If you honestly believe that Elites were intended for the bulk of the player base then obviously trying to talk common sense to you is a lost cause.
It's rather impossible to disagree with this. 'Elites', by their very definition, are not meant for the general population. If they were, they wouldn't be 'Elites.'
Like "Advanced?" That they nerfed into the ground because not everyone could complete them every time.
That only shows Advanceds were aptly named. (In that they couldn't be done by everyone) If they hadn't nerfed those, 2/3rd of the queue levels would have been inaccessible to the player base: something no business can afford, really. The only thing they didn't change was the name 'Advanced.'
Also, with Dilithium Rising, Geko made it *very* clear (in several podcasts), that Elites were going to be truly for Elite players only, and were not meant for everyone.
To be honest, there are players capable of completing Korfez. It's not a huge number, but those people exist. Thus, the very notion that you *need* to have a normal/advanced version for a queue to become proficient in elite is ridiculous.
If you honestly believe that Elites were intended for the bulk of the player base then obviously trying to talk common sense to you is a lost cause.
It's rather impossible to disagree with this. 'Elites', by their very definition, are not meant for the general population. If they were, they wouldn't be 'Elites.'
Like "Advanced?" That they nerfed into the ground because not everyone could complete them every time.
That only shows Advanceds were aptly named. (In that they couldn't be done by everyone) If they hadn't nerfed those, 2/3rd of the queue levels would have been inaccessible to the player base: something no business can afford, really. The only thing they didn't change was the name 'Advanced.'
Why not? What's it to Cryptic if some part of the playerbase plays Normal instead? Every other game I play does exactly that and can afford it just fine. It gives players reason to improve, that improvement lets them do more things, get better rewards. Not like Advanced was all that hard anyway. All they ever had to do was direct players to a difficulty level matching their resources and skillset.
Also, with Dilithium Rising, Geko made it *very* clear (in several podcasts), that Elites were going to be truly for Elite players only, and were not meant for everyone.
Geko's idea of what an Elite player is may be different than ours. All the Elites were puggable at DR release, as long as you didn't get newbies wandering in by accident (because there were no requirements to unlocking them...and still aren't). Some of them were rewards-optimal. Others less so. This was, of course, before the alerts got the all-marks.
And that's still not the point. Where are the quotes for Elites being meant to have low rewards and to appeal only to those players who aren't in it for the rewards?
Elites being meant to have low rewards and to appeal only to those players who aren't in it for the rewards?
No one claimed that it's meant to be that way. Players not caring about rewards in elite is just the result of elites not offering any kind of meaningful rewards, cause most elite-ready players already have enough of every mark and are not in a dire need of dilithium anymore either. For me personally, Salvaged Tech is the biggest draw of elite queues, reward wise (but yeah, it's not a huge selling point either).
So if elites truly are designed only for a tiny number of players should the most effort in game design not be going into the advanced and normal queues? No point trying to dream up changes to make elite queues more appealing if the VAST majority of players are really only within the realms of advanced capable. So if anything it makes more sense to ignore elite queues for the time being and think about why people aren’t playing the rest of the content. Banging on about dps scores or elite players is a bit of a distraction as only 10% or less players are affected but that side of things. So things like elite fail conditions, dps margins and channels do t really help encourage participation at lower tower. They are in effect exceptions in the game environment.
Elites being meant to have low rewards and to appeal only to those players who aren't in it for the rewards?
No one claimed that it's meant to be that way. Players not caring about rewards in elite is just the result of elites not offering any kind of meaningful rewards, cause most elite-ready players already have enough of every mark and are not in a dire need of dilithium anymore either. For me personally, Salvaged Tech is the biggest draw of elite queues, reward wise (but yeah, it's not a huge selling point either).
Right. Which is what I meant with Elites being abandoned to their fate. It's not that Elites are designed for players who don't care about rewards, it's that the relatively poor rewards drive away the players that do care about them. Something that should be changed.
If Elites were worth playing (for the players who care about rewards), people would need gear to do it. That in turn would make lower level content more worth playing, to acquire that gear. It all chains up, reason to play. Then all the queues need is some uniqueness back to the reward and they're all full again.
But as long as Normal/Advanced can be done with sticks and rocks and Elite doesn't reward anything you couldn't get better, faster, easier on Normal/Advanced...there's not much need to play anything at all. For the people who care about rewards. Filling up the daily dil quota doesn't encourage much diversity, even for those players who can't get it all from Admiralty.
So if elites truly are designed only for a tiny number of players should the most effort in game design not be going into the advanced and normal queues?
No point trying to dream up changes to make elite queues more appealing if the VAST majority of players are really only within the realms of advanced capable.
So if anything it makes more sense to ignore elite queues for the time being and think about why people aren’t playing the rest of the content. Banging on about dps scores or elite players is a bit of a distraction as only 10% or less players are affected but that side of things. So things like elite fail conditions, dps margins and channels do t really help encourage participation at lower tower. They are in effect exceptions in the game environment.
My proposed changes would affect also both advanced and normal content.
