So, at their current state, I see no gamma marks in RA selection - and no daily bonuses either. And no Nakuhl RA. Sounds like incredibly sloppy work to me.
I can't say I am surprised.
So I guess the intent really was to kill red alerts once and for all.. sounds like they will be successful.
Soooo ..... Just ran one of the "weekend" Borg red alerts. And it gave the 35 standard marks ... but gone were the addition of the daily marks per mark type.
So, at their current state, I see no gamma marks in RA selection - and no daily bonuses either. And no Nakuhl RA. Sounds like incredibly sloppy work to me.
No daily bonus? Dumb. And no Na'kuhl alert or Gamma marks? Sloppy indeed.
So I guess run the RA's back to back and make an extra 5 marks over what we previously had. Twice the work, literally a handful of extra marks. How is this an improvement?
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
No bonus marks is a crying shame. And your weekend is not offering what you said it would, as there are no Gamma marks or Nakhul red alert.
And removing the regular alerts is not how you create incentive to run the longer queues. For instance: now there is no reliable way to make Lukari or Competitive marks. (Not everyone is interested in PvP... of any type.)
I firmly believe this is a poor decision, but seeing as I'm just some person who plays a game, the odds of you listening to me (or the any other number of people who aren't pleased with the decision) are very slim.
Lore posts are great, but give us real info first please!
This is a Terri-Bad idea of monumental proportions.
For the ones wanting casual quick pew and the time poor, these were great for your star trek shooty-shooty fix.
Plus when will you guys learn that taking content away from the game is a BAD IDEA?!
If your afraid that the "take-your-pick" mark boxes are TRIBBLE with things then why not limit Borg RA to Borg marks and Tholian RA to Tholian marks? Rather than make more content time slot specific?
Well done Cryptic. I needed to free up time to actually play other games. Seeing as I can no longer have access to quick easy going action on here( as you seem intent on making EVERYTHING a bloody chore ) , might as well play other games where my time is actually valued.
This was some of my favourite content as it was quick, casual, no strings pew pew. No commitments, just fun. Rewards to me were secondary on these. I played these more just for the reasons above.
One less reason to log in. That list sure has been getting longer as of late.
People also need to consider the fact that with the new changes to the rep system, every character on your account becomes auto-sponsored after getting to T5, meaning you need half as many marks as you did before simply for having a main that's already at T5.
That'll be nice going forward for new characters, but entirely irrelevant for a lot of current players. I have 12 characters, and every single one has sponsorship for all reps, except for one, for gamma. Which I'm two days away from.
Yes, I'm still going to pay the 100 marks for sponsorship, as I still get the title.
For years we have reported bugs, for months I have reported a graphic problems with the "timeline stabilizer" and nothing changed. More, Borticus told us to write bug reports, bug reports that get systematically ignored. Why guys? Why??
I can't believe Timeline Stablilizer is still broken after all this time.
They removed bonus marks from RA , you get a flat 35 marks , the net loss of marks is huge , 7 days of 65 per run vs. 2 days of 35 per run.
Well, that assures me that I will never touch RAs again. No daily bonus = not interested.
I don't play that much anymore, so when I do play, I very much rely on those daily bonus marks to keep up with the people that do play every day. I guess that means more time for other games then.
i disagree with Omega marks. they are going to be a pain in the rear grinding defera for a lousy 5 marks per mission that take 10 minutes to do each
You know those qualify for the daily right? so the first one gets the daily bonus...
You know these are ground missions right ? Very few enjoy ground missions , most only tolerate them because they can't be skipped.
I can buy it being... less popular than space, but something the majority of STO players actively avoid? nope. I personally collect melee weapons and have pretty much one of every melee weapon in the game. Which might be part of why I find Defera to be a cake walk. REMODULATE THIS! *punches Borg so hard it's head falls off* OHH! I made a video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKL_e9dDQU&list=PLY5hPGi2f0fteHE9KxBSLB2JRB011bpQV&index=18&t=0s
Flaming/trolling removed. (Really? That old meme? Q will be displeased.) -- StarSword-C
Post edited by starswordc on
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
i disagree with Omega marks. they are going to be a pain in the rear grinding defera for a lousy 5 marks per mission that take 10 minutes to do each
You know those qualify for the daily right? so the first one gets the daily bonus...
You know these are ground missions right ? Very few enjoy ground missions , most only tolerate them because they can't be skipped.
