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Devs, why do we only get red alerts on console once in a blue moon?

I would really really (and I mean really) appreciate it if a dev could answer this but I know it's not likely. Why aren't red alerts a permanent feature on console like they are on pc? Back when I played on pc I enjoyed the red alerts and I don't understand why they only show up on console as a rare event.

Comments

  • leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,331 Arc User
    Because they keep other queues populated. Red Alerts on PC have ruined queues as people rarely run others because they are easy Marks. Trust me. It IS better this way.
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
  • snowwolf#0563 snowwolf Member Posts: 1,018 Arc User
    Very true.

    You can't run anything on PC anymore unless you're in an active fleet or a large group of friends. NONE of the queue's are being run, at ALL.. Unless they have en endeavour or some sort of feature to them.

    I even do this myself..

    Why "waste" time on a queue that can take.. 25-30 minutes with random people because of issues.

    Compared to a Borg Red Alert where you blow everything up in 5 minutes or less, and still get about 30-40 marks with the daily bonus.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,587 Arc User
    Because console kiddies should be starved of content until they return to the fold. :) "Let not a console, nor a console kiddie be."
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  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    Better question would be why PC gets them on 24/7? That's not an "alert."

    Alerts were so much better before the queueification.
  • meimeitoomeimeitoo Member Posts: 12,587 Arc User
    dtrekkie wrote: »
    leemwatson wrote: »
    Because they keep other queues populated. Red Alerts on PC have ruined queues as people rarely run others because they are easy Marks. Trust me. It IS better this way.

    I remember seeing the biggest drop in queues when Delta Rising was released. The mistake cryptic make with the queues during that expansion seems to be something the game never recovered from.


    That's the question, isn't it? Did queues die because of Red Alerts? Or were 24/7 Red Alerts instituted because the queues were dead? My money is on the latter: with the advent of Dilithium Rising, too many players left; and, in panic -- out of fear everyone would leave soon, in the absence of popping queues -- they quickly introduced perma-RA's.
    3lsZz0w.jpg
  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    edited July 2018
    The queues died before the 24/7 Red Alerts started.

    The real decline started with the release of Delta Rising, but they were fairly dead even before that. DR certainly didn't help the situation, while things were already bad before Delta, the queue population never recovered from the death blow that was Delta Rising.
    Insert witty signature line here.
  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    The queues died before the 24/7 Red Alerts started.

    The real decline started with the release of Delta Rising, but they were fairly dead even before that. DR certainly didn't help the situation, while things were already bad before Delta, the queue population never recovered from the death blow that was Delta Rising.
    The real decline started with the release of Season 7, which removed the STF unique drops and instantly killed the ground half of them. It continued with the introduction of choice marks eating into the rewards diversity even more. Delta Rising made CCA into what it is by making it 10x easier and reward 50% more, meaning there was no longer any reason to play anything else for dil. Continued proliferation of choice marks killed off the last of the specific marks queues (<-the alert queueification goes here). Then Admiralty killed off CCA as a dil farmer.

    And quite frankly, after filling up all the reps on my jemmy almost exclusively with Recruit event unlocks (as well as stacking enough gamma marks for my other toons), I'm starting to think the alerts as a mark farmer aren't too far from going out, too. It's all too easy to just get everything on the side from events.

    There is simply too little reason to play any of the non-event content in this game.
  • leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,331 Arc User
    Delta Rising was not responsible for the drop in queues at all. That was circumstantial. The introduction of Choice Mark Packs, the 24/7 alerts, the loss of the hourly events et all, contributed to the state of queues. There's a mentality of little effort for max reward in some people too, which the Choice Packs also helped to feed. Had specific Marks been limited to what they related to and/or were similar too, then queues would have remained populated, especially if the hourly events focused on giving bonuses to a queue at that time. We've been given TOO much choice, and content we cannot possibly fail......people have taken advantage of it.
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    leemwatson wrote: »
    Delta Rising was not responsible for the drop in queues at all. That was circumstantial. The introduction of Choice Mark Packs, the 24/7 alerts, the loss of the hourly events et all, contributed to the state of queues. There's a mentality of little effort for max reward in some people too, which the Choice Packs also helped to feed. Had specific Marks been limited to what they related to and/or were similar too, then queues would have remained populated, especially if the hourly events focused on giving bonuses to a queue at that time. We've been given TOO much choice, and content we cannot possibly fail......people have taken advantage of it.
    Right. The only thing Delta Rising specifically did to the queues was up the reward on CCA and make it easier. It had an effect as far as dil farming is concerned, but without choice marks it wouldn't have killed the queues.

