I always figured some sort of basic commodity trade aspect that varied across star systems or social zones might interest players willing to move about a bit. Most just sit in ESD and surf the exchange but some do use other places, give them a reason to move around.
Tbh maybe if they just updated the visuals in social areas they would be more popular. ESD looks amazing but compared to places like K7 and even DS9 it’s a million times better build and better looking.
I would say that they generally would benefit from adding SOME perk to social zones. EXP boosts or something
Meh, that doesn't promote social behavior. That just encourages players to do their doffing and admiralty at a specific place (in contravention to how those systems are designed.)
What I'd like to see: activities similar to the seasonal events built into the background of social zones. For example: happy hour at Quarks (which starts a non-combat minigame that plays out like pie-eating during the winter event, with rewards based on individual achievement [so participation is never futile, which I think is the problem with New Romulus alerts].) There wouldn't necessarily be something going on at all times (unlike the seasonal events) but just something to occasionally bring players together at a focal point (making you more aware of the fact they exist.)
This is actually a good idea, honestly. The main idea of adding perks is to draw people to certain locations. So maybe you'd see more players hanging out at ESD or DS9, or on other worlds, which could, in turn, promote socializing in the areas. Your addition of the minigames is also incredibly clever.
This is likely the reason we never got the botanical garden, working holodecks, working medbay, and poker, addons for ship interiors that the devs threw around as possible ideas in the past.
Its ironic that you said that these ideas have been tossed about years ago, and yet this is exactly the sort of thing that I am thinking about. Wouldnt it be great if they had a poker table that a bunch of strangers could just join up to for a game of 5 Card Draw, or maybe hanging out in the Academy Garden doing a few tasks given out by a Holo-Boothby, or for the Medical officers, going to the different med-bays on the different stations and helping the injured?
Yeah the rewards won't be high, but we are talking about minigames. The Tholian/Borg Red Alert only give out a small reward, yet they remain ever popular, so I think it could be a success.
The problem with trying to "fix" these maps by adding in unique mini-games or whatever is that people would do them for like a week, and then stop, making all the time and money put into them mean even less then the typical battlezone, which usually get at least some amount of constant play. Even if you add rewards like ditlhium, or exp, or EC, or marks, people won't do them because most people are too focused on maximum efficiency, and will just grind Crystalline Entity over and over.
So? This is the fallacy of the extreme. You've picked the most popular point in STO and essentially said that "investment can't be justified" because social zone mini-events wouldn't be trying to outcompete CCA (of all things.) Congratulations, you're not insane. However, you are missing the point by a fairly wide margin by assuming this would be a problem.
Just take the winter event. There, the most efficient way of earning ornaments is, by far, doffing. But Cryptic still added Klingon ice fishing and people still played it throughout its run (from my experience.) Plus they're adding another event this year. Why? Efficiency isn't what guides human behavior in full. Time/reward is only a component of a more complicated equation which you can work at from other directions as well. For example: breaking monotony with targeted activities in convenient areas of the game (with disproportionate benefits to their cost in counterbalancing a critical problem. Single target grinding without breaks can lead to burn-out and high player turn-over.)
And that pretty much describes seasonal events themselves. They help break monotony over the year. So, what we're talking about here is just a different scale of activity. Same principle, same justification, same secondary benefits to player aggregation, but using existing maps and setting limited availability by the clock rather than a calendar.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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I always figured some sort of basic commodity trade aspect that varied across star systems or social zones might interest players willing to move about a bit.
Most just sit in ESD and surf the exchange but some do use other places, give them a reason to move around.
...
I'd really like that idea but IMO I'd also like them to be mini missions, so that you could be ambushed on the way to your destination (by for example Space Pirates) just to keep it interesting. You could also have escort missions were you had to take an ambassador from one place to another, again, with a chance to be attacked along the way (maybe by a faction that doesn't like the ambassadors faction).
