Playing STF/PQ solo

thecylus

Why is it not possible to start an STF/PQ solo? Most of the content in STO is made for casual gamers and Cryptic doesn’t seem to care about PvP. In my opinion people should have the option to start STF/PQs solo, and thus have a greater challenge. Of course, this is not possible for every PQ, because sometimes you need more than just DPS. But at least it can be possible for the majority of space-STF’s.

Why can't we do that? I would even accept a three stage confirmation query to make sure I want to play it solo, just to make sure, the casual gamers don't slip in there by accident.

nandospc

I agree. Well, actually you can already do that, making private and let the players leave the queue once inside, but it's laborious, let's say
It could be a nice addition, but cryptic, in that case, should add a larger reward for the instance. You know, you're doing the job of an entire team

leemwatson

Indeed. I would support this function for a number of queues, but obviously, I do like the teaming element too, so maybe they could make some adjusted queues. It was hugely disappointing when they removed the ability to solo SB24 as it was great for levelling Ship Mastery, but they must make sure it is more rewarding to play as a team than as a single player in standard queues, otherwise queues would be even more quiet than they are now!

duncanidaho11

Is it really in the best interests of STO to take more payers out of the queue system? Challenge is one thing but when your personal invigoration is also denying others your contribution to making the PVE system work (by allowing convenient solo'ing through teamed content) I don't think there's a benefit strong enough to justify investing dev time into this.

Personally, I don't think STO is lacking for single player content and retrofitting multiplayer to satisfy that niche (with the aforementioned hit to population dynaimcs) isn't as effective a solution as, say, designing more elaborate patrols or hopping into the Foundry and doing that yourself (SRS for example has built a lot of PVE style scenarios to challenge participants and rank performance. Search their tag to find them.)

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peterconnorfirst

Well I’m a team player and starting stages solo does not really interest me. Nevertheless I’m highly interested in being able to start PvE maps in incomplete teams in order to set the difficulty straight or being able to play at all. Therefore I find the request of the OP highly useful. We currently have means to do so in game, nevertheless it requires some doing and is not accessible to every player. Would be nice if it was.

davefenestrator

You used to be able to go into Borg red alerts solo sometimes, randomly, before alerts were added to the queue system.

Doing it solo was a fun test of a new build. I miss that

seaofsorrows

davefenestrator wrote: »

You used to be able to go into Borg red alerts solo sometimes, randomly, before alerts were added to the queue system.

Doing it solo was a fun test of a new build. I miss that

I miss that too.. Solo Borg alerts were great!

warpangel

My guess is because they can't think of better ways to encourage group play than an arbitrary headcount requirement to start content with.

duncanidaho11 wrote: »

Is it really in the best interests of STO to take more payers out of the queue system? Challenge is one thing but when your personal invigoration is also denying others your contribution to making the PVE system work (by allowing convenient solo'ing through teamed content) I don't think there's a benefit strong enough to justify investing dev time into this.

The only dev time it needs is someone changing the number of players required to start private queue to 1. It was actually possible on some maps before and they removed it with the UI revamp just because, see above.

Personally, I don't think STO is lacking for single player content and retrofitting multiplayer to satisfy that niche (with the aforementioned hit to population dynaimcs) isn't as effective a solution as, say, designing more elaborate patrols or hopping into the Foundry and doing that yourself (SRS for example has built a lot of PVE style scenarios to challenge participants and rank performance. Search their tag to find them.)

STO is sorely lacking in well-rewarding single-player content. The episodes are worth a few runs through if you want the gear set, there's That One Patrol for XP grinding, and that's it.

And with few exceptions, the so-called "multiplayer" of the queues is much more well-suited to being played solo as it is, no "retrofitting" required. The combat difficulty level is appropriate for a single player of average performance and the need to cover multiple areas makes it more interesting than the usual park-n-shoot of team play. Most of them don't even have fail conditions anyway.

Of course, the real issue is a lot of the queues aren't made to be played at all. They have auto-win timers and actually doing anything is optional, with little if any effect on the rewards. Without peer pressure, everyone would just AFK the timers.

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