Well let’s just drop talking about elite stuff all the time for a second. Because the game starts at normal and advanced so the majority of players are at that level. That’s where encouragement of players is needed, elites will sort themselves out. Why do I say this? Because by the time someone is ready for elite they will probably be able to join circles of players like yourself who can play such content. The elites are after all not meant for everyone so by the time someone really is ready for them they should have encountered people interested in them.
The advanced and normal queues is where the effort is really needed. That’s where people encounter their first endgame content. It’s where they will spend most of the time gaining marks etc to buy stuff. Encourage players into queues at that level and they’ll naturally progress onto elites.
If you honestly believe that Elites were intended for the bulk of the player base then obviously trying to talk common sense to you is a lost cause.
It's rather impossible to disagree with this. 'Elites', by their very definition, are not meant for the general population. If they were, they wouldn't be 'Elites.'
Like "Advanced?" That they nerfed into the ground because not everyone could complete them every time.
That only shows Advanceds were aptly named. (In that they couldn't be done by everyone) If they hadn't nerfed those, 2/3rd of the queue levels would have been inaccessible to the player base: something no business can afford, really. The only thing they didn't change was the name 'Advanced.'
Why not? What's it to Cryptic if some part of the playerbase plays Normal instead? Every other game I play does exactly that and can afford it just fine.
You can't just say "2/3rd of this game will be out of reach to you." That's just psychology. Especially in a casual game, like STO, ppl don't want a constant reminder they're simply inadequate for most of what the game has to offer. They want to feel they can, overall, participate (and then will accept, that maybe Elites aren't for them).
Also, with Dilithium Rising, Geko made it *very* clear (in several podcasts), that Elites were going to be truly for Elite players only, and were not meant for everyone.
Geko's idea of what an Elite player is may be different than ours. All the Elites were puggable at DR release, as long as you didn't get newbies wandering in by accident
DR had many initial weave-errors (to out it mildly). Some Advanced queues, for instance, were way too difficult, at start. By 'accident' (according to Cryptic, though the cynic in me believes Geko had done this on purpose, to spur us to do the whole Upgrade spiel). So, eventually toning those down a bit (after we did most all of our Upgrade spending already) was only fair. It was at that time, iirc, that Geko got into a bit of a p*ssing contest, with top DPS-ers (not being able to cope with the fact they were *still* beating his harder content, like childplay), that he announced a new Korfez, and that these other new Elites would become truly undoable for the vast majority of players.
DR had many intial weave-errors (to out it mildly). Some Advanced queues, for instance, were way too difficult, at start. By 'accident' (according to Cryptic, though the cynic in me believes Geko had done this on purpose, to spur us to do the whole Upgrade spiel). So, eventually toning those down a bit (after we did most all of our Upgrade spending already) was only fair.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
Well let’s just drop talking about elite stuff all the time for a second.
Because the game starts at normal and advanced so the majority of players are at that level. That’s where encouragement of players is needed, elites will sort themselves out.
Why do I say this? Because by the time someone is ready for elite they will probably be able to join circles of players like yourself who can play such content. The elites are after all not meant for everyone so by the time someone really is ready for them they should have encountered people interested in them.
The advanced and normal queues is where the effort is really needed. That’s where people encounter their first endgame content. It’s where they will spend most of the time gaining marks etc to buy stuff. Encourage players into queues at that level and they’ll naturally progress onto elites.
This is all fair.
Just to clarify, I don't expect any real work to be put into Elites. I understand that they don't apply to the largest section of the player base. Cryptic is going to put the time where it serves best and I get that. I don't expect Elite Rewards to be worth while for the reason Tunebreaker said earlier. If you are geared up to the point where you can handle a queue like Fez or even HSE you're past the point where you need these rewards. All I meant by my comment is that those of us that do Elites know we're not going to get a big reward out of it and we have accepted that. We do it for the fun of it and so that we can play together as a team, that's it.
You're 100% right, Cryptic should put the focus on the Advanced Queues. These are the queues for the 'masses' and it's the most logical place to put the focus. As said though, the suggestions in the original post are not difficulty specific at all, they will help all queues. None of us want to come across as trying to be selfish or promote our own agenda. We're not looking to just improve the content we personally play based on our own personal standards, the original post is very clear in it's intent to implement a global change in the interest of helping players across the board.
The only thing this thread was designed to be about is making content more fun and accessible for everyone. It was never about Elites specifically, and it's perfectly fine to focus discussion on the majority.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
We accept this.. it's only logical. We would like to see the improvements applied at all difficulty levels.
To be honest, there are players capable of completing Korfez. It's not a huge number, but those people exist. Thus, the very notion that you *need* to have a normal/advanced version for a queue to become proficient in elite is ridiculous.
Perhaps - but whilst I don't disagree as such, it is an interesting point.
As you say, there are players who can complete Korfez. But the fact is they can only have learnt how to complete Korfez by actually playing it - and since it doesn't come in any other flavour, they had to have learnt/played it on Elite.
For some, that's a pretty steep learning curve.
I mean, whilst I've been driving for about 20 years I don't think for one moment that if someone dropped me in a Formula 1 car I'd be able to drive it. But I probably would if I'd been given some experience in a fast sports car, followed by an F2 car, before progressing to the F1 car.
Korfez (and places like it) should be where you apply that knowledge you've gained-like a final exam that doesn't just copy off the textbook, but instead requires you to apply knowledge gained in earlier stages.