I can buy it being... less popular than space, but something the majority of STO players actively avoid? nope. I personally collect melee weapons and have pretty much one of every melee weapon in the game. Which might be part of why I find Defera to be a cake walk. REMODULATE THIS! *punches Borg so hard it's head falls off* OHH! I made a video!
I think what would be useful over personal experience comparisons (I prefer space queues to ground queues, disclosure ) would be looking at population of Voth BZ vs Undine BZ and Defera vs Badlands at various times, and how many instances are running.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
- you are taking away popular content to fix the lack of people participating in others STF
People have been citing the supreme easiness of the red alerts as their best defining characteristics. That's not a vote in favor of the innate gameplay value of these TFO's (the RA's were fairly dead up until choice of marks and queuing were added to help support them, with extreme consequences.) It's a comment on the min-max grinding potential of these queues for marks that would otherwise take a minor amount of effort through their host TFO's (as if this was an MMORPG and players had to work towards system progress and specific rewards...)
They are a useful shortcut which further undercuts prime content in STO (other queues) simply because of their ease, not a vital feature which STO couldn't possibly do without. There was an STO before queued alerts, and there is one now through the console versions of the game. Cryptic has data on population dynamics without RA's and systems inbound to help alleviate problems with getting a specific mark. No need to maintain the ad hoc stop gap at the expense of both that effort and the rest of the PVE system.
If folks need a fallback, there'll be the defense of starbase one and random queue rewards for a choice of marks and sector patrols for short-form space combat (if indeed folks have a real gameplay preference, and aren't just trying to preserve a mark shortcut for their personal convenience [nevermind what it's been costing the PVE system].)
One of the chat channels I have in-game was created for the sole purpose of begging other people to help you with the Red Alerts back when they were souped-up DSEs with practically no rewards. That says a lot about how popular they were back then. They're popular now because they're the easiest TFOs in the game, no other reason.
i disagree with Omega marks. they are going to be a pain in the rear grinding defera for a lousy 5 marks per mission that take 10 minutes to do each
You know those qualify for the daily right? so the first one gets the daily bonus...
You know these are ground missions right ? Very few enjoy ground missions , most only tolerate them because they can't be skipped.
I can buy it being... less popular than space, but something the majority of STO players actively avoid? nope. I personally collect melee weapons and have pretty much one of every melee weapon in the game. Which might be part of why I find Defera to be a cake walk. REMODULATE THIS! *punches Borg so hard it's head falls off* OHH! I made a video!
I think what would be useful over personal experience comparisons (I prefer space queues to ground queues, disclosure ) would be looking at population of Voth BZ vs Undine BZ and Defera vs Badlands at various times, and how many instances are running.
Voth are annoying -#-%-&-- to fight on ground and the BZ is still popular. Heck, last time I went to Defera I actually had to wait for mission objectives to respawn because there were other people doing the missions at the same time as me!
Another step closer to the STO NGE equivalent. Taking stuff away a HELL of a lot of people use and "giving" stuff a lot people don't want for the most part.
Also, at moment RA's doesn't drop daily bonus - If this is also going to be a thing across the board then your weekend event will most likely fail. XP seems to have dropped drastically as well, the level my ship was just at in a Borg RA would have mastered before 4/4 done - barely changed mastery level now.
This properly sucks, I enjoy an evening of gathering Daily Rep Boxes and leveling up a ship I've done already on almost a dozen other toons!
As of this evening, the game's appeal, for the first time ever so far as I'm concerned, has taken a drastic plunge from my point of view.
I saw the same kind of player reaction to changes in Trion's Defiance and their concurrency dropped considerably as people lost interest. Eventually they flailed around looking for something to revitalize the game and made the mistake of putting in a lobby-style side game which just pushed it further into the toilet. For the last few years it has been a more or less an event-only game where people show up for the more popular events but the map is practically deserted when none are running. Which was a shame really, it is the only fully open-map emergent-behavior based game that does not depend heavily on PvP to achieve it, but that is off the subject. The point is that FtP games have odd thresholds and things that may seem minor to devs but can have a disastrous effect on player concurrency, and that can have far reaching effects on ques and things.