    In fact, DR's attempt at adding higher difficulty levels had a chance to be a new reason to play, because getting better gear could've been actually necessary at some point rather than just another step up in the DPS contest (for those who care about such things). Too bad they walked back on that.
  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    edited July 2018
    1. Players will, quite logically, favor the most efficient path towards getting their paycheck.
    2. Content which does not offer the most efficient path towards said paycheck will be abandoned.
    3. Content in which the player is likely to not receive the paycheck(and gets a 30 minute ban for on top) will be rated even worse than it otherwise might be.

    Considering that so many of the new queues are basically time-gated with mandatory mission times and wait times, it should be a lot easier to figure out a "fair" payout for these missions then before. But it seems they still haven't really figured it out.


    But I think also given how many queues that exist, it might not even be enough to better distribute the rewards over time played. It will basically never be a perfect match, and any queue not the best will still be played less, which means more wait time for that queue, making it eve less attractive to queue for.

    If I was Cryptic, Each week I would pick two of the least queued space and ground queues and give them a bonus reward once per day per character. Something like 50 Extra Marks and +1 Elite Marks +500 Dilithium. Not sure that would work for all queues, because some just plain suck (like can fail randomly or still just take too long). It would of course work better with better equalized reward/time ratios.


    *sacrificestotheeditmonster*
    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    1. Players will, quite logically, favor the most efficient path towards getting their paycheck.
    2. Content which does not offer the most efficient path towards said paycheck will be abandoned.
    3. Content in which the player is likely to not receive the paycheck(and gets a 30 minute ban for on top) will be rated even worse than it otherwise might be.

    Considering that so many of the new queues are basically time-gated with mandatory mission times and wait times, it should be a lot easier to figure out a "fair" payout for these missions then before. But it seems they still haven't really figured it out.
    The problem is not figuring it out. That's just basic math. The problem is that, if a 15-minute queue had its reward scaled up to the same time ratio as 60-second CCA, it would give over 10k dil ore and 1000 marks per run (15x CCA payout).

    Or conversely if CCA was scaled down to the ratio of the timed queues, it would give about 50 dil and 5 marks.

    Neither of these payouts is realistic.

    And because these queues are guaranteed win, there are no extra factors to adjust payout by difficulty, only time.
    But I think also given how many queues that exist, it might not even be enough to better distribute the rewards over time played. It will basically never be a perfect match, and any queue not the best will still be played less, which means more wait time for that queue, making it eve less attractive to queue for.

    If I was Cryptic, Each week I would pick two of the least queued space and ground queues and give them a bonus reward once per day per character. Something like 50 Extra Marks and +1 Elite Marks +500 Dilithium. Not sure that would work for all queues, because some just plain suck (like can fail randomly or still just take too long). It would of course work better with better equalized reward/time ratios.
    These daily bonuses always get brought up in this topic. As said, a 15-minute queue must give over 10k dil and 1000 marks per run to match CCA's reward/time ratio. Even large events like Mirror Invasion with their 50k dil, don't come even close to that.

    There's absolutely no way to support 50-odd queues (and however many other activities) all with the same reward. Any attempt is doomed from the start. And that's before considering that, with Admiralty, players don't need to farm much dilithium anymore in the first place.

    The queues are and will remain dead unless and until they start giving different rewards. As long as people can get their reward bigger, faster, easier somewhere else, that's exactly what they'll do.
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