I mean, just dropping someone into F1 would have some serious ramifications. But it's a game. At worst, you'll pug it and get yelled at. If you haven't done any other elites, it's not a nice thing to do, but even if you decide to be a prick, it doesn't end in physical harm to anyone.
And even then, it would ideally be a similar progression in STO. You'll first master normal queues, then play through most of the advanced content and then start to look at elite. And preferably approach elites with a group of friends/fleetmates, so there will be no hard feelings and you can all just laugh at eachother when you mess something up and fail.
DR had many intial weave-errors (to out it mildly). Some Advanced queues, for instance, were way too difficult, at start. By 'accident' (according to Cryptic, though the cynic in me believes Geko had done this on purpose, to spur us to do the whole Upgrade spiel). So, eventually toning those down a bit (after we did most all of our Upgrade spending already) was only fair.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
Yes, that is typical Cryptic. They tend to go from one extreme to the other.
I may not like the removal of fail conditions from Advanced, but I have to admit.. I get it.
The original intent was good, Normal Queues are brain dead easy and guaranteed success. They're intended to learn how to do the queues for beginners.
The Advanced Queues are harder and present the possibility of failure. They are designed to be a step up from Normal. Maybe not an extreme step, but a step none the less with the possibility of failure with better rewards.
The problem came in the rewards. You can't offer a ton of rewards for normal. If you do this, what happens is you get well geared players that storm this content because they can cut through it in seconds, get their loot and leave. To avoid this, they made the rewards very very petty for Normal. What this did however is just made it so that no one of any level played normal and everyone got funneled into Advanced. Now you have a mix of experienced and new players all lumped together. Sometimes the experienced players were able to carry the new players, but this usually didn't result in the new player learning much of anything. In fact, the opposite often happened where players were finding constant success and not realizing they were being carried. This leads to players thinking they are doing fine when they're not.
Then there was the big problem, inexperienced players causing Advanced to fail. This caused the backlash because players were getting frustrated with queues failing because people didn't know what they were doing. The inexperienced players throwing off the queues was never a problem Cryptic intended so they did the normal 'band aid' approach and removed the fail conditions.
I have to admit.. I sympathize with Cryptic here because I honestly don't have a solution for this problem. How do you make Normal rewarding enough for new players to play it while not leaving it open to exploitation from well geared players? Ideally, you want to attract new and under geared players to normals, and more experienced and a little better geared players into advanced. The problem is, this is a lot harder then it sounds.
I may not like the removal of fail conditions from Advanced, but I have to admit.. I get it.
The original intent was good, Normal Queues are brain dead easy and guaranteed success. They're intended to learn how to do the queues for beginners.
The Advanced Queues are harder and present the possibility of failure. They are designed to be a step up from Normal. Maybe not an extreme step, but a step none the less with the possibility of failure with better rewards.
The problem came in the rewards. You can't offer a ton of rewards for normal. If you do this, what happens is you get well geared players that storm this content because they can cut through it in seconds, get their loot and leave. To avoid this, they made the rewards very very petty for Normal. What this did however is just made it so that no one of any level played normal and everyone got funneled into Advanced. Now you have a mix of experienced and new players all lumped together. Sometimes the experienced players were able to carry the new players, but this usually didn't result in the new player learning much of anything. In fact, the opposite often happened where players were finding constant success and not realizing they were being carried. This leads to players thinking they are doing fine when they're not.
Then there was the big problem, inexperienced players causing Advanced to fail. This caused the backlash because players were getting frustrated with queues failing because people didn't know what they were doing. The inexperienced players throwing off the queues was never a problem Cryptic intended so they did the normal 'band aid' approach and removed the fail conditions.
I have to admit.. I sympathize with Cryptic here because I honestly don't have a solution for this problem. How do you make Normal rewarding enough for new players to play it while not leaving it open to exploitation from well geared players? Ideally, you want to attract new and under geared players to normals, and more experienced and a little better geared players into advanced. The problem is, this is a lot harder then it sounds.
I honestly don't know a good way to do it.
^^ Thas was one of the most insightful analyses I've come across here of late! There's never an 'Insightful' button when you need one.
I may not like the removal of fail conditions from Advanced, but I have to admit.. I get it.
The original intent was good, Normal Queues are brain dead easy and guaranteed success. They're intended to learn how to do the queues for beginners.
The Advanced Queues are harder and present the possibility of failure. They are designed to be a step up from Normal. Maybe not an extreme step, but a step none the less with the possibility of failure with better rewards.
The problem came in the rewards. You can't offer a ton of rewards for normal. If you do this, what happens is you get well geared players that storm this content because they can cut through it in seconds, get their loot and leave. To avoid this, they made the rewards very very petty for Normal. What this did however is just made it so that no one of any level played normal and everyone got funneled into Advanced. Now you have a mix of experienced and new players all lumped together. Sometimes the experienced players were able to carry the new players, but this usually didn't result in the new player learning much of anything. In fact, the opposite often happened where players were finding constant success and not realizing they were being carried. This leads to players thinking they are doing fine when they're not.