The reason I mentioned turning it into a mini mission (though you could have both types) is because of the random ambushes,,, they might be easier to implement for the Devs if it was a mission instead. Also the ambushes might give people more incentive to actually travel from point to point instead of just fast travelling constantly, ie 'farming' it.
Other than the ambushes your idea could be easy to put into the game, (though I would also like the idea of random action along the way whether it be on the ground or in space). Simply creating certain items that are only sold in one area of space (Alpha, Beta, etc) and anywhere they aren't sold, they sell for a higher price. The destination area would also sell items unique to that area, again, that are worth more value in the further out hubs. This type of gameplay would appeal to characters like traders or bounty hunters. If the escort missions were also added this would appeal to Fed or military type characters.
I could see some sort of economy thing.. say, 20-30 differnet commodities, whos prices would randomly fluctuate. Players can grab, say, industrial replicators for cheap on ESD, and get then to Kobali, where the prices are higher. maybe some sort of alert can be flashed... Andor needs Synthale or Vulcan has a glut of Chield Generators.
The game has changed during these last 5 years. Back then people were more spread out and there were much fewer places to spread to. There are also less people around. The largest exodus by far was due to delta rising, which cleaned out mostly the type of player who would frequent these social zones most.
Basically now content is intended to be consumable - finish it then move on and never look back. Consider the Tzenkethi space battle zone. That was move on before you even tried it! But places like Risa and Q's will be packed during events. You have to go where the events and current content lead you. That said there are some places that still get trafic like DS9. Nimbus III may have had the longest staying power of anything in the game. I never understood why but everytime I go there there are people still.
Sheldon is so WISE.
Remember what people also forget is not only where they are but what instance they are in. If you go to Earth Space Dock often many times in the evening or weekends you still see 10 or 15 instances with at least half of them close to being full. Drozanna sometimes has 2 so if there's not many around perhaps your just in the less populated instance.
Still I think the regular player base may have declined a bit. Not because less people play the game they just play it far less often than they used to or only login daily mostly to REFINE / run DOFF & Admiralty. I suspect most players like to wait awhile till there's far more new content for them to try out as we get only 1 or 2 new episodes every several months.
Neverwinter attempted to speed up Queue load's by changing their Diamond bonus from doing any 2 dungeons, or 3 skirmishes, or 2 epic trials into Random Queue's. Now they only have ground battles but STO could do something like this to also assist Queue load times:
Random Normal 50-59 Space Queue
Random Normal 50-59 Ground Queue
-
Random Normal 60 (Space or Ground could load) Queue
Random Advanced 60 (Space or Ground could load) Queue
Random Elite 60 (Space or Ground could load) Queue
I'm not sure we'd see a Dilithium bonus one time for each Random Queue however; Star Trek awards most DIL from Admiralty, Duty Officer, then normal Queue run's / Mission Replay's. If they did offer a Dilithium bonus for the first run of each random queue we might see the rewards slightly reduced for a select or specific queue on normal, advanced or elite slightly? Still it would help queue load times and would give people a way to do a variety of content.
Unfortunately, it seems ALL the social zones are just hiding places for various UI buttons, with nothing to do that actually needs the map. The New Romulus adventure zone I suppose could count as a social map, as it contains exchange/bank/mail facilities, so that could be the one exception. The academies have that particle-scanning event thing, but it only runs once in a blue moon (and rewards bunk). And Risa of course is only operational in the summer.
You can throw in the other battlezones (at least Kobali) then, I guess.
As for the academies: they have unique doff missions (helpful at the lower levels due to low fatality rate, uninteresting afterwards), doff acquirement officers (also found on starbases, but for those without fleets useful), dil refining officer, 50% vendor (as I think all social zones), the "lore of empire" double quest. No real need but not too shabby either.
Those NPC contacts are exactly what I meant by "hiding places for UI buttons." None of them do anything that interacts with the map, they could just as well be put into a menu without affecting their function in the slightest.
I like that there are so many places to visit, it makes the galaxy seem bigger. With even fewer places to visit it would make the galaxy feel even smaller, that is not what I want from a game that is meant to take place in an explored galaxy.