Personally, since I do not have much of a budget for gaming I was depending hevily on reputation gear for endgame, but with the RAs gone and most of the other ques buggy or ill-designed to near unplayability that will slow leveling reps to a crawl making it an impractical endgame strategy, especially since I tend toward polaron builds. For instance, the battlezone for Lukai marks needs SERIOUS reworking (and bug squashing), along with breaking down the mark rewards into more incremental packages that are in range of players at less busy hours.
Making the Lukari-mark battlezone (and the others to a lesser extent) less nauseatingly game-show hokey would help massively as well, the mark of a well designed scenario is that it hides the fact that you are just doing the same tired old handful of minigames that have been out since early WoW with situations that are reasonable for the game background and therefore do not break immersion. And the Tzenkethi battlezone fails the immersion criteria totally.
So I guess run the RA's back to back and make an extra 5 marks over what we previously had. Twice the work, literally a handful of extra marks. How is this an improvement?
"They nerfed the easy queues"
*Shrug*
These are developers and they do have an interest in encouraging folks to play more than one part of their game. If RA's were life for you or anyone else posting, that is providing an anecdotal data point for how utterly broken the old system was (such that a single, super easy queue could provide allow players to complete all but the latest reputation and at the expense of the entire PVE queue system.)
This is something we have been providing Cryptic feedback on for some time. IE. the RA setup distorted the queue system and contributed to the population imbalance. They may have kept it going on PC (in spite of structuring alerts as weekend events on consoles) simply because an alternative for the blocked rep problem wasn't available. One's now coming next week. Let's get back to queueing for more than just gaming the rewards system.
Taking away the daily bonuses in the Red Alerts is not going to make me play other queues I already know I dislike.
Precedent suggests that nerfing the most lucrative activity does indeed cause people to shift over to the next most lucrative activity.
See. reducing dil payouts for borg STF's (in line with the rewards structure rebalance some years ago that brought dilithium to the whole PVE system) and how that shifted forcus away from the entire line of Borg STF's and concentrated it on ISA and CCA. You might try to maintain the argument that this time, it'll be different. But in that, aren't you just trying to force change by threatening to quit STO in part or in total? That's not a workable position (either you have to go through with it for the sake of drama [and at the expense of everything else you like about the game, ultimately shooting yourself in the foot in protest of a structural rebalance] or back down and try to pretend it never happened once the population settles back into equilibrium [which is par for the internet course. See. viewing the current state of the game as normal. Folks are very adaptable.])
This was some of my favourite content as it was quick, casual, no strings pew pew. No commitments, just fun. Rewards to me were secondary on these. I played these more just for the reasons above.
Then let's ask a question here: do you play patrols anywhere near as frequently as you do alerts? If the answer is no (in spite of them offering comparable popcorn gameplay; though with far greater variety, a tailored experience (no pugs), and developed encounter design), then rewards are not secondary.
That's not to doubt you liking them, just to shine a light on what seems to me an inconsistent argument (ie. that RA's were core to the game, yet comparable alternatives [lacking that all important omni-mark box and XP boost] are pretty much maligned in forum discourse. See. patrol whining with DR [driven by some systematic factors too, but if these were next to nirvana, then the concerns should have been secondary or dismissed entirely as "well, Cryptic's just tyring to get folks to play the best darn gameplay in STO" (which I never recall seeing in any thread).])
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
So I guess run the RA's back to back and make an extra 5 marks over what we previously had. Twice the work, literally a handful of extra marks. How is this an improvement?
"They nerfed the easy queues"
*Shrug*
These are developers and they do have an interest in encouraging folks to play more than one part of their game. If RA's were life for you or anyone else posting, that is providing an anecdotal data point for how utterly broken the old system was (such that a single, super easy queue could provide allow players to complete all but the latest reputation and at the expense of the entire PVE queue system.)
This is something we have been providing Cryptic feedback on for some time. IE. the RA setup distorted the queue system and contributed to the population imbalance. They may have kept it going on PC (in spite of structuring alerts as weekend events on consoles) simply because an alternative for the blocked rep problem wasn't available. One's now coming next week. Let's get back to queueing for more than just gaming the rewards system.
Taking away the daily bonuses in the Red Alerts is not going to make me play other queues I already know I dislike.
Precedent suggests that nerfing the most lucrative activity does indeed cause people to shift over to the next most lucrative activity.