Then there was the big problem, inexperienced players causing Advanced to fail. This caused the backlash because players were getting frustrated with queues failing because people didn't know what they were doing. The inexperienced players throwing off the queues was never a problem Cryptic intended so they did the normal 'band aid' approach and removed the fail conditions.
I have to admit.. I sympathize with Cryptic here because I honestly don't have a solution for this problem. How do you make Normal rewarding enough for new players to play it while not leaving it open to exploitation from well geared players? Ideally, you want to attract new and under geared players to normals, and more experienced and a little better geared players into advanced. The problem is, this is a lot harder then it sounds.
I honestly don't know a good way to do it.
What could've been done, imo, was to apply some sort of short skill-check in form of a solo mission, that needed to be completed in order to gain access to advanced queues. And similarly to elite.
Now, people will say that "but muh trinkets I can only get from advanced queues!". However, Fleet gear, as well as Nukara and Romulan rep offerings are completely enough to make yourself viable for adv, so I can't see any problems with players being left out, if they're willing to try even just a bit.
But whatever, I believe the train has already left in order for that solution to get applied, sadly.
I have to admit.. I sympathize with Cryptic here because I honestly don't have a solution for this problem. How do you make Normal rewarding enough for new players to play it while not leaving it open to exploitation from well geared players? Ideally, you want to attract new and under geared players to normals, and more experienced and a little better geared players into advanced. The problem is, this is a lot harder then it sounds.
I honestly don't know a good way to do it.
Well, one way, albeit draconian (not including RA's) is to simply bar better players from doing Normals. "Reach lv 50? No more Normals for you!" And then step up the rewards for Normals a bit. But I can already see the forum rage, if they ever did that.
I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
I disagree to a point. I wouldn't mind seeing fail conditions on Elites... however... with the vast majority of the playerbase playing Advanced... having fail conditions is a recipe for disaster. I speak from experience.
One of my early Advanced runs of Infected back when DR hit... I had someone from a... CERTAIN FLEET we all know... decide to go "hunting for his spec point". The rest of us... being the veterans that we were, went off to the left per normal operation procedure for Infected. The Spec Point Hunter, lets call him Bozo, decided to go right and pop a Generator right off the bat, then said "Nope. Not here". So there we were... SCRAMBLING to keep from failing... because Bozo decided to be a Troll and fail us on purpose.
In the end... we got the standard 30 minute lock out... no reward... and in general just a crapload of frustration for our efforts to complete Infected of all things. All because Bozo wanted to fail us on purpose for teh lulz.
Fail conditions just ASK for abuse in this form. For a game full of casuals... this is a problem that added to the uproar on the forums. I remember the fires on the forums during Delta Rising...
Never underestimate the ability of a Troll to ruin your day. They will FIND ways to do so. And once they do... they will exploit it all to hell for their own amusement and to the frustration of others around them.
So as I said... I disagree to a point. Fails in Elite is fine because its SUPPOSED to be a challenge. Fails on Advanced... are just too easy to Troll the entire community with.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
DR had many intial weave-errors (to out it mildly). Some Advanced queues, for instance, were way too difficult, at start. By 'accident' (according to Cryptic, though the cynic in me believes Geko had done this on purpose, to spur us to do the whole Upgrade spiel). So, eventually toning those down a bit (after we did most all of our Upgrade spending already) was only fair.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
I remember.
Me and several of my friends who regularly teamed to do the old STFs tried Advanced Mirror day 1 in T5s and level 50 characters.... we got curbstomped. Mainly because of how much firepower it took to kill everything. Taking down a single battleship mob required us to stick together... and you NEED to split up for this one.
I have to admit.. I sympathize with Cryptic here because I honestly don't have a solution for this problem. How do you make Normal rewarding enough for new players to play it while not leaving it open to exploitation from well geared players? Ideally, you want to attract new and under geared players to normals, and more experienced and a little better geared players into advanced. The problem is, this is a lot harder then it sounds.
I honestly don't know a good way to do it.
The reason the easy content is "open to exploitation" is because it's more rewarding than the hard content. If the rewards were properly set up, everyone should want to play at the highest level that they can. Of course, it's very hard to do if everything rewards the same dil and marks, but with unique rewards it's quite simple.
STO has even had it. In the before time, the long long ago, when there were no rep system, the STFs randomly dropped unique gear sets. Mark X or XI for Normal and XI or XII for Elite. The Normal drops were quite enough to improve your build, but once you were ready for Elite you really wanted that Mk XII and it would've been folly to go back to "exploit" the Normals since you'd never get the big shiny there.
What could've been done, imo, was to apply some sort of short skill-check in form of a solo mission, that needed to be completed in order to gain access to advanced queues. And similarly to elite.
I agree. In fact I'm pretty sure I suggested they add unlock conditions to the higher levels when the whining started after DR. Because Advanced was most certainly not too hard.
Even just properly informing players of their performance or lack thereof would've helped. I honestly do believe some newbies back then would've believed they'd won the queue when the 10 mark consolation prize popped up with no explanation.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
I remember the time very well.
The day DR went live i joined a pug run of CSA as i had been doing for months previously. I was flying an Engineering Vesta variant and that build had served me excellently for many months without issue.
That first run was a goddamned nightmare.
