Perhaps what they could do is add a cutscene intro to each queues that only plays on the normal versions. Those are likely to be where newbies play first so they’d have to sit through it.
Leave it off advanced and elite as generally players at that level don’t need an intro.
Now if they combined that with some sort of unlock feature so you must do at least 5 runs at normal to open further ranks of a queue then players would be pushed into learning i’d hope.
You can't push people into learning. You can make people wait through a briefing timer, but you can't make them read the briefing. Unskippable spam in the beginning of a mission just aggravates people and makes them want to ignore it out of spite. As long as players can win missions without paying attention, they'll keep doing exactly that.
The only way to motivate players to learn, is to have goals they'll want to accomplish that can't be accomplished without learning.
For that matter, I don't believe it's a game's job to teach players how to win. The game puts up the rules and the goals, then it's the players' job to figure out how best to achieve them.
Unlock conditions have often been suggested, but nothing has ever come out of it.
As others already mentioned, running X runs at Normal is no test of skill whatsoever, as anyone can just get carried. Even most of the optionals are piece of cake to get by accident even in pugs. Normal and Advanced are basically so easy the hardest part completing most of them 5 times would be getting the queue to pop that much. Ideally, an unlock condition would be something players have to complete alone.
Honestly, since they already removed the fail conditions from Advanced, there's little point locking it up anymore. It isn't noticeably harder than Normal, just takes a while longer if the team has bad DPS. And of course, Elite is basically the performance players' just-for-fun playground since it doesn't reward anything you couldn't get easier on Advanced.
If they put fail conditions back to Advanced, and worthwhile rewards to Elite, then they should lock them.
Yeah well in fairness when i made the poll i didn't want to just have one answer for "Rewards" as from my experience in discussing the topic in this very thread there are clearly many trains of thought about rewards and the problems with them.
Some people seemed to be unhappy with ANY volume of rewards bar the ridiculous, others simply get them from non-combat content which they prefer or find easier. An others fin that generally the effort to get rewards from queues is not worth it, not necessarily that the size of the rewards are too small.
You did fine making that difference. Group A does not play queues in light of RAs, group B does not and would not no matter if RAs are there or not. With the change now group A will play queues group B still wont.
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Here is an issue, too... I wouldn't know how to act in a team.
Where does one learn THAT?
Generally by acting like a decent human being is a good start....
You try to do the job you're all there for, know the mission objective, you heal teammates if needed, help defend them if required, don't bring a knife to a gun fight, keep with the fight even if it goes south and you loose optionals.
It's not really that hard to play as a team player.
Yeah well in fairness when i made the poll i didn't want to just have one answer for "Rewards" as from my experience in discussing the topic in this very thread there are clearly many trains of thought about rewards and the problems with them.
Some people seemed to be unhappy with ANY volume of rewards bar the ridiculous, others simply get them from non-combat content which they prefer or find easier. An others fin that generally the effort to get rewards from queues is not worth it, not necessarily that the size of the rewards are too small.
You did fine making that difference. Group A does not play queues in light of RAs, group B does not and would not no matter if RAs are there or not. With the change now group A will play queues group B still wont.
Thanks @peterconnorfirst , glad some people can see the difference. There's definitely people who see rewards slightly differently so it's better to give them various options, especially seeing as rewards are clearly a big issue and not one to be pared down to a simple reason.
Here is an issue, too... I wouldn't know how to act in a team.
Where does one learn THAT?
Do you have eyesight?
Learning by doing works for most then!
You laugh...but no I don't have very good eyesight! And all the lights don't help.
So, I assume my best bet : I will just continue to avoid the group stuff.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Yeah well in fairness when i made the poll i didn't want to just have one answer for "Rewards" as from my experience in discussing the topic in this very thread there are clearly many trains of thought about rewards and the problems with them.
Some people seemed to be unhappy with ANY volume of rewards bar the ridiculous, others simply get them from non-combat content which they prefer or find easier. An others fin that generally the effort to get rewards from queues is not worth it, not necessarily that the size of the rewards are too small.
You did fine making that difference. Group A does not play queues in light of RAs, group B does not and would not no matter if RAs are there or not. With the change now group A will play queues group B still wont.