If all the things you mentioned were just added to the players hud then what reason would there be to go any where? Take them vendors away and that area becomes totally useless. You might not think it's useful anyway but for me and other players it's somewhere else to visit, new vistas, it makes the galaxy seem bigger (as it should) and I think taking some of the things you mentioned away would lessen the game, a galaxy full of possibilities but not bigger than a town (with lack of places to visit).
Maybe you're just lazy or bored, maybe an option could be added to do it from the UI as well as visit the places, but for me (and probably many others) I would still choose to go there.
There is no reason to go anywhere as it is. My toons are all parked at some exchange console or another and most of them only move far enough to reach the mail console when sales expire. I'll transwarp to a feature episode once a week when one is on.
And do notice I wasn't talking about "taking away" anything (even though I personally couldn't care less if they axed all the useless social zones). I'm saying there should be some interesting activities in them that make use of the maps instead of just buttons to click. Like for example New Romulus (the outside map).
The problem with trying to "fix" these maps by adding in unique mini-games or whatever is that people would do them for like a week, and then stop, making all the time and money put into them mean even less then the typical battlezone, which usually get at least some amount of constant play. Even if you add rewards like ditlhium, or exp, or EC, or marks, people won't do them because most people are too focused on maximum efficiency, and will just grind Crystalline Entity over and over.
Not if they have useful and unique rewards that people want.
Everything rewarding the same old dilithium, marks, EC is the game's major malfunction. It's not the players being too focused on efficiency (no such thing), it's the game never giving them a reason to aim for anything else. If everything gives out the same reward, it is only logical to do whatever gives the most of it.
Also
-Seasonal events =/= social zones everyone can go to any day or the year.
You might want to check on Risa then. From our point of view, the difference between a social zone and a seasonal event is merely the presence of timed activities. This is a simple statement of fact. My proposal is to add similar activities in a much more limited fashion to other maps (perhaps twice a day, to make careful use of the seasonal map format in other areas of the game which could use more points of social aggregation.)
Same tool, new application; the argument here is neither difficult or a contentious one to make.
-Doffing is far from the most efficient means of getting things, as you have to log on every hour or two to load up more projects, else you waste tons of time not having projects slotted.
It takes a few clicks and slots in around normal gameplay (ex. hopping around PVE's). All that's required is that you use the winter event map as a social zone and occasionally check the doff UI. Assuming you'd try to min-max this, to exclusively squeeze every item you can out of the day, is again another fallacy of the extreme (though still one that falls short because you're only looking at time logged in, not time spent actually engaged with the activity. Remember, it runs in the background and you don't have to watch the timer.)
Doffing (for the minimal effort required and notable rewards gained) is most definitely the most efficient means of getting winter event items. It's not exclusively used though because doffing doesn't offer the same level of gameplay as other activities (it can be used in conjunction or entirely in replacement, it depends on the preferences user.)
-Adding these kinds of mini-games to social zones isn't going to break monotony, because, it being available all the time mean it is monotony itself. Unlike season events which only show up for a month or so, or the yearly Mirror Universe Incursion, which is only around for a few weeks.
I said most explicitly that these events would available only a certain times, not all the time. That's simply your narrow interpretation of monotony as only playing out across the scale of months/weeks. You'll find that people can get bored in shorter intervals. They may have other options (ex. adventure zones, missions, and the Foundry) but it'd be a stretch to say that these are totally sufficient to minimize burn-out. More could help push the numbers down further. The question is how new types of gameplay can be added to STO naturally and in way that compliments (rather than detracts) from other parts of the game (this would be a wiser counter-argument for you to make. You can't speak for Cryptic's investment/return calculations.) The seasonal events offer a tested model. All that remains is to investigate the potential in applying it.
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If you really think Cryptic hasn't investigated it, and deemed it insufficient, then you are only fooling yourself.
