Thank you very much for putting so much effort into a post to help the DEVs to make general teamed PvE more exciting.
It is really too bad that Cryptic has such a hard time to figure things out. I saw the reason for all those artificial time gates in the past where there was some concern that top players could DIL-weed the queue list too fast but that is pretty much obsolete by now.
No matter how much DPS you have got, no PvE reward in game could compete with the admiralty system anyway so that brings PvE down to: FUN & Marks Since the latter is just a question of time it is realy only about fun in the end.
Getting rid of the annoying conditions would undoubtedly help to revitalize PvE and your ideas are once again spot on.
Thank you very much for putting so much effort into a post to help the DEVs to make general teamed PvE more exciting.
It is really too bad that Cryptic has such a hard time to figure things out. I saw the reason for all those artificial time gates in the past where there was some concern that top players could DIL-weed the queue list too fast but that is pretty much obsolete by now.
No matter how much DPS you have got, no PvE reward in game could compete with the admiralty system anyway so that brings PvE down to: FUN & Marks Since the latter is just a question of time it is realy only about fun in the end.
Getting rid of the annoying conditions would undoubtedly help to revitalize PvE and your ideas are once again spot on.
Got my vote as well
Cool mate.
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@protoneous It is indeed incredibly disturbing if the queue window will be released to Holodeck in such a state. Hopefully they come to their senses and restore the "people queued" counter.
A lot of things in the UI on Tribble seem to have gone AWOL. Half my rep projects window seems to have gone missing, for instance: I can't see what I have queued in the upcoming slot anymore.
Then I honestly hope they don't release it in this state. But this Cryptic, so they probably will.
Edit: (for clarity) the only way to see how many are queued is to highlight the queue then the number in the queued box at upper left will change from none to the number of people queued.
That box is the category button for the queues you are currently waiting in and the number shows how many queues are in it, not the number of people in those queues.
Thanks for the correction. So then there isn't any way to check the number of people queued for a particular map before queuing? How about after joining the queue?
If it pops, it's full, if it doesn't, it's not. No other info.
Another one of those obfuscation tricks. Remember, shortly after DR? Then it was like 'Yeah, it says a 10 minutes wait, but those numbers are displayed totally wrong.' No, they weren't. And now, to avoid you seeing only 1 person queued for it, they're obfuscating that too. When will they ever learn?!
Red Alerts are why nost people don't queue for their needed marks anymore imho.
They just pop red alert all day long.
For the marks they want avoiding the main queues this way.
I think same regard bg battlezones but think they too boring to worry about removing anyway
Yea, I Iike the idea of @ruinthefun to get rid of the multiple marks there and make em all about xp again.
In all honesty, I'm still on the fence about this. It's the 'chicken and the egg' thingy: were choice boxes in RAs introduced because ppl were complaining their pertinent queues wouldn't pop? Or aren't the queues popping any more because choice boxes were introduced in RA's?
Another one of those obfuscation tricks. Remember, shortly after DR? Then it was like 'Yeah, it says a 10 minutes wait, but those numbers are displayed totally wrong.' No, they weren't. And now, to avoid you seeing only 1 person queued for it, they're obfuscating that too. When will they ever learn?!
The problem is that this doesn't work well and accentuates the negatives. Psycholergy confirms that humans treat unknown negatives as being roughly twice as bad as what they actually are and unknown positives as only being half as good, with the result that the situation will be viewed 4x as bad as it actually is.
I singled out this, since... what is it that the players enjoy, then?
They do not enjoy the queues. There is also a large number of players who hate Ground content. Borticus asked players awhile ago "what do you like about STO?". Most people in the thread talked about "story driven content", which is not the majority of queues. Feel free to browse the thread.
That's speculation, something you seem to be awfully sure of. And yes, if we're talking about the unfortunate case where player hates queued content altogether, my proposed changes won't help anything. But, again, I believe those people to be in minority, simply because I can't see there's much else to do in game. However, I chatted with various people, and they all confirmed that they would queue up more often to queues they currently avoid if Cryptic would make them less tedious.
You chatted with people who like public queues, but have issues with some of them. I don't know if you talked to players who dislike public queues or players who dislike the queue system in general. Your suggestions may improve the enjoyment for players who like the public queues, but dislike some of the individual missions for the reasons you stated. At best, players who already use public queues will queue for something other than the missions they prefer. It does not address the concerns of people who queue privately. As a result, you will not see an increase in the number of players using the public queues. You will see more players trying different queues (as those players who already queue publicly will be more inclined to try a different queue).
Fyi, most of the people I talked to do private queues much more often than pugs. I'm also one of those.
Could it be that the "Private queue Crew" is no longer in touch with the community and that the community does not dislike ground as much as the private queue crew does?