The simple assimilated BoP's had gone from simple cannon fodder to million+ HP monsters that could not be killed by anything we had at our disposal. Even bringing one down with every single trick we had in our arsenal was almost impossible and eventually the timer just ran out on us. The Kang was in no danger because it too had a trillion HP's or whatever, but nobody could do any meaningful damage against the wall of HP's.
It was a perfect example of utterly lazy and half-arsed game changes trying to make a mission more difficult; the old "whack a million extra HP's on everything" trick that Cryptic are so fond of.
The fail conditions were not an issue for me, i like a little bit of risk in my runs and nothing was more fun that clawing a messed up run back from the brink with half the team leaving early. I met some awesome friends doing that, pulling victory from the jaws or seemingly certain defeat.
I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
I disagree to a point. I wouldn't mind seeing fail conditions on Elites... however... with the vast majority of the playerbase playing Advanced... having fail conditions is a recipe for disaster. I speak from experience.
One of my early Advanced runs of Infected back when DR hit... I had someone from a... CERTAIN FLEET we all know... decide to go "hunting for his spec point". The rest of us... being the veterans that we were, went off to the left per normal operation procedure for Infected. The Spec Point Hunter, lets call him Bozo, decided to go right and pop a Generator right off the bat, then said "Nope. Not here". So there we were... SCRAMBLING to keep from failing... because Bozo decided to be a Troll and fail us on purpose.
In the end... we got the standard 30 minute lock out... no reward... and in general just a crapload of frustration for our efforts to complete Infected of all things. All because Bozo wanted to fail us on purpose for teh lulz.
Fail conditions just ASK for abuse in this form. For a game full of casuals... this is a problem that added to the uproar on the forums. I remember the fires on the forums during Delta Rising...
Never underestimate the ability of a Troll to ruin your day. They will FIND ways to do so. And once they do... they will exploit it all to hell for their own amusement and to the frustration of others around them.
So as I said... I disagree to a point. Fails in Elite is fine because its SUPPOSED to be a challenge. Fails on Advanced... are just too easy to Troll the entire community with.
Ok, but consider this. Ground elites are pretty much equal to space advanced in terms of their popularity relative to other difficulties (no one plays advanced ground, unless elite doesn't exist for that map). Undine Inflitration, back when it wasn't bugged, was an extremely popular queue which popped incredibly fast. It also happens to be the easiest queue to troll, because other players can't do anything at all when someone decides to choose wrong answer on purpose. In ISA, you can at least try to kill the spheres ASAP or contain them with control powers, in there, there's nothing you can do. Furthermore, even if you managed to get through that part, in caves someone could force the entire team to quit with a carefully placed Cover shield.
Yet, there were not too many complaints about it. Sure, there were some, but considering how popular the queue was, I'd say the trolls were not too frequent. I think over the 2(?) years I actively played that queue, I met both of those trolling "tricks" only once. So yes, trolls can always find a way to ruin your day, but I believe most of the "but think what would happen if someone were to troll it" concerns are slight overreactions. But maybe I've been just lucky.
STO has even had it. In the before time, the long long ago, when there were no rep system, the STFs randomly dropped unique gear sets. Mark X or XI for Normal and XI or XII for Elite. The Normal drops were quite enough to improve your build, but once you were ready for Elite you really wanted that Mk XII and it would've been folly to go back to "exploit" the Normals since you'd never get the big shiny there.
There were no empty queues back then.
There was also quite a few instances of the Random Number Gods hating some people and loving others. One person could run Kitomer Ground 100 times for a week straight and NOT get the shiny, while the next guy over just got his 5th in a row.
I speak from experience. I was one of those who didn't get the shiny for QUITE a while. Was really aggrivating.
While I would not mind seeing something like a unique drop come back to STFs... I'd rather it not be tied to any of the rep gear we can earn. Make it something truly unique. I don't wanna end up with that aggrivation of not getting the 1 thing I need to finish my MACO set for WEEKS again.
So... leave the reps as they are... but ADD something cool that can be earned as a drop that is only available in a particular STF. I'm one of those oddballs who actually likes the more tactical feel of ground combat at times.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
DR had many intial weave-errors (to out it mildly). Some Advanced queues, for instance, were way too difficult, at start. By 'accident' (according to Cryptic, though the cynic in me believes Geko had done this on purpose, to spur us to do the whole Upgrade spiel). So, eventually toning those down a bit (after we did most all of our Upgrade spending already) was only fair.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
I remember.
Me and several of my friends who regularly teamed to do the old STFs tried Advanced Mirror day 1 in T5s and level 50 characters.... we got curbstomped. Mainly because of how much firepower it took to kill everything. Taking down a single battleship mob required us to stick together... and you NEED to split up for this one.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
I remember the time very well.
The day DR went live i joined a pug run of CSA as i had been doing for months previously. I was flying an Engineering Vesta variant and that build had served me excellently for many months without issue.
That first run was a goddamned nightmare.
The simple assimilated BoP's had gone from simple cannon fodder to million+ HP monsters that could not be killed by anything we had at our disposal. Even bringing one down with every single trick we had in our arsenal was almost impossible and eventually the timer just ran out on us. The Kang was in no danger because it too had a trillion HP's or whatever, but nobody could do any meaningful damage against the wall of HP's.