There is a reason why all of these planned mini-features Cryptic talked about never saw the light of day... because they aren't worth it. Just like Cryptic knows Defera is broken, but wont do anything to fix it because the cost of fixing it would be greater then making a new battlezone at this point, and even making a new battlezone for it to reduce the cost of fixing it is still too much to justify doing it unless they went back to a big story arc where the Borg were the main badguys again. It isn't worth it to fix it because no one would use it anyways, especially now that the borg aren't the big bads.
But I don't believe there is much of a cost of "fixing it", not compared to the cost of creating whole new areas, new queues, new ground and space items/content....
I've nver created anything on the Foundry, but I hear the mechanics are similar. If a player can spend a few minutes changing something in a mission they created, then it shoud be similar to the devs.
Put it this way, when they launch this years winter event, I can best my wages that 24 hours later, there will be server downtime to fix some major bugs. I know this cos it happens every year. If fixing important things has a great cost to it, then this wouldn't happen and the devs would leave bugs in until the even tran its course.
Also think about this, they make a lot fo revenue ffrom RP'ers customising their outfits and ships, so giving the social zones some love would only be increasing their revenue stream in the long run...
Well when I talk about "Fixing" i'm not talking about a complete overhaul. i mean the endeavour system was a nice little addition to get players to migrate to different areas and queues, what I'm suggesting is some social minigames and things to do which will draw players to different areas for different rewards. they don't even ave to be big rewards. As we see, the Red Alerts don't give big rewards but they are still popular, and i thnk players would appreciate it.
Not if they have useful and unique rewards that people want.
Everything rewarding the same old dilithium, marks, EC is the game's major malfunction. It's not the players being too focused on efficiency (no such thing), it's the game never giving them a reason to aim for anything else. If everything gives out the same reward, it is only logical to do whatever gives the most of it.
They woin't, because that isn't how games work. Even if they did, it would just be a case of the MUI where people play it for however long they need, and then stop.
So you get two weeks out of it, then its dead for years since its on all the time.
That is exactly how almost every other MMO but STO works. And people play them for however long the developers dare make them worth playing. Quite possibly forever, if the rewards are something tradeable or otherwise usable in quantity.
You can't speak for Cryptic's investment/return calculations.) The seasonal events offer a tested model. All that remains is to investigate the potential in applying it.
If you really think Cryptic hasn't investigated it, and deemed it insufficient, then you are only fooling yourself.
You have imagined a certainty rather than dealing with those facts which are available to the community. We literally do not know whether Cryptic has investigated adding timed events in this way (ie. in a similar way to the seasonal events. Can you really not see the analogy just because it disagrees with your desired point of view? We haven't got poker but we do have the omega mini-games, first contact day, anniversary prize hunt, among every other yearly addition to both summer and winter events. A total bias against new non-PVE actives is simply not supportable by fact,) or done so recently. To say otherwise is highly presumptive. You may believe it but, looking at it myself, it seems like you're only trying to convince yourself that an idea isn't worth pursuing to prematurely shut down discussion simply because you don't want to have it.
Why you're so eager I don't know, but next time you might want to consider exactly why you find a point distasteful, rather than assuming a voice you don't have to jump to a point you can't logically make. The devs can make their own cost-benefit analysis. Forums don't have to. We aren't professionals and we don't have the facts necessary to make valid analyses. We just throw ideas out for Cryptic to consider. That's fine, that's natural to the format, and it won't result in the ruination of the game (to borrow your extreme attitude.)
Take it easy and just let discussion happen. There are other angles of "adding mini-events to social zones" to consider and I did lightly suggest them to you, in hopes of having a better discussion. If you want to, you can try adopting a stronger counter argument (one that deals with the mechanics of the proposal). Or, you can simply take a break. Either way, it's fine.
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We can't even get them to add a bank and exchange console to Defera and you think they are going to add social minigames (the heck does that even mean) to various areas?
I was more specific earlier on (reading full threads can be a useful thing before jumping into the middle of discussion. ) For precedent, just check the omega event. Cryptic quite literally added a new minigame to various social areas (for a yearly event as opposed to a daily/weekly.)