Except it isn't written a "queues vs red alerts" -poll. It's a "why don't you play different content" -poll. It's speculative to assume that the content the answerers play means red alerts and the content they avoid means queues, because it wasn't written that way.
And even for those who did mean RA's, it's speculative to assume that now that RA's are limited, the next option on their list would have to be queues. There are more than RA's out there, even listed in the poll answer. So group A can still get rewards elsewhere. Rewards' still not unique.
On the other hand, group B's "too small" rewards would be bigger, relatively speaking, now that there's less options to compare them with. It's easy to call a sack of potatoes small if you've got a cartfull right next to it, but take away the cart and the sack will start to look more appealing.
I would even expect that for some people, the queues ARE the "elsewhere" that they're getting their rewards from (probably at least CCA, which is optimal for dil except for Admiralty).
BTW, I answered "because I can get rewards elsewhere" myself. I did not mean RA's (rather Admiralty and events) and limiting them has no effect on me.
It is interesting, yes. The bandwagon effect (seeing empty queues) in particular is unexpectedly high. I didn't believe it before, but Cryptic may actually be onto something removing those indicators.
This isn't the first time they've done that, and each time, it has exactly the opposite effect: That people, unable to see what to queue for, don't queue for anything because when they try to queue for something, it doesn't pop, and, seeing no feedback to indicate whether or not their action is having any effect, they stop doing it. The result is that people become very conservative in their queue-picking choices, only choosing things they know will pop, and less-popular queues get even more abandoned because, on the off chance it becomes even likely to pop, nobody can see this and thus do not join.
That is an irrational course of action. The most successful option when lacking information about queue participation would be to queue for all of them, so that no matter what queue does pop, the player would be guaranteed to be in it.
The grindiness of the grind has forced players to optimize their time in game to achieve certain results. If one queue gives you a 2 minute discount on completion and the reward you want, the other queues which offer the same reward will not get played because in 30 replays you save an hour of game time.
The negative feedback issue is in full force: if the queue doesn't pop quickly, the player will stop waiting in sector space and play something else, which will make the queue take longer to pop, which means fewer people will wait around, and so on.
Battlegrounds as opposed to queued missions might be the answer. You can go to any battleground any time you want and play as long as you want, and what other people are doing makes little difference, outside of peak times when lots of players are there taking down the obstacles faster.
Queued missions might do better as team only missions which offer unique rewards you can't find elsewhere. That way your challenge is to get a team together, not to sit in sector space discussing the ramifications of neocolonialism on the global trade network while waiting for a queue to pop.
Yeah well in fairness when i made the poll i didn't want to just have one answer for "Rewards" as from my experience in discussing the topic in this very thread there are clearly many trains of thought about rewards and the problems with them.
Some people seemed to be unhappy with ANY volume of rewards bar the ridiculous, others simply get them from non-combat content which they prefer or find easier. An others fin that generally the effort to get rewards from queues is not worth it, not necessarily that the size of the rewards are too small.
You did fine making that difference. Group A does not play queues in light of RAs, group B does not and would not no matter if RAs are there or not. With the change now group A will play queues group B still wont.
Except it isn't written a "queues vs red alerts" -poll. It's a "why don't you play different content" -poll. It's speculative to assume that the content the answerers play means red alerts and the content they avoid means queues, because it wasn't written that way.
And even for those who did mean RA's, it's speculative to assume that now that RA's are limited, the next option on their list would have to be queues. There are more than RA's out there, even listed in the poll answer. So group A can still get rewards elsewhere. Rewards' still not unique.
On the other hand, group B's "too small" rewards would be bigger, relatively speaking, now that there's less options to compare them with. It's easy to call a sack of potatoes small if you've got a cartfull right next to it, but take away the cart and the sack will start to look more appealing.
I would even expect that for some people, the queues ARE the "elsewhere" that they're getting their rewards from (probably at least CCA, which is optimal for dil except for Admiralty).
BTW, I answered "because I can get rewards elsewhere" myself. I did not mean RA's (rather Admiralty and events) and limiting them has no effect on me.
It is interesting, yes. The bandwagon effect (seeing empty queues) in particular is unexpectedly high. I didn't believe it before, but Cryptic may actually be onto something removing those indicators.