See. reducing dil payouts for borg STF's (in line with the rewards structure rebalance some years ago that brought dilithium to the whole PVE system) and how that shifted forcus away from the entire line of Borg STF's and concentrated it on ISA and CCA. You might try to maintain the argument that this time, it'll be different. But in that, aren't you just trying to force change by threatening to quit STO in part or in total? That's not a workable position (either you have to go through with it for the sake of drama [and at the expense of everything else you like about the game, ultimately shooting yourself in the foot in protest of a structural rebalance] or back down and try to pretend it never happened [which is par for the internet course].)
What is supposedly coming next week that will be "an alternative for the blocked rep problem"? The only thing I have heard coming out next week is AoD and nothing in that seems to have anything to do with acquiring rep, just a cap increase and some new reputation gear that will be put further out of reach with the less (often very much so) reliable mark gathering sources. Rep will still be as blocked after AoD starts as it is now.
If Cryptic can get us players to pay, or work, more for less then Cryptic considers that a win.
That's one of the reasons this was done otherwise Cryptic could've just added this as an option, but instead Cryptic took away an option lots of players utilized.
Only thing that would be possibly better is for Cryptic to add daily bonus reputation & fleet marks to subscriber only players or for Cryptic to have a bonus reputation & fleet mark token sale now just to rub it in our faces more.
Bad idea with the half arsed job you are doing with the random TFO's i.e not allowing us to change specs making this DOA or dead within 2 weeks as bad PUG experience turn people off the idea. You have made a decision that has hurt the game.
If you want to funnel players into other content than make that other content more enticing.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
What is supposedly coming next week that will be "an alternative for the blocked rep problem"? The only thing I have heard coming out next week is AoD and nothing in that seems to have anything to do with acquiring rep, just a cap increase and some new reputation gear that will be put further out of reach with the less (often very much so) reliable mark gathering sources. Rep will still be as blocked after AoD starts as it is now.
Seriously? Random queuing as the primary, defense of starbase one (choice of marks) as secondary. It's debatable whether folks will (in a full scale test of the random queue system) be able to bank on random folks populating any eligible queue they choose to queue for, though the design suggests that it'll be an additional factor helping to make more queues directly playable. Furthermore, this awards a choice of mark box. The direct implication there is that players won't need to obsessively grind through the most reductive queues in the game simply to meet a minimum level of bankable progress. In the first case, finding matches for all but one rep should be much easier (also in part thanks to the removal of the population-consuming alerts.) If players fail to materialize readily in your games, then random queueing yourself is the next step on to earning requisite marks (and the fallback to competitive.)
If that all fails, then you have the defense of starbase one (also supplementing competitive marks.) Altogether folks should be very safe for rep progress next week, this is a pretty darn simple primary consequence of incoming content.
That's one of the reasons this was done otherwise Cryptic could've just added this as an option, but instead Cryptic took away an option lots of players utilized.
Lots of players use exploits when extant too, doesn't mean that their effect on population dynamics and player progression isn't ultimately deleterious. Alerts sapped populations and trivialized progression through at least a couple systems. They may have been short blasts through enemy groups too, but other examples of that aren't at issue here. The alerts were hammering pc STO.
In addition to suggesting patrols, CCA, and fleet alerts as fine popcorn alternatives to RA's; I'll also note that players can build elaborated combat scenarios very much like the RA's in the Foundry (just without the dreadnoughts, though you can build comparable challenge by teaming up battleships. You can also write in a story, even for that one map, and do a lot more to build in gameplay structure to the encounter (without sapping the pace). Ie. make something better. You can't add in the ideal rewards you want, but if RA's weren't just ways of bypassing customary progression through the reputation system or ship mastery that shouldn't be a problem. Folks have done stuff this in the past, supplementing for example the Romulan starter experience with more patrol/alert-style content to help build setting and share small bits of fun.)
Basically, even for folks who are crushingly disappointed this isn't the end of the world. It just takes a modicum of initiative to find something else in STO to supplement or replace whatever interest permanent RA's held (without calling for an utterly broken PVE situation to be maintained, in spite of the associated costs.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
So I guess run the RA's back to back and make an extra 5 marks over what we previously had. Twice the work, literally a handful of extra marks. How is this an improvement?
"They nerfed the easy queues"
*Shrug*
These are developers and they do have an interest in encouraging folks to play more than one part of their game. If RA's were life for you or anyone else posting, that is providing an anecdotal data point for how utterly broken the old system was (such that a single, super easy queue could provide allow players to complete all but the latest reputation and at the expense of the entire PVE queue system.)
This is something we have been providing Cryptic feedback on for some time. IE. the RA setup distorted the queue system and contributed to the population imbalance. They may have kept it going on PC (in spite of structuring alerts as weekend events on consoles) simply because an alternative for the blocked rep problem wasn't available. One's now coming next week. Let's get back to queueing for more than just gaming the rewards system.
Taking away the daily bonuses in the Red Alerts is not going to make me play other queues I already know I dislike.
Precedent suggests that nerfing the most lucrative activity does indeed cause people to shift over to the next most lucrative activity.
See. reducing dil payouts for borg STF's (in line with the rewards structure rebalance some years ago that brought dilithium to the whole PVE system) and how that shifted forcus away from the entire line of Borg STF's and concentrated it on ISA and CCA. You might try to maintain the argument that this time, it'll be different. But in that, aren't you just trying to force change by threatening to quit STO in part or in total? That's not a workable position (either you have to go through with it for the sake of drama [and at the expense of everything else you like about the game, ultimately shooting yourself in the foot in protest of a structural rebalance] or back down and try to pretend it never happened once the population settles back into equilibrium [which is par for the internet course. See. viewing the current state of the game as normal. Folks are very adaptable.])
This was some of my favourite content as it was quick, casual, no strings pew pew. No commitments, just fun. Rewards to me were secondary on these. I played these more just for the reasons above.
Then let's ask a question here: do you play patrols anywhere near as frequently as you do alerts? If the answer is no (in spite of them offering comparable popcorn gameplay; though with far greater variety, a tailored experience (no pugs), and developed encounter design), then rewards are not secondary.
That's not to doubt you liking them, just to shine a light on what seems to me an inconsistent argument (ie. that RA's were core to the game, yet comparable alternatives [lacking that all important omni-mark box and XP boost] are pretty much maligned in forum discourse. See. patrol whining with DR [driven by some systematic factors too, but if these were next to nirvana, then the concerns should have been secondary or dismissed entirely as "well, Cryptic's just tyring to get folks to play the best darn gameplay in STO" (which I never recall seeing in any thread).])
You do not solve a population imbalance by taking away the fun content players enjoy and making them play the bad content they hate. That’s how you kill games and that’s what the devs have done. RA did not distort the queues in a bad way and this change isn’t likely to make people play other queues more. For people like me this change is going to cause a lot less queues to be played both less RA’s and less other queues.
You are acting like equilibrium is a good thing but it’s not. It’s unnatural and unhealthy to have a equilibrium in player population over all queues.
As for patrols no I do not play them over RA's because they are comparable, mostly not fun, and the extra variety is a negative not a positive in the case of patrols.
Lastly the alternatives you talk about are not comparable or suitable replacements. The main impact of this change alongside the random STF changes will be to cause a bunch of people to stop playing daily queues which will over time cause those people to stop playing altogether as there will no longer be a reason to log in daily.
You are acting like equilibrium is a good thing but it’s not. It’s unnatural and unhealthy to have a equilibrium in player population over all queues.
lol, so how about you take that logic to threads complaining about dead queues and try to convince people that red alerts being the focal point of STO is both natural and healthy. You'll find the zeitgeist there less accommodating.
PS. for as many times as the devs have killed STO for you, it seems to have a lot of longevity.
PPS. note how I didn't say "spread the population across all queues" or indeed mention spreading at all in referring to that equilibrium (physically spreading the population isn't strictly necessary given the mechanics of the random queue system, though it is a secondary consequence of both it and the removal of RA's. It'll likely never reach full evenness, even to an approximate degree, though regardless note that evenness is not synonymous with an equilibrium in a system with more than one input or any kind of constraint [ex. Hardy Weinberg: when P=/=0.5, P^2=/=Q^2])
See fallacy of the extreme in rhetorical contradiction (something to avoid in your writing.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Comments
I can't say I am surprised.
So I guess the intent really was to kill red alerts once and for all.. sounds like they will be successful.
Same. Toss in that if I had only a brief five minutes ... It was something I knew I could do quickly.
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
No daily bonus? Dumb. And no Na'kuhl alert or Gamma marks? Sloppy indeed.
So I guess run the RA's back to back and make an extra 5 marks over what we previously had. Twice the work, literally a handful of extra marks. How is this an improvement?
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
A test server is supposed to be used to properly test patches before patching anything....