The proposal: new minigame but on a shorter rotation. Ex. Happy Hour at Quarks (something lively that helps break the static monotony of the established social maps.) Here's how I'd go about that:
Twice a day (one convenient for US, other EU) on the weekend, enable "happy hour activities" for one hour in quarks bar. There would be two to choose from:
1. Serve drinks
2. Drinking contest
For 1. the player would be tasked with a light dialog based puzzle challenge where they have to take amusing orders and return them to the counter. Succeed three times and you receive your full pay (say: 1000 latinum [provided the lat store finally gets updated], plus 400 dil just to put something out there.) Fail, and you get a consolation prize (say: 200 latinum, 50 dil.)
For 2. the player is tasked with consuming as many drinks as possible within an allotted time frame. This would basically just be a reskin of the pie eating contest (such that players can interfere with one another.) Prizes would be tiered based on performance.
I'm comfortable making two suggestions (which would help the long-term life of happy hour) because as a Foundry author I could knock out the dialog and mechanics for one (proceeding linearly) in one day. Two is likewise simple. Now of course there's complications we don't know about (and a few days work is still a lot to schedule in and around other projects) but these are within the scale set by previous events (the omega mini-game introduced a whole new UI and implementation across the whole game.)
Now why Quarks? It'd be a nice thing to tag along with a DS9 revamp (which we know the devs are interested in, and it would be thematically appropriate for the upcoming expansion.) However, the same idea could also be applied to club 47 and the bar on Qo'Nos.
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Comments
Most just sit in ESD and surf the exchange but some do use other places, give them a reason to move around.
Tbh maybe if they just updated the visuals in social areas they would be more popular. ESD looks amazing but compared to places like K7 and even DS9 it’s a million times better build and better looking.
This is actually a good idea, honestly. The main idea of adding perks is to draw people to certain locations. So maybe you'd see more players hanging out at ESD or DS9, or on other worlds, which could, in turn, promote socializing in the areas. Your addition of the minigames is also incredibly clever.
Its ironic that you said that these ideas have been tossed about years ago, and yet this is exactly the sort of thing that I am thinking about. Wouldnt it be great if they had a poker table that a bunch of strangers could just join up to for a game of 5 Card Draw, or maybe hanging out in the Academy Garden doing a few tasks given out by a Holo-Boothby, or for the Medical officers, going to the different med-bays on the different stations and helping the injured?
Yeah the rewards won't be high, but we are talking about minigames. The Tholian/Borg Red Alert only give out a small reward, yet they remain ever popular, so I think it could be a success.
So? This is the fallacy of the extreme. You've picked the most popular point in STO and essentially said that "investment can't be justified" because social zone mini-events wouldn't be trying to outcompete CCA (of all things.) Congratulations, you're not insane. However, you are missing the point by a fairly wide margin by assuming this would be a problem.
Just take the winter event. There, the most efficient way of earning ornaments is, by far, doffing. But Cryptic still added Klingon ice fishing and people still played it throughout its run (from my experience.) Plus they're adding another event this year. Why? Efficiency isn't what guides human behavior in full. Time/reward is only a component of a more complicated equation which you can work at from other directions as well. For example: breaking monotony with targeted activities in convenient areas of the game (with disproportionate benefits to their cost in counterbalancing a critical problem. Single target grinding without breaks can lead to burn-out and high player turn-over.)
And that pretty much describes seasonal events themselves. They help break monotony over the year. So, what we're talking about here is just a different scale of activity. Same principle, same justification, same secondary benefits to player aggregation, but using existing maps and setting limited availability by the clock rather than a calendar.
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Edit - Must have been tired when I wrote that. I think it can be better understood now.
I'd really like that idea but IMO I'd also like them to be mini missions, so that you could be ambushed on the way to your destination (by for example Space Pirates) just to keep it interesting. You could also have escort missions were you had to take an ambassador from one place to another, again, with a chance to be attacked along the way (maybe by a faction that doesn't like the ambassadors faction).
The reason I mentioned turning it into a mini mission (though you could have both types) is because of the random ambushes,,, they might be easier to implement for the Devs if it was a mission instead. Also the ambushes might give people more incentive to actually travel from point to point instead of just fast travelling constantly, ie 'farming' it.
Other than the ambushes your idea could be easy to put into the game, (though I would also like the idea of random action along the way whether it be on the ground or in space). Simply creating certain items that are only sold in one area of space (Alpha, Beta, etc) and anywhere they aren't sold, they sell for a higher price. The destination area would also sell items unique to that area, again, that are worth more value in the further out hubs. This type of gameplay would appeal to characters like traders or bounty hunters. If the escort missions were also added this would appeal to Fed or military type characters.
Sheldon is so WISE.
Remember what people also forget is not only where they are but what instance they are in. If you go to Earth Space Dock often many times in the evening or weekends you still see 10 or 15 instances with at least half of them close to being full. Drozanna sometimes has 2 so if there's not many around perhaps your just in the less populated instance.
Still I think the regular player base may have declined a bit. Not because less people play the game they just play it far less often than they used to or only login daily mostly to REFINE / run DOFF & Admiralty. I suspect most players like to wait awhile till there's far more new content for them to try out as we get only 1 or 2 new episodes every several months.
Neverwinter attempted to speed up Queue load's by changing their Diamond bonus from doing any 2 dungeons, or 3 skirmishes, or 2 epic trials into Random Queue's. Now they only have ground battles but STO could do something like this to also assist Queue load times:
Random Normal 50-59 Space Queue
Random Normal 50-59 Ground Queue
-
Random Normal 60 (Space or Ground could load) Queue
Random Advanced 60 (Space or Ground could load) Queue
Random Elite 60 (Space or Ground could load) Queue
I'm not sure we'd see a Dilithium bonus one time for each Random Queue however; Star Trek awards most DIL from Admiralty, Duty Officer, then normal Queue run's / Mission Replay's. If they did offer a Dilithium bonus for the first run of each random queue we might see the rewards slightly reduced for a select or specific queue on normal, advanced or elite slightly? Still it would help queue load times and would give people a way to do a variety of content.
And do notice I wasn't talking about "taking away" anything (even though I personally couldn't care less if they axed all the useless social zones). I'm saying there should be some interesting activities in them that make use of the maps instead of just buttons to click. Like for example New Romulus (the outside map).
Not if they have useful and unique rewards that people want.
Everything rewarding the same old dilithium, marks, EC is the game's major malfunction. It's not the players being too focused on efficiency (no such thing), it's the game never giving them a reason to aim for anything else. If everything gives out the same reward, it is only logical to do whatever gives the most of it.
You might want to check on Risa then. From our point of view, the difference between a social zone and a seasonal event is merely the presence of timed activities. This is a simple statement of fact. My proposal is to add similar activities in a much more limited fashion to other maps (perhaps twice a day, to make careful use of the seasonal map format in other areas of the game which could use more points of social aggregation.)
Same tool, new application; the argument here is neither difficult or a contentious one to make.
It takes a few clicks and slots in around normal gameplay (ex. hopping around PVE's). All that's required is that you use the winter event map as a social zone and occasionally check the doff UI. Assuming you'd try to min-max this, to exclusively squeeze every item you can out of the day, is again another fallacy of the extreme (though still one that falls short because you're only looking at time logged in, not time spent actually engaged with the activity. Remember, it runs in the background and you don't have to watch the timer.)
Doffing (for the minimal effort required and notable rewards gained) is most definitely the most efficient means of getting winter event items. It's not exclusively used though because doffing doesn't offer the same level of gameplay as other activities (it can be used in conjunction or entirely in replacement, it depends on the preferences user.)