This isn't the first time they've done that, and each time, it has exactly the opposite effect: That people, unable to see what to queue for, don't queue for anything because when they try to queue for something, it doesn't pop, and, seeing no feedback to indicate whether or not their action is having any effect, they stop doing it. The result is that people become very conservative in their queue-picking choices, only choosing things they know will pop, and less-popular queues get even more abandoned because, on the off chance it becomes even likely to pop, nobody can see this and thus do not join.
That is an irrational course of action. The most successful option when lacking information about queue participation would be to queue for all of them, so that no matter what queue does pop, the player would be guaranteed to be in it.
Players are as a group not rational. If they were rational, they wouldn't be playing games and paying money into them, they'd be doing things that offer tangible rewards.
as a result of understanding this, the course of action Ruin describes is exactly what happens.
All rewards are ultimately in your mind. A desire fulfilled. It has nothing to do with "tangible." Irrational is acting in a way that denies yourself a desired outcome for no reason. Players are usually very rational.
Of course, I have got the impression a whole lot of players may not actually have noticed that it is in fact possible to join any number of queues at once now. Before, when you could only join 3 queues at once, it was necessary to choose ones that could pop or you'd be waiting forever in empty queues. Now, you can just join all of them and guarantee poppage, but the game doesn't actually mention this. Even the "select all" -checkbox is curiously unlabeled.
Here is an issue, too... I wouldn't know how to act in a team.
Where does one learn THAT?
Do you have eyesight?
Learning by doing works for most then!
You laugh...but no I don't have very good eyesight! And all the lights don't help.
So, I assume my best bet : I will just continue to avoid the group stuff.
There is no need to. The tasks on all PvE are that easy that one should be able to understand them in 2-3 runs. I see that you may be hesitant if you never played any team content but for the most part reading the intro and then observing what the others are doing should be suffice.
And again, if you or anybody else has interest to play PvE but feels uncertain of your own abilities or have been let down too often by others in random groups you are welcome to join dedicated channels like DPS-Bronze or my own Voice of Omega Combat. The first chat only requires 10k DPS in ISA, the other one just not to troll matches on purpose. My carrier pets for example can do both alright by the way so it should not be hard at all.
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I am sure some of you have been on Tribble. They are adding the STFs into the MISSION JOURNAL. It will no longer be something separated by a player's level. That is going on line with tomorrow's patch, right???
The convo about "How does one apply team work to STFs?" "What is the best way to complete objectives in such and such queue?" is going to become much more relevant. Veterans wondering why they don't approach the queues any more, that important?
I don't know how the random TFOs is going to work with Veterans mixing with new players while actually doing the queues.
Because really...what good does it do to have Veteran "carry" players....players who are at the point where they want to learn this stuff? You know: What good is it for Veterans to over run the map when new players need the practice? And not to mention all those folks giving new players such rude "welcomes" in the chat and leaving them with no clue as to what went south.
There is a window of opportunity to create a new player that has an understanding of "how the game can be played" with the knowledge base you all have...but afraid they will be over run by people acting badly and thinking selfishly.
I am not sure why Cryptic is setting the scene for the most uneven and unhealthy competition, ever.
Post edited by where2r1 on
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I am sure some of you have been on Tribble. They are adding the STFs into the MISSION JOURNAL. It will no longer be something separated by a player's level. That is going on line with tomorrow's patch, right???
The convo about "How does one apply team work to STFs?" "What is the best way to complete objectives in such and such queue?" is going to become much more relevant. Veterans wondering why they don't approach the queues any more, that important?
I don't know how the random TFOs is going to work with Veterans mixing with new players while actually doing the queues.
Because really...what good does it do to have Veteran "carry" players....players who are at the point where they want to learn this stuff? You know: What good is it for Veterans to over run the map when new players need the practice? And not to mention all those folks giving new players such rude "welcomes" in the chat and leaving them with no clue as to what went south.
There is a window of opportunity to create a new player that has an understanding of "how the game can be played" with the knowledge base you all have...but afraid they will be over run by people acting badly and thinking selfishly.
I am not sure why Cryptic is setting the scene for the most uneven and unhealthy competition, ever.
I really think you are making too much of an issue where none exists. I sucked when I first played and in fact some rude comments towards me in PvE was the first time I started to notice the chat window in STO. Didn’t need it before. I stopped to suck about a week later and half a year after that was good enough to lead teams or “carry” others as you put it.