And removing the regular alerts is not how you create incentive to run the longer queues. For instance: now there is no reliable way to make Lukari or Competitive marks. (Not everyone is interested in PvP... of any type.)
I firmly believe this is a poor decision, but seeing as I'm just some person who plays a game, the odds of you listening to me (or the any other number of people who aren't pleased with the decision) are very slim.
For the ones wanting casual quick pew and the time poor, these were great for your star trek shooty-shooty fix.
Plus when will you guys learn that taking content away from the game is a BAD IDEA?!
If your afraid that the "take-your-pick" mark boxes are TRIBBLE with things then why not limit Borg RA to Borg marks and Tholian RA to Tholian marks? Rather than make more content time slot specific?
Well done Cryptic. I needed to free up time to actually play other games. Seeing as I can no longer have access to quick easy going action on here( as you seem intent on making EVERYTHING a bloody chore ) , might as well play other games where my time is actually valued.
This was some of my favourite content as it was quick, casual, no strings pew pew. No commitments, just fun. Rewards to me were secondary on these. I played these more just for the reasons above.
One less reason to log in. That list sure has been getting longer as of late.
Yes, I'm still going to pay the 100 marks for sponsorship, as I still get the title.
I can't believe Timeline Stablilizer is still broken after all this time.
Well, that assures me that I will never touch RAs again. No daily bonus = not interested.
I don't play that much anymore, so when I do play, I very much rely on those daily bonus marks to keep up with the people that do play every day. I guess that means more time for other games then.
My character Tsin'xing
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I think what would be useful over personal experience comparisons (I prefer space queues to ground queues, disclosure ) would be looking at population of Voth BZ vs Undine BZ and Defera vs Badlands at various times, and how many instances are running.
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My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
Also, at moment RA's doesn't drop daily bonus - If this is also going to be a thing across the board then your weekend event will most likely fail. XP seems to have dropped drastically as well, the level my ship was just at in a Borg RA would have mastered before 4/4 done - barely changed mastery level now.
This properly sucks, I enjoy an evening of gathering Daily Rep Boxes and leveling up a ship I've done already on almost a dozen other toons!
As of this evening, the game's appeal, for the first time ever so far as I'm concerned, has taken a drastic plunge from my point of view.
Personally, since I do not have much of a budget for gaming I was depending hevily on reputation gear for endgame, but with the RAs gone and most of the other ques buggy or ill-designed to near unplayability that will slow leveling reps to a crawl making it an impractical endgame strategy, especially since I tend toward polaron builds. For instance, the battlezone for Lukai marks needs SERIOUS reworking (and bug squashing), along with breaking down the mark rewards into more incremental packages that are in range of players at less busy hours.
Making the Lukari-mark battlezone (and the others to a lesser extent) less nauseatingly game-show hokey would help massively as well, the mark of a well designed scenario is that it hides the fact that you are just doing the same tired old handful of minigames that have been out since early WoW with situations that are reasonable for the game background and therefore do not break immersion. And the Tzenkethi battlezone fails the immersion criteria totally.
"They nerfed the easy queues"
*Shrug*
These are developers and they do have an interest in encouraging folks to play more than one part of their game. If RA's were life for you or anyone else posting, that is providing an anecdotal data point for how utterly broken the old system was (such that a single, super easy queue could provide allow players to complete all but the latest reputation and at the expense of the entire PVE queue system.)
This is something we have been providing Cryptic feedback on for some time. IE. the RA setup distorted the queue system and contributed to the population imbalance. They may have kept it going on PC (in spite of structuring alerts as weekend events on consoles) simply because an alternative for the blocked rep problem wasn't available. One's now coming next week. Let's get back to queueing for more than just gaming the rewards system.
Precedent suggests that nerfing the most lucrative activity does indeed cause people to shift over to the next most lucrative activity.
See. reducing dil payouts for borg STF's (in line with the rewards structure rebalance some years ago that brought dilithium to the whole PVE system) and how that shifted forcus away from the entire line of Borg STF's and concentrated it on ISA and CCA. You might try to maintain the argument that this time, it'll be different. But in that, aren't you just trying to force change by threatening to quit STO in part or in total? That's not a workable position (either you have to go through with it for the sake of drama [and at the expense of everything else you like about the game, ultimately shooting yourself in the foot in protest of a structural rebalance] or back down and try to pretend it never happened once the population settles back into equilibrium [which is par for the internet course. See. viewing the current state of the game as normal. Folks are very adaptable.])