Personally i like doing ground and there are good combinations in specializations for doing both space and ground. That combo may not be God Almighty levels, but it is not a complete disaster either. Playing queues that way may actually bring back a little bit of challenge to mostly stale (too easy) combat in STO.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I singled out this, since... what is it that the players enjoy, then?
They do not enjoy the queues. There is also a large number of players who hate Ground content. Borticus asked players awhile ago "what do you like about STO?". Most people in the thread talked about "story driven content", which is not the majority of queues. Feel free to browse the thread.
That's speculation, something you seem to be awfully sure of. And yes, if we're talking about the unfortunate case where player hates queued content altogether, my proposed changes won't help anything. But, again, I believe those people to be in minority, simply because I can't see there's much else to do in game. However, I chatted with various people, and they all confirmed that they would queue up more often to queues they currently avoid if Cryptic would make them less tedious.
You chatted with people who like public queues, but have issues with some of them. I don't know if you talked to players who dislike public queues or players who dislike the queue system in general. Your suggestions may improve the enjoyment for players who like the public queues, but dislike some of the individual missions for the reasons you stated. At best, players who already use public queues will queue for something other than the missions they prefer. It does not address the concerns of people who queue privately. As a result, you will not see an increase in the number of players using the public queues. You will see more players trying different queues (as those players who already queue publicly will be more inclined to try a different queue).
Fyi, most of the people I talked to do private queues much more often than pugs. I'm also one of those.
Could it be that the "Private queue Crew" is no longer in touch with the community and that the community does not dislike ground as much as the private queue crew does?
Personally i like doing ground and there are good combinations in specializations for doing both space and ground. That combo may not be God Almighty levels, but it is not a complete disaster either. Playing queues that way may actually bring back a little bit of challenge to mostly stale (too easy) combat in STO.
Uhh... what? Why are you bringing it even up? Fyi, I love ground. Not as much as space, but I enjoy doing it.
Red Alerts are why nost people don't queue for their needed marks anymore imho.
They just pop red alert all day long.
For the marks they want avoiding the main queues this way.
I think same regard bg battlezones but think they too boring to worry about removing anyway
Yea, I Iike the idea of @ruinthefun to get rid of the multiple marks there and make em all about xp again.
In all honesty, I'm still on the fence about this. It's the 'chicken and the egg' thingy: were choice boxes in RAs introduced because ppl were complaining their pertinent queues wouldn't pop? Or aren't the queues popping any more because choice boxes were introduced in RA's?
The choice boxes in the RA's are only the tip of the iceberg. They already had choice boxes in every event all the time before that. Recruit events have given so much account-unlock choice boxes new toons barely need to play anything at all to max all reps (before T6 at least).
But no, it's not a chicken and egg question. Whatever caused the queues to empty, putting choiceboxes in the RAs unquestionably made it worse.
I actually love Battle Zones. The Undine Space and the Badlands are excellent IMO.
Gon'cra is in DESPERATE need of being fixed, as it is impossible right now. It would be a great source of Lukari Marks... except that it is totally broken, and pretty much has been since Day 1.
But no, it's not a chicken and egg question. Whatever caused the queues to empty, putting choiceboxes in the RAs unquestionably made it worse.
I pin the ultimate blame on Reward Homogenization. This process began in Season 7. Prior to Season 7, we had 6 highly populated, living queues, each of which had a unique justification for existence. Post-Season 7, the number of queues with activity began to rapidly contract. The now "Omega" Rep became the ISE Rep. The Romulan Rep was the Epohh Rep. Voth Rep was Star Turok. Each rep inevitably developed its short circuit that, because every rep was powered by the same homgenous mark within its type, dominated every other content in its rep. Events tended to provide a temporary short circuit with Omnimarks, but as these were limited-time dealies, only caused limited, short-term damage. Red Alerts, however, have increasingly become the short circuit of nearly every rep, with their All Omnimark, All The Time behavior.
That's not to say that problems didn't exist pre-S7, though: The driving force of S7, after all, was the bitching about the random nature of the drops. And the system itself was generally set up for a long-term malaise ultimately when veterans would ultimately exit the system once they "Got Theirs". This all could have been prevented with unbound drops that would provide a self-balancing market. But instead, we got rep, which brings us to the condition we have today: Short circuits render whole swathes of content irrelevant, and veterans quickly exit the field upon completing it, because, frankly, there's little to be gained from continued rep-based play except generic currency conversion, which, well, is about as homogenized as it gets and competes with literally everything else offering that same generic currency. Every attempt to drive additional play has ultimately been a hamfisted effort: First we got R&D materials and Salvage Tech added, now we get this "random queue system". All are clumsy band-aid attempts
In summary, the system has three major problems:
1. Homogenization of rewards.
2. Lack of any motive to continue playing in the long term.
3. No self-balancing corrective mechanism to repair the above.
But no, it's not a chicken and egg question. Whatever caused the queues to empty, putting choiceboxes in the RAs unquestionably made it worse.
I pin the ultimate blame on Reward Homogenization. This process began in Season 7. Prior to Season 7, we had 6 highly populated, living queues, each of which had a unique justification for existence. Post-Season 7, the number of queues with activity began to rapidly contract. The now "Omega" Rep became the ISE Rep. The Romulan Rep was the Epohh Rep. Voth Rep was Star Turok. Each rep inevitably developed its short circuit that, because every rep was powered by the same homgenous mark within its type, dominated every other content in its rep. Events tended to provide a temporary short circuit with Omnimarks, but as these were limited-time dealies, only caused limited, short-term damage. Red Alerts, however, have increasingly become the short circuit of nearly every rep, with their All Omnimark, All The Time behavior.
That's not to say that problems didn't exist pre-S7, though: The driving force of S7, after all, was the bitching about the random nature of the drops. And the system itself was generally set up for a long-term malaise ultimately when veterans would ultimately exit the system once they "Got Theirs". This all could have been prevented with unbound drops that would provide a self-balancing market. But instead, we got rep, which brings us to the condition we have today: Short circuits render whole swathes of content irrelevant, and veterans quickly exit the field upon completing it, because, frankly, there's little to be gained from continued rep-based play except generic currency conversion, which, well, is about as homogenized as it gets and competes with literally everything else offering that same generic currency. Every attempt to drive additional play has ultimately been a hamfisted effort: First we got R&D materials and Salvage Tech added, now we get this "random queue system". All are clumsy band-aid attempts
That's so true. But it wasn't just 6 queues. Practically all the queues were at least somewhat popular back then, because they rewarded different things. You had the STFs with their drops, fleet marks queues for guess what and the 10/20-man queues for dil (they did reward more dil than the STFs when the daily was up). You did Mirror Invasion for XP and even the original Vault shuttle event featured a unique reward, even if the reman set was kinda "meh." Breaking the Planet was the only one that consistently had trouble popping, because it had no daily.
And of course the original CC was totally unpuggable, even when it did pop (though it was good if you wanted to laugh at people cursing eachother for doing it wrong and giving eachother bad advice based mostly on myth). But I digress.
One by one they have removed all of that. Rep system ate the unique drops. Fleet marks were turned from a valuable resource you gathered with your fleetmates into garbage you have to camp the projects to dump the second the timer ticks down (or abuse your privilege as fleet admin by starting a project manually and taking a dump into it before anyone notices). Choice boxes found their way everywhere. Everything and the kitchen sink drops dil. Gear tokens are just another 100 marks off the choicebox. MI was turned from the game's best XP killfest into a dull waiting game. And speaking of XP, these 15-minute timed queues with unlimited respawning enemies are surely a great way to get ship XP? No, of course not, gotta cap it off or people might actually want to play them.
R&D materials were not unique enough and most importantly, not necessary enough. Because the upgrade system was implemented in a way that overwhelmingly favored crafing mk2 items that required no advanced materials. Admiralty hit the last nail in their coffin by giving them out like candy.
Endeavors had great potential, that was completely wasted on blink-and-you-miss-it short tasks available only 3 times a week and rewarding nothing but the same old generic currencies. As far as I've seen, the catalog of possible tasks doesn't even include more than 3 queues. The random queues are looking to repeat the mistakes of the endeavors.
They should totally add unique rewards into every queue. It doesn't even matter what they are, as long as they're desireable and not available anywhere else. Remove the choiceboxes and the token conversions. Give ship XP for every ship killed in those timed killfests. Endeavors should be massively expanded with more, longer/multi-tiered tasks, a larger task catalog and better rewards including at least the chance of something unique. Random queues should allow the entire queue list, not just dev favorites and also have at least the chance of rewarding something unique. More accolades (and fixing the broken ones, like the missing Elite STF optionals) wouldn't hurt either.
People WILL play all the content, if they are given a reason to.
The funny thing is that the last time I tried ISA figuring it would be an easy one-click stop for Borg Marks, it turns out that ISA is now a complete shitshow since the DPS leagues abandoned it for HSE.
You don't say.
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So... the only reason people played ISA was to get carried by the DPS people?
Uh... huh...
Not all, but some did.
I had heard more then once in Zone that you can get easy rewards from ISA because the DPS'ers run it all the time so you can just relax and let them complete the mission for you. It was known among most of the DPS community as well, just no one cared because that's what happens when you run Pugs.
Honestly, I have run a few ISA Pugs over the last month and I haven't noticed any real difference at all. Most of the runs were over in a couple min, I usually had at least 1-2 other heavy hitters with me. It probably depends on what time you run it.
If the DPS community completely migrates away from ISA though, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see other players drop it as well.
I've really only ever done PUG runs myself. Sure we get the odd bad run, but that's really the only time I've seen subpar capabilities. Most of the time its like you said, done in a few minutes no problems.
Comments
wow thank u sir.
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Highly appreciated!
Got my vote as well
Cool mate.
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Then I honestly hope they don't release it in this state.
Another one of those obfuscation tricks. Remember, shortly after DR? Then it was like 'Yeah, it says a 10 minutes wait, but those numbers are displayed totally wrong.' No, they weren't. And now, to avoid you seeing only 1 person queued for it, they're obfuscating that too. When will they ever learn?!
They just pop red alert all day long.
For the marks they want avoiding the main queues this way.
I think same regardibg battlezones but think they too boring to worry about removing anyway
Yea, I Iike the idea of @ruinthefun to get rid of the multiple marks there and make em all about xp again.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
In all honesty, I'm still on the fence about this. It's the 'chicken and the egg' thingy: were choice boxes in RAs introduced because ppl were complaining their pertinent queues wouldn't pop? Or aren't the queues popping any more because choice boxes were introduced in RA's?
Good observation!
Agreed on everything except the last part.
I actually love Battle Zones. The Undine Space and the Badlands are excellent IMO.
Could it be that the "Private queue Crew" is no longer in touch with the community and that the community does not dislike ground as much as the private queue crew does?
Personally i like doing ground and there are good combinations in specializations for doing both space and ground. That combo may not be God Almighty levels, but it is not a complete disaster either. Playing queues that way may actually bring back a little bit of challenge to mostly stale (too easy) combat in STO.
Uhh... what? Why are you bringing it even up? Fyi, I love ground. Not as much as space, but I enjoy doing it.
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.
But no, it's not a chicken and egg question. Whatever caused the queues to empty, putting choiceboxes in the RAs unquestionably made it worse.
No reason for people to even try playing most content if you just give them an easy "i win" button for getting anything they want for minimal effort.
Gon'cra is in DESPERATE need of being fixed, as it is impossible right now. It would be a great source of Lukari Marks... except that it is totally broken, and pretty much has been since Day 1.
100% agree.
And of course the original CC was totally unpuggable, even when it did pop (though it was good if you wanted to laugh at people cursing eachother for doing it wrong and giving eachother bad advice based mostly on myth). But I digress.
One by one they have removed all of that. Rep system ate the unique drops. Fleet marks were turned from a valuable resource you gathered with your fleetmates into garbage you have to camp the projects to dump the second the timer ticks down (or abuse your privilege as fleet admin by starting a project manually and taking a dump into it before anyone notices). Choice boxes found their way everywhere. Everything and the kitchen sink drops dil. Gear tokens are just another 100 marks off the choicebox. MI was turned from the game's best XP killfest into a dull waiting game. And speaking of XP, these 15-minute timed queues with unlimited respawning enemies are surely a great way to get ship XP? No, of course not, gotta cap it off or people might actually want to play them.
R&D materials were not unique enough and most importantly, not necessary enough. Because the upgrade system was implemented in a way that overwhelmingly favored crafing mk2 items that required no advanced materials. Admiralty hit the last nail in their coffin by giving them out like candy.
Endeavors had great potential, that was completely wasted on blink-and-you-miss-it short tasks available only 3 times a week and rewarding nothing but the same old generic currencies. As far as I've seen, the catalog of possible tasks doesn't even include more than 3 queues. The random queues are looking to repeat the mistakes of the endeavors.
They should totally add unique rewards into every queue. It doesn't even matter what they are, as long as they're desireable and not available anywhere else. Remove the choiceboxes and the token conversions. Give ship XP for every ship killed in those timed killfests. Endeavors should be massively expanded with more, longer/multi-tiered tasks, a larger task catalog and better rewards including at least the chance of something unique. Random queues should allow the entire queue list, not just dev favorites and also have at least the chance of rewarding something unique. More accolades (and fixing the broken ones, like the missing Elite STF optionals) wouldn't hurt either.
People WILL play all the content, if they are given a reason to.
My character Tsin'xing
You don't say.
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Uh... huh...
Not all, but some did.
I had heard more then once in Zone that you can get easy rewards from ISA because the DPS'ers run it all the time so you can just relax and let them complete the mission for you. It was known among most of the DPS community as well, just no one cared because that's what happens when you run Pugs.
Honestly, I have run a few ISA Pugs over the last month and I haven't noticed any real difference at all. Most of the runs were over in a couple min, I usually had at least 1-2 other heavy hitters with me. It probably depends on what time you run it.
If the DPS community completely migrates away from ISA though, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see other players drop it as well.