Nowadays players willing to learn stuff get rolled out a red carpet via dedicated PvE fleets and DPS channels.
Those who want to become good can do so easier than ever but you are right, those who don’t want to probably also can do so easier than ever.
What gives? It’s still on them then.
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Because really...what good does it do to have Veteran "carry" players....players who are at the point where they want to learn this stuff? You know: What good is it for Veterans to over run the map when new players need the practice? And not to mention all those folks giving new players such rude "welcomes" in the chat and leaving them with no clue as to what went south.
There is a window of opportunity to create a new player that has an understanding of "how the game can be played" with the knowledge base you all have...but afraid they will be over run by people acting badly and thinking selfishly.
The first thing you have to do here is accept the fact that there will be rude people in all walks of life. There will be Vets that disparage new players, there will be new players that accuse all experienced players of 'Elitism,' those people will exist.. but you can't reason with either, so not worth the effort.
Connor said it best, there has never been a time that I can remember where the Veteran Players were more open and welcoming to new players. Believe it or not, Vets don't prefer to carry a team, most people no matter what their experience level would rather be part of a team, one link in the chain.. not the entire thing.
As for the part about the player learning, that's a side effect of Cryptic's mission design. Ideally, this would not be a problem because players wouldn't be in Advanced Queues to 'learn,' they would be in normals where none of the Vets would be. This however, doesn't work out since Normals give so little rewards that new players tend to cut their teeth in Advanced.
Most of the Veteran players I know these days are very welcoming of new players, they enjoy helping players improve themselves and become more successful in the game. I understand, that not everyone wants to take this path and that's fine, but to those that do, it's as simple as asking for help. Anyone that's gotten anywhere in this game has done so by asking for help at one point or another. Many years back I started a thread on this very forum (well, the old board) asking for help because I was.. terrible. It was as simple as asking.. I got all the help I needed and since then have done my best to try and help others.
As Connor said though, ultimately, it's on them. They have to ask. The TFO's are going to be.. interesting, but most Vets should know when queuing up that they could very well end up carrying a team. We can only hope that if that happens that they won't be rude about it.
Honestly, I believe most of these players will just continue to stick to premades though. The TFO's are likely to be comprised of mostly newer players, but we'll see.
Honestly, I believe most of these players will just continue to stick to premades though. The TFO's are likely to be comprised of mostly newer players, but we'll see.
Well yea no idea there. What’s really a downer is that one can’t filter out ground and space. Not that I mind ground at all but in the average OCD team the two of us run (let it be the partial premades we queue up often for public) ground advanced is simply much to easy to play while space on the other hand is perfect. On the other hand the multiple choice marks one gets that way is too tempting to ignore.
Who knows perhaps this new Starbase 1 map is exciting to play and there we also get multiple choice marks and know what we sign up for after some time.
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And I thought the "new" Queue UI we got when S13 hit couldn't possibly be any worse...
Yeah, f--k this s--t, honestly. With no possibility to see anymore how many ppl are queued for certain mission, Random TFOs not being separated by ground and space and on top of that you have no way of knowing which queue you're going to get until it's already loading...
Well, the devs who are supposedly reading this, tell me, are you actively trying to get rid of that part of your playerbase who plays the queues? If yes, why is that? According to my logic, that part of the players should account for biggest amount of sales, cause they strive to buy many ships just for their consoles, or traits, and upgrading their gear constantly to perform better.
Kael, you asked us over in stobuilds why are we feeling burned out - this kind of TRIBBLE is exactly why. We try our best to give you folks FREE advice how to improve the game, and not only are players constantly seemingly ignored, it actually gets a double down action by devs "You think the game need improvement? Look at this new update we give you, you ain't seen true "bad" yet!".
Just wanted to use this thread to give my feedback to this new map where I see some minor tendencies that some parts of the criticism here seem to find its way to future mission designs. Also this thread seems to enjoys more attention by now that the respective official ones.
Overall the design of the map is ok. Straight forward main tasks to shoot stuff with an escort side quest that even matters for a change. Nothing more, nothing less.
Positive part is I see a lot of different build options we have shine here. DPSer can DPS, crowd controller may control and tanks may even tank (a bit). Different weapon types also offer different benefits. Even though nothing is mandatory having a bit of options is a clear up. The reward/effort ratio especially under consideration of multiple choice marks is good as well. No CD times also feels legit on this new map. It is a good replacement for RAs that way without introducing something too lucrative so that other maps may get rejected.
Negative is mainly the scaling but as patch notes hint will see further adjustments. I pugged advanced which was so easy that I wanted to call of the evacuation. Also we were sitting there for minutes without having anything to do. I hope, cryptic, you have not decided to replace the criticized visual timers by invisible ones. They don’t make stuff less annoying just add confusion. On Elite things felt more reasonable in the DPS Diamond group I ran the map with. Not the hardest map but also nothing to sleep in.
All in all a solid C from me after the D- I’d give Swarm and the F+ of Dranur Gauntlet. No reason to put the Champaign on ice but a small step in the right direction. Who knows but we could be to Tzenkethi Front B levels again in no time.
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Just wanted to use this thread to give my feedback to this new map where I see some minor tendencies that some parts of the criticism here seem to find its way to future mission designs. Also this thread seems to enjoys more attention by now that the respective official ones.
Overall the design of the map is ok. Straight forward main tasks to shoot stuff with an escort side quest that even matters for a change. Nothing more, nothing less.
Positive part is I see a lot of different build options we have shine here. DPSer can DPS, crowd controller may control and tanks may even tank (a bit). Different weapon types also offer different benefits. Even though nothing is mandatory having a bit of options is a clear up. The reward/effort ratio especially under consideration of multiple choice marks is good as well. No CD times also feels legit on this new map. It is a good replacement for RAs that way without introducing something too lucrative so that other maps may get rejected.
Negative is mainly the scaling but as patch notes hint will see further adjustments. I pugged advanced which was so easy that I wanted to call of the evacuation. Also we were sitting there for minutes without having anything to do. I hope, cryptic, you have not decided to replace the criticized visual timers by invisible ones. They don’t make stuff less annoying just add confusion. On Elite things felt more reasonable in the DPS Diamond group I ran the map with. Not the hardest map but also nothing to sleep in.
All in all a solid C from me after the D- I’d give Swarm and the F+ of Dranur Gauntlet. No reason to put the Champaign on ice but a small step in the right direction. Who knows but we could be to Tzenkethi Front B levels again in no time.
Agreed on most of this.. I actually really like this map.
My biggest problem was that, as you said.. advanced is just too easy. I realize that calling for increased challenge could backfire as right now the map is easy enough that you can carry a team easily. Fixing the scaling could be too much for some players, but it still needs to be done. Right now enemies just melt.
I haven't tried the Elite yet, we need to run that one later this week.
Starbase One is... meh for me. It's not horrible, but it's dull, and again, timegated. Running it every now and then would be fine, but if Random TFO system decides to put you into it 4x in a row, and one time the map has already ended, then it starts getting on my nerves.
And yes, completely agree about the enemies, when I was pugging the advanced with Zooey, I'm afraid we might've given everyone else afk penalties, just because NPCs tended to die even before the duration of my single firing volley had ended.
I like Starbase 1. And yes, it needs better scaling (foes you're facing, I've seen them be lv. 51-55). But let's not make it too hard, k? It shouldn't become a 'git gut' map. Apparently it exists on Elite, so Elite players should probably just play it on Elite. And the rest of us should be able to pug it on Advanced.
It's broken, though, in that, half the time, it bugs out and doesn't finish properly. That, foremost, needs taking care of.
I like how it's a map where your ability to heal NPCs matters.
Exactly how?
The optional is to keep the NPC ships from dying before they warp out, Stuff like Extend shields and Hazard emitters cast on the NPC you're protecting makes them live longer.
Sure, you might be able to spike the enemies to death before it matters, but there are options.
Sure, you might be able to spike the enemies to death before it matters, but there are options.
Hah, seems like that's what I've been doing then. Granted, I haven't tried elite yet, cause my 3 days old toon needs marks and Cryptic in their ingenuity have made advanced pay off better than elite. Will try it one day, soon, however from what I've heard from my fleeties, it didn't pose too big of a challenge to them, doubt they went in with a dedicated healer or something.
Sure, you might be able to spike the enemies to death before it matters, but there are options.
Hah, seems like that's what I've been doing then. Granted, I haven't tried elite yet, cause my 3 days old toon needs marks and Cryptic in their ingenuity have made advanced pay off better than elite. Will try it one day, soon, however from what I've heard from my fleeties, it didn't pose too big of a challenge to them, doubt they went in with a dedicated healer or something.
Did it only 3 times on Elite so far and as a different map the DPS figures are clearly different from ISA (would say judging form an average L->R run 1/4 to 1/3 less on my energy weapon alts)
If I abstract from that and would need to give an idea for Elite:
- For a Diamond group that map poses no real challenge
- For a Gold group it is challenging but doable
- For a Silver group we could look at a serious brawl where the healing of the transports could have high relevance in lack of DPS for critter removal and it may or may not succeed
- For a Bronze group I’d bet on a certain fail
Of course there is a lot of gut feeling here at place (in light of limited testing) but this map is clearly not on Fez or Gauntlett levels but rather in the HSE, TFE, CPE ec. reach for the build level of a player.
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Comments
The only way to motivate players to learn, is to have goals they'll want to accomplish that can't be accomplished without learning.
For that matter, I don't believe it's a game's job to teach players how to win. The game puts up the rules and the goals, then it's the players' job to figure out how best to achieve them.
Unlock conditions have often been suggested, but nothing has ever come out of it.
As others already mentioned, running X runs at Normal is no test of skill whatsoever, as anyone can just get carried. Even most of the optionals are piece of cake to get by accident even in pugs. Normal and Advanced are basically so easy the hardest part completing most of them 5 times would be getting the queue to pop that much. Ideally, an unlock condition would be something players have to complete alone.
Honestly, since they already removed the fail conditions from Advanced, there's little point locking it up anymore. It isn't noticeably harder than Normal, just takes a while longer if the team has bad DPS. And of course, Elite is basically the performance players' just-for-fun playground since it doesn't reward anything you couldn't get easier on Advanced.
If they put fail conditions back to Advanced, and worthwhile rewards to Elite, then they should lock them.
Where does one learn THAT?
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
You did fine making that difference. Group A does not play queues in light of RAs, group B does not and would not no matter if RAs are there or not. With the change now group A will play queues group B still wont.
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Do you have eyesight?
Learning by doing works for most then!
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Generally by acting like a decent human being is a good start....
You try to do the job you're all there for, know the mission objective, you heal teammates if needed, help defend them if required, don't bring a knife to a gun fight, keep with the fight even if it goes south and you loose optionals.
It's not really that hard to play as a team player.
Thanks @peterconnorfirst , glad some people can see the difference. There's definitely people who see rewards slightly differently so it's better to give them various options, especially seeing as rewards are clearly a big issue and not one to be pared down to a simple reason.
You laugh...but no I don't have very good eyesight! And all the lights don't help.
So, I assume my best bet : I will just continue to avoid the group stuff.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
They are coupling it with the random queue thing this time.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
And even for those who did mean RA's, it's speculative to assume that now that RA's are limited, the next option on their list would have to be queues. There are more than RA's out there, even listed in the poll answer. So group A can still get rewards elsewhere. Rewards' still not unique.
On the other hand, group B's "too small" rewards would be bigger, relatively speaking, now that there's less options to compare them with. It's easy to call a sack of potatoes small if you've got a cartfull right next to it, but take away the cart and the sack will start to look more appealing.
I would even expect that for some people, the queues ARE the "elsewhere" that they're getting their rewards from (probably at least CCA, which is optimal for dil except for Admiralty).
BTW, I answered "because I can get rewards elsewhere" myself. I did not mean RA's (rather Admiralty and events) and limiting them has no effect on me.
That is an irrational course of action. The most successful option when lacking information about queue participation would be to queue for all of them, so that no matter what queue does pop, the player would be guaranteed to be in it.
The negative feedback issue is in full force: if the queue doesn't pop quickly, the player will stop waiting in sector space and play something else, which will make the queue take longer to pop, which means fewer people will wait around, and so on.
Battlegrounds as opposed to queued missions might be the answer. You can go to any battleground any time you want and play as long as you want, and what other people are doing makes little difference, outside of peak times when lots of players are there taking down the obstacles faster.