Then let's ask a question here: do you play patrols anywhere near as frequently as you do alerts? If the answer is no (in spite of them offering comparable popcorn gameplay; though with far greater variety, a tailored experience (no pugs), and developed encounter design), then rewards are not secondary.
That's not to doubt you liking them, just to shine a light on what seems to me an inconsistent argument (ie. that RA's were core to the game, yet comparable alternatives [lacking that all important omni-mark box and XP boost] are pretty much maligned in forum discourse. See. patrol whining with DR [driven by some systematic factors too, but if these were next to nirvana, then the concerns should have been secondary or dismissed entirely as "well, Cryptic's just tyring to get folks to play the best darn gameplay in STO" (which I never recall seeing in any thread).])
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
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What is supposedly coming next week that will be "an alternative for the blocked rep problem"? The only thing I have heard coming out next week is AoD and nothing in that seems to have anything to do with acquiring rep, just a cap increase and some new reputation gear that will be put further out of reach with the less (often very much so) reliable mark gathering sources. Rep will still be as blocked after AoD starts as it is now.
That's one of the reasons this was done otherwise Cryptic could've just added this as an option, but instead Cryptic took away an option lots of players utilized.
Only thing that would be possibly better is for Cryptic to add daily bonus reputation & fleet marks to subscriber only players or for Cryptic to have a bonus reputation & fleet mark token sale now just to rub it in our faces more.
If you want to funnel players into other content than make that other content more enticing.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Seriously? Random queuing as the primary, defense of starbase one (choice of marks) as secondary. It's debatable whether folks will (in a full scale test of the random queue system) be able to bank on random folks populating any eligible queue they choose to queue for, though the design suggests that it'll be an additional factor helping to make more queues directly playable. Furthermore, this awards a choice of mark box. The direct implication there is that players won't need to obsessively grind through the most reductive queues in the game simply to meet a minimum level of bankable progress. In the first case, finding matches for all but one rep should be much easier (also in part thanks to the removal of the population-consuming alerts.) If players fail to materialize readily in your games, then random queueing yourself is the next step on to earning requisite marks (and the fallback to competitive.)
If that all fails, then you have the defense of starbase one (also supplementing competitive marks.) Altogether folks should be very safe for rep progress next week, this is a pretty darn simple primary consequence of incoming content.
Lots of players use exploits when extant too, doesn't mean that their effect on population dynamics and player progression isn't ultimately deleterious. Alerts sapped populations and trivialized progression through at least a couple systems. They may have been short blasts through enemy groups too, but other examples of that aren't at issue here. The alerts were hammering pc STO.
In addition to suggesting patrols, CCA, and fleet alerts as fine popcorn alternatives to RA's; I'll also note that players can build elaborated combat scenarios very much like the RA's in the Foundry (just without the dreadnoughts, though you can build comparable challenge by teaming up battleships. You can also write in a story, even for that one map, and do a lot more to build in gameplay structure to the encounter (without sapping the pace). Ie. make something better. You can't add in the ideal rewards you want, but if RA's weren't just ways of bypassing customary progression through the reputation system or ship mastery that shouldn't be a problem. Folks have done stuff this in the past, supplementing for example the Romulan starter experience with more patrol/alert-style content to help build setting and share small bits of fun.)
Basically, even for folks who are crushingly disappointed this isn't the end of the world. It just takes a modicum of initiative to find something else in STO to supplement or replace whatever interest permanent RA's held (without calling for an utterly broken PVE situation to be maintained, in spite of the associated costs.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
You are acting like equilibrium is a good thing but it’s not. It’s unnatural and unhealthy to have a equilibrium in player population over all queues.
As for patrols no I do not play them over RA's because they are comparable, mostly not fun, and the extra variety is a negative not a positive in the case of patrols.
Lastly the alternatives you talk about are not comparable or suitable replacements. The main impact of this change alongside the random STF changes will be to cause a bunch of people to stop playing daily queues which will over time cause those people to stop playing altogether as there will no longer be a reason to log in daily.
lol, so how about you take that logic to threads complaining about dead queues and try to convince people that red alerts being the focal point of STO is both natural and healthy. You'll find the zeitgeist there less accommodating.
PS. for as many times as the devs have killed STO for you, it seems to have a lot of longevity.
PPS. note