I said most explicitly that these events would available only a certain times, not all the time. That's simply your narrow interpretation of monotony as only playing out across the scale of months/weeks. You'll find that people can get bored in shorter intervals. They may have other options (ex. adventure zones, missions, and the Foundry) but it'd be a stretch to say that these are totally sufficient to minimize burn-out. More could help push the numbers down further. The question is how new types of gameplay can be added to STO naturally and in way that compliments (rather than detracts) from other parts of the game (this would be a wiser counter-argument for you to make. You can't speak for Cryptic's investment/return calculations.) The seasonal events offer a tested model. All that remains is to investigate the potential in applying it.
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But I don't believe there is much of a cost of "fixing it", not compared to the cost of creating whole new areas, new queues, new ground and space items/content....
I've nver created anything on the Foundry, but I hear the mechanics are similar. If a player can spend a few minutes changing something in a mission they created, then it shoud be similar to the devs.
Put it this way, when they launch this years winter event, I can best my wages that 24 hours later, there will be server downtime to fix some major bugs. I know this cos it happens every year. If fixing important things has a great cost to it, then this wouldn't happen and the devs would leave bugs in until the even tran its course.
Also think about this, they make a lot fo revenue ffrom RP'ers customising their outfits and ships, so giving the social zones some love would only be increasing their revenue stream in the long run...
You have imagined a certainty rather than dealing with those facts which are available to the community. We literally do not know whether Cryptic has investigated adding timed events in this way (ie. in a similar way to the seasonal events. Can you really not see the analogy just because it disagrees with your desired point of view? We haven't got poker but we do have the omega mini-games, first contact day, anniversary prize hunt, among every other yearly addition to both summer and winter events. A total bias against new non-PVE actives is simply not supportable by fact,) or done so recently. To say otherwise is highly presumptive. You may believe it but, looking at it myself, it seems like you're only trying to convince yourself that an idea isn't worth pursuing to prematurely shut down discussion simply because you don't want to have it.
Why you're so eager I don't know, but next time you might want to consider exactly why you find a point distasteful, rather than assuming a voice you don't have to jump to a point you can't logically make. The devs can make their own cost-benefit analysis. Forums don't have to. We aren't professionals and we don't have the facts necessary to make valid analyses. We just throw ideas out for Cryptic to consider. That's fine, that's natural to the format, and it won't result in the ruination of the game (to borrow your extreme attitude.)
Take it easy and just let discussion happen. There are other angles of "adding mini-events to social zones" to consider and I did lightly suggest them to you, in hopes of having a better discussion. If you want to, you can try adopting a stronger counter argument (one that deals with the mechanics of the proposal). Or, you can simply take a break. Either way, it's fine.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I was more specific earlier on (reading full threads can be a useful thing before jumping into the middle of discussion.
The proposal: new minigame but on a shorter rotation. Ex. Happy Hour at Quarks (something lively that helps break the static monotony of the established social maps.) Here's how I'd go about that:
Twice a day (one convenient for US, other EU) on the weekend, enable "happy hour activities" for one hour in quarks bar. There would be two to choose from:
1. Serve drinks
2. Drinking contest
For 1. the player would be tasked with a light dialog based puzzle challenge where they have to take amusing orders and return them to the counter. Succeed three times and you receive your full pay (say: 1000 latinum [provided the lat store finally gets updated], plus 400 dil just to put something out there.) Fail, and you get a consolation prize (say: 200 latinum, 50 dil.)
For 2. the player is tasked with consuming as many drinks as possible within an allotted time frame. This would basically just be a reskin of the pie eating contest (such that players can interfere with one another.) Prizes would be tiered based on performance.
I'm comfortable making two suggestions (which would help the long-term life of happy hour) because as a Foundry author I could knock out the dialog and mechanics for one (proceeding linearly) in one day. Two is likewise simple. Now of course there's complications we don't know about (and a few days work is still a lot to schedule in and around other projects) but these are within the scale set by previous events (the omega mini-game introduced a whole new UI and implementation across the whole game.)
Now why Quarks? It'd be a nice thing to tag along with a DS9 revamp (which we know the devs are interested in, and it would be thematically appropriate for the upcoming expansion.) However, the same idea could also be applied to club 47 and the bar on Qo'Nos.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!