Queued missions might do better as team only missions which offer unique rewards you can't find elsewhere. That way your challenge is to get a team together, not to sit in sector space discussing the ramifications of neocolonialism on the global trade network while waiting for a queue to pop.
Of course, I have got the impression a whole lot of players may not actually have noticed that it is in fact possible to join any number of queues at once now. Before, when you could only join 3 queues at once, it was necessary to choose ones that could pop or you'd be waiting forever in empty queues. Now, you can just join all of them and guarantee poppage, but the game doesn't actually mention this. Even the "select all" -checkbox is curiously unlabeled.
There is no need to. The tasks on all PvE are that easy that one should be able to understand them in 2-3 runs. I see that you may be hesitant if you never played any team content but for the most part reading the intro and then observing what the others are doing should be suffice.
And again, if you or anybody else has interest to play PvE but feels uncertain of your own abilities or have been let down too often by others in random groups you are welcome to join dedicated channels like DPS-Bronze or my own Voice of Omega Combat. The first chat only requires 10k DPS in ISA, the other one just not to troll matches on purpose. My carrier pets for example can do both alright by the way so it should not be hard at all.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The convo about "How does one apply team work to STFs?" "What is the best way to complete objectives in such and such queue?" is going to become much more relevant. Veterans wondering why they don't approach the queues any more, that important?
I don't know how the random TFOs is going to work with Veterans mixing with new players while actually doing the queues.
Because really...what good does it do to have Veteran "carry" players....players who are at the point where they want to learn this stuff? You know: What good is it for Veterans to over run the map when new players need the practice? And not to mention all those folks giving new players such rude "welcomes" in the chat and leaving them with no clue as to what went south.
There is a window of opportunity to create a new player that has an understanding of "how the game can be played" with the knowledge base you all have...but afraid they will be over run by people acting badly and thinking selfishly.
I am not sure why Cryptic is setting the scene for the most uneven and unhealthy competition, ever.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I really think you are making too much of an issue where none exists. I sucked when I first played and in fact some rude comments towards me in PvE was the first time I started to notice the chat window in STO. Didn’t need it before. I stopped to suck about a week later and half a year after that was good enough to lead teams or “carry” others as you put it.
Nowadays players willing to learn stuff get rolled out a red carpet via dedicated PvE fleets and DPS channels.
Those who want to become good can do so easier than ever but you are right, those who don’t want to probably also can do so easier than ever.
What gives? It’s still on them then.
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The first thing you have to do here is accept the fact that there will be rude people in all walks of life. There will be Vets that disparage new players, there will be new players that accuse all experienced players of 'Elitism,' those people will exist.. but you can't reason with either, so not worth the effort.
Connor said it best, there has never been a time that I can remember where the Veteran Players were more open and welcoming to new players. Believe it or not, Vets don't prefer to carry a team, most people no matter what their experience level would rather be part of a team, one link in the chain.. not the entire thing.
As for the part about the player learning, that's a side effect of Cryptic's mission design. Ideally, this would not be a problem because players wouldn't be in Advanced Queues to 'learn,' they would be in normals where none of the Vets would be. This however, doesn't work out since Normals give so little rewards that new players tend to cut their teeth in Advanced.
Most of the Veteran players I know these days are very welcoming of new players, they enjoy helping players improve themselves and become more successful in the game. I understand, that not everyone wants to take this path and that's fine, but to those that do, it's as simple as asking for help. Anyone that's gotten anywhere in this game has done so by asking for help at one point or another. Many years back I started a thread on this very forum (well, the old board) asking for help because I was.. terrible. It was as simple as asking.. I got all the help I needed and since then have done my best to try and help others.
As Connor said though, ultimately, it's on them. They have to ask. The TFO's are going to be.. interesting, but most Vets should know when queuing up that they could very well end up carrying a team. We can only hope that if that happens that they won't be rude about it.
Honestly, I believe most of these players will just continue to stick to premades though. The TFO's are likely to be comprised of mostly newer players, but we'll see.
Well yea no idea there. What’s really a downer is that one can’t filter out ground and space. Not that I mind ground at all but in the average OCD team the two of us run (let it be the partial premades we queue up often for public) ground advanced is simply much to easy to play while space on the other hand is perfect. On the other hand the multiple choice marks one gets that way is too tempting to ignore.