It was a perfect example of utterly lazy and half-arsed game changes trying to make a mission more difficult; the old "whack a million extra HP's on everything" trick that Cryptic are so fond of.
The fail conditions were not an issue for me, i like a little bit of risk in my runs and nothing was more fun that clawing a messed up run back from the brink with half the team leaving early. I met some awesome friends doing that, pulling victory from the jaws or seemingly certain defeat.
@meimeitoo - It feels like you did an awesome job carrying me... oh wait, I didn't even know you at that time yet. Who the hell was carrying me then? Cause I know I was a totally awful player back then (I made my first DPS-10k eligible parse on 24th of November 2014, a month after DR, and it was in a pug), with only semi-decent gear on my Avenger an abomination of skilltree, yet I didn't feel like there had been a too big leap in terms of difficulty. The enemies were tougher, alright, but was it really that horrible?
I'm not going to argue with you though, cause indeed, those memories are a bit fuzzy for me, plus player experiences *can* differ.
STO has even had it. In the before time, the long long ago, when there were no rep system, the STFs randomly dropped unique gear sets. Mark X or XI for Normal and XI or XII for Elite. The Normal drops were quite enough to improve your build, but once you were ready for Elite you really wanted that Mk XII and it would've been folly to go back to "exploit" the Normals since you'd never get the big shiny there.
There were no empty queues back then.
There was also quite a few instances of the Random Number Gods hating some people and loving others. One person could run Kitomer Ground 100 times for a week straight and NOT get the shiny, while the next guy over just got his 5th in a row.
I speak from experience. I was one of those who didn't get the shiny for QUITE a while. Was really aggrivating.
While I would not mind seeing something like a unique drop come back to STFs... I'd rather it not be tied to any of the rep gear we can earn. Make it something truly unique. I don't wanna end up with that aggrivation of not getting the 1 thing I need to finish my MACO set for WEEKS again.
So... leave the reps as they are... but ADD something cool that can be earned as a drop that is only available in a particular STF. I'm one of those oddballs who actually likes the more tactical feel of ground combat at times.
Of course. Randomly dropping the rep gear wouldn't be unique at all. It wouldn't be any incentive to play more diverse content, because everyone could still grind the same Easy Mode stuff to get it. It would just be a shortcut for someone who got lucky partway through the grind.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,674Community Moderator
I wasn't referring to Rep gear. I was saying add something NEW that isn't tied to the rep.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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That only shows Advanceds were aptly named.
Also, with Dilithium Rising, Geko made it *very* clear (in several podcasts), that Elites were going to be truly for Elite players only, and were not meant for everyone.
Typical.. throw an insult.. get an insult back and then play the victim.
You don't want a fight.. don't start one.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Geko's idea of what an Elite player is may be different than ours. All the Elites were puggable at DR release, as long as you didn't get newbies wandering in by accident (because there were no requirements to unlocking them...and still aren't). Some of them were rewards-optimal. Others less so. This was, of course, before the alerts got the all-marks.
And that's still not the point. Where are the quotes for Elites being meant to have low rewards and to appeal only to those players who aren't in it for the rewards?
No one claimed that it's meant to be that way. Players not caring about rewards in elite is just the result of elites not offering any kind of meaningful rewards, cause most elite-ready players already have enough of every mark and are not in a dire need of dilithium anymore either. For me personally, Salvaged Tech is the biggest draw of elite queues, reward wise (but yeah, it's not a huge selling point either).
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
No point trying to dream up changes to make elite queues more appealing if the VAST majority of players are really only within the realms of advanced capable.
So if anything it makes more sense to ignore elite queues for the time being and think about why people aren’t playing the rest of the content. Banging on about dps scores or elite players is a bit of a distraction as only 10% or less players are affected but that side of things. So things like elite fail conditions, dps margins and channels do t really help encourage participation at lower tower. They are in effect exceptions in the game environment.
If Elites were worth playing (for the players who care about rewards), people would need gear to do it. That in turn would make lower level content more worth playing, to acquire that gear. It all chains up, reason to play. Then all the queues need is some uniqueness back to the reward and they're all full again.
But as long as Normal/Advanced can be done with sticks and rocks and Elite doesn't reward anything you couldn't get better, faster, easier on Normal/Advanced...there's not much need to play anything at all. For the people who care about rewards. Filling up the daily dil quota doesn't encourage much diversity, even for those players who can't get it all from Admiralty.
My proposed changes would affect also both advanced and normal content.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Because the game starts at normal and advanced so the majority of players are at that level. That’s where encouragement of players is needed, elites will sort themselves out.
Why do I say this? Because by the time someone is ready for elite they will probably be able to join circles of players like yourself who can play such content. The elites are after all not meant for everyone so by the time someone really is ready for them they should have encountered people interested in them.
The advanced and normal queues is where the effort is really needed. That’s where people encounter their first endgame content. It’s where they will spend most of the time gaining marks etc to buy stuff. Encourage players into queues at that level and they’ll naturally progress onto elites.
You can't just say "2/3rd of this game will be out of reach to you." That's just psychology. Especially in a casual game, like STO, ppl don't want a constant reminder they're simply inadequate for most of what the game has to offer. They want to feel they can, overall, participate (and then will accept, that maybe Elites aren't for them).