Who knows perhaps this new Starbase 1 map is exciting to play and there we also get multiple choice marks and know what we sign up for after some time.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Yeah, f--k this s--t, honestly. With no possibility to see anymore how many ppl are queued for certain mission, Random TFOs not being separated by ground and space and on top of that you have no way of knowing which queue you're going to get until it's already loading...
Well, the devs who are supposedly reading this, tell me, are you actively trying to get rid of that part of your playerbase who plays the queues? If yes, why is that? According to my logic, that part of the players should account for biggest amount of sales, cause they strive to buy many ships just for their consoles, or traits, and upgrading their gear constantly to perform better.
Kael, you asked us over in stobuilds why are we feeling burned out - this kind of TRIBBLE is exactly why. We try our best to give you folks FREE advice how to improve the game, and not only are players constantly seemingly ignored, it actually gets a double down action by devs "You think the game need improvement? Look at this new update we give you, you ain't seen true "bad" yet!".
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.
Just wanted to use this thread to give my feedback to this new map where I see some minor tendencies that some parts of the criticism here seem to find its way to future mission designs. Also this thread seems to enjoys more attention by now that the respective official ones.
Overall the design of the map is ok. Straight forward main tasks to shoot stuff with an escort side quest that even matters for a change. Nothing more, nothing less.
Positive part is I see a lot of different build options we have shine here. DPSer can DPS, crowd controller may control and tanks may even tank (a bit). Different weapon types also offer different benefits. Even though nothing is mandatory having a bit of options is a clear up. The reward/effort ratio especially under consideration of multiple choice marks is good as well. No CD times also feels legit on this new map. It is a good replacement for RAs that way without introducing something too lucrative so that other maps may get rejected.
Negative is mainly the scaling but as patch notes hint will see further adjustments. I pugged advanced which was so easy that I wanted to call of the evacuation. Also we were sitting there for minutes without having anything to do. I hope, cryptic, you have not decided to replace the criticized visual timers by invisible ones. They don’t make stuff less annoying just add confusion. On Elite things felt more reasonable in the DPS Diamond group I ran the map with. Not the hardest map but also nothing to sleep in.
All in all a solid C from me after the D- I’d give Swarm and the F+ of Dranur Gauntlet. No reason to put the Champaign on ice but a small step in the right direction. Who knows but we could be to Tzenkethi Front B levels again in no time.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Agreed on most of this.. I actually really like this map.
My biggest problem was that, as you said.. advanced is just too easy. I realize that calling for increased challenge could backfire as right now the map is easy enough that you can carry a team easily. Fixing the scaling could be too much for some players, but it still needs to be done. Right now enemies just melt.
I haven't tried the Elite yet, we need to run that one later this week.
And yes, completely agree about the enemies, when I was pugging the advanced with Zooey, I'm afraid we might've given everyone else afk penalties, just because NPCs tended to die even before the duration of my single firing volley had ended.
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.
My character Tsin'xing
Exactly how?
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.
It's broken, though, in that, half the time, it bugs out and doesn't finish properly. That, foremost, needs taking care of.
Sure, you might be able to spike the enemies to death before it matters, but there are options.
My character Tsin'xing
Hah, seems like that's what I've been doing then. Granted, I haven't tried elite yet, cause my 3 days old toon needs marks and Cryptic in their ingenuity have made advanced pay off better than elite. Will try it one day, soon, however from what I've heard from my fleeties, it didn't pose too big of a challenge to them, doubt they went in with a dedicated healer or something.
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.
Did it only 3 times on Elite so far and as a different map the DPS figures are clearly different from ISA (would say judging form an average L->R run 1/4 to 1/3 less on my energy weapon alts)
If I abstract from that and would need to give an idea for Elite:
- For a Diamond group that map poses no real challenge
- For a Gold group it is challenging but doable
- For a Silver group we could look at a serious brawl where the healing of the transports could have high relevance in lack of DPS for critter removal and it may or may not succeed
- For a Bronze group I’d bet on a certain fail
Of course there is a lot of gut feeling here at place (in light of limited testing) but this map is clearly not on Fez or Gauntlett levels but rather in the HSE, TFE, CPE ec. reach for the build level of a player.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.