DR had many initial weave-errors (to out it mildly). Some Advanced queues, for instance, were way too difficult, at start. By 'accident' (according to Cryptic, though the cynic in me believes Geko had done this on purpose, to spur us to do the whole Upgrade spiel). So, eventually toning those down a bit (after we did most all of our Upgrade spending already) was only fair. It was at that time, iirc, that Geko got into a bit of a p*ssing contest, with top DPS-ers (not being able to cope with the fact they were *still* beating his harder content, like childplay), that he announced a new Korfez, and that these other new Elites would become truly undoable for the vast majority of players.
While I don't remember that time quite well, cause I was only a 10k-er back then, I do think they made advanced queues too easy by removing every way to completely fail them.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
This is all fair.
Just to clarify, I don't expect any real work to be put into Elites. I understand that they don't apply to the largest section of the player base. Cryptic is going to put the time where it serves best and I get that. I don't expect Elite Rewards to be worth while for the reason Tunebreaker said earlier. If you are geared up to the point where you can handle a queue like Fez or even HSE you're past the point where you need these rewards. All I meant by my comment is that those of us that do Elites know we're not going to get a big reward out of it and we have accepted that. We do it for the fun of it and so that we can play together as a team, that's it.
You're 100% right, Cryptic should put the focus on the Advanced Queues. These are the queues for the 'masses' and it's the most logical place to put the focus. As said though, the suggestions in the original post are not difficulty specific at all, they will help all queues. None of us want to come across as trying to be selfish or promote our own agenda. We're not looking to just improve the content we personally play based on our own personal standards, the original post is very clear in it's intent to implement a global change in the interest of helping players across the board.
The only thing this thread was designed to be about is making content more fun and accessible for everyone. It was never about Elites specifically, and it's perfectly fine to focus discussion on the majority.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
We accept this.. it's only logical. We would like to see the improvements applied at all difficulty levels.
For once, I agree with @patrickngo here.
I mean, just dropping someone into F1 would have some serious ramifications. But it's a game. At worst, you'll pug it and get yelled at. If you haven't done any other elites, it's not a nice thing to do, but even if you decide to be a prick, it doesn't end in physical harm to anyone.
And even then, it would ideally be a similar progression in STO. You'll first master normal queues, then play through most of the advanced content and then start to look at elite. And preferably approach elites with a group of friends/fleetmates, so there will be no hard feelings and you can all just laugh at eachother when you mess something up and fail.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Yes, that is typical Cryptic.
The original intent was good, Normal Queues are brain dead easy and guaranteed success. They're intended to learn how to do the queues for beginners.
The Advanced Queues are harder and present the possibility of failure. They are designed to be a step up from Normal. Maybe not an extreme step, but a step none the less with the possibility of failure with better rewards.
The problem came in the rewards. You can't offer a ton of rewards for normal. If you do this, what happens is you get well geared players that storm this content because they can cut through it in seconds, get their loot and leave. To avoid this, they made the rewards very very petty for Normal. What this did however is just made it so that no one of any level played normal and everyone got funneled into Advanced. Now you have a mix of experienced and new players all lumped together. Sometimes the experienced players were able to carry the new players, but this usually didn't result in the new player learning much of anything. In fact, the opposite often happened where players were finding constant success and not realizing they were being carried. This leads to players thinking they are doing fine when they're not.
Then there was the big problem, inexperienced players causing Advanced to fail. This caused the backlash because players were getting frustrated with queues failing because people didn't know what they were doing. The inexperienced players throwing off the queues was never a problem Cryptic intended so they did the normal 'band aid' approach and removed the fail conditions.
I have to admit.. I sympathize with Cryptic here because I honestly don't have a solution for this problem. How do you make Normal rewarding enough for new players to play it while not leaving it open to exploitation from well geared players? Ideally, you want to attract new and under geared players to normals, and more experienced and a little better geared players into advanced. The problem is, this is a lot harder then it sounds.
I honestly don't know a good way to do it.
^^ Thas was one of the most insightful analyses I've come across here of late! There's never an 'Insightful' button when you need one.
What could've been done, imo, was to apply some sort of short skill-check in form of a solo mission, that needed to be completed in order to gain access to advanced queues. And similarly to elite.
Now, people will say that "but muh trinkets I can only get from advanced queues!". However, Fleet gear, as well as Nukara and Romulan rep offerings are completely enough to make yourself viable for adv, so I can't see any problems with players being left out, if they're willing to try even just a bit.
But whatever, I believe the train has already left in order for that solution to get applied, sadly.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Well, one way, albeit draconian (not including RA's) is to simply bar better players from doing Normals. "Reach lv 50? No more Normals for you!" And then step up the rewards for Normals a bit. But I can already see the forum rage, if they ever did that.
I disagree to a point. I wouldn't mind seeing fail conditions on Elites... however... with the vast majority of the playerbase playing Advanced... having fail conditions is a recipe for disaster. I speak from experience.
One of my early Advanced runs of Infected back when DR hit... I had someone from a... CERTAIN FLEET we all know... decide to go "hunting for his spec point". The rest of us... being the veterans that we were, went off to the left per normal operation procedure for Infected. The Spec Point Hunter, lets call him Bozo, decided to go right and pop a Generator right off the bat, then said "Nope. Not here". So there we were... SCRAMBLING to keep from failing... because Bozo decided to be a Troll and fail us on purpose.
In the end... we got the standard 30 minute lock out... no reward... and in general just a crapload of frustration for our efforts to complete Infected of all things. All because Bozo wanted to fail us on purpose for teh lulz.
Fail conditions just ASK for abuse in this form. For a game full of casuals... this is a problem that added to the uproar on the forums. I remember the fires on the forums during Delta Rising...
Never underestimate the ability of a Troll to ruin your day. They will FIND ways to do so. And once they do... they will exploit it all to hell for their own amusement and to the frustration of others around them.
So as I said... I disagree to a point. Fails in Elite is fine because its SUPPOSED to be a challenge. Fails on Advanced... are just too easy to Troll the entire community with.
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Me and several of my friends who regularly teamed to do the old STFs tried Advanced Mirror day 1 in T5s and level 50 characters.... we got curbstomped. Mainly because of how much firepower it took to kill everything. Taking down a single battleship mob required us to stick together... and you NEED to split up for this one.
My character Tsin'xing
STO has even had it. In the before time, the long long ago, when there were no rep system, the STFs randomly dropped unique gear sets. Mark X or XI for Normal and XI or XII for Elite. The Normal drops were quite enough to improve your build, but once you were ready for Elite you really wanted that Mk XII and it would've been folly to go back to "exploit" the Normals since you'd never get the big shiny there.
There were no empty queues back then.
I agree. In fact I'm pretty sure I suggested they add unlock conditions to the higher levels when the whining started after DR. Because Advanced was most certainly not too hard.
Even just properly informing players of their performance or lack thereof would've helped. I honestly do believe some newbies back then would've believed they'd won the queue when the 10 mark consolation prize popped up with no explanation.
I remember the time very well.
The day DR went live i joined a pug run of CSA as i had been doing for months previously. I was flying an Engineering Vesta variant and that build had served me excellently for many months without issue.
That first run was a goddamned nightmare.
The simple assimilated BoP's had gone from simple cannon fodder to million+ HP monsters that could not be killed by anything we had at our disposal. Even bringing one down with every single trick we had in our arsenal was almost impossible and eventually the timer just ran out on us. The Kang was in no danger because it too had a trillion HP's or whatever, but nobody could do any meaningful damage against the wall of HP's.
It was a perfect example of utterly lazy and half-arsed game changes trying to make a mission more difficult; the old "whack a million extra HP's on everything" trick that Cryptic are so fond of.
The fail conditions were not an issue for me, i like a little bit of risk in my runs and nothing was more fun that clawing a messed up run back from the brink with half the team leaving early. I met some awesome friends doing that, pulling victory from the jaws or seemingly certain defeat.
Ok, but consider this. Ground elites are pretty much equal to space advanced in terms of their popularity relative to other difficulties (no one plays advanced ground, unless elite doesn't exist for that map). Undine Inflitration, back when it wasn't bugged, was an extremely popular queue which popped incredibly fast. It also happens to be the easiest queue to troll, because other players can't do anything at all when someone decides to choose wrong answer on purpose. In ISA, you can at least try to kill the spheres ASAP or contain them with control powers, in there, there's nothing you can do. Furthermore, even if you managed to get through that part, in caves someone could force the entire team to quit with a carefully placed Cover shield.
Yet, there were not too many complaints about it. Sure, there were some, but considering how popular the queue was, I'd say the trolls were not too frequent. I think over the 2(?) years I actively played that queue, I met both of those trolling "tricks" only once. So yes, trolls can always find a way to ruin your day, but I believe most of the "but think what would happen if someone were to troll it" concerns are slight overreactions. But maybe I've been just lucky.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
There was also quite a few instances of the Random Number Gods hating some people and loving others. One person could run Kitomer Ground 100 times for a week straight and NOT get the shiny, while the next guy over just got his 5th in a row.
I speak from experience. I was one of those who didn't get the shiny for QUITE a while. Was really aggrivating.
While I would not mind seeing something like a unique drop come back to STFs... I'd rather it not be tied to any of the rep gear we can earn. Make it something truly unique. I don't wanna end up with that aggrivation of not getting the 1 thing I need to finish my MACO set for WEEKS again.
So... leave the reps as they are... but ADD something cool that can be earned as a drop that is only available in a particular STF. I'm one of those oddballs who actually likes the more tactical feel of ground combat at times.
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colored text = mod mode
@meimeitoo - It feels like you did an awesome job carrying me... oh wait, I didn't even know you at that time yet. Who the hell was carrying me then? Cause I know I was a totally awful player back then (I made my first DPS-10k eligible parse on 24th of November 2014, a month after DR, and it was in a pug), with only semi-decent gear on my Avenger an abomination of skilltree, yet I didn't feel like there had been a too big leap in terms of difficulty. The enemies were tougher, alright, but was it really that horrible?
I'm not going to argue with you though, cause indeed, those memories are a bit fuzzy for me, plus player experiences *can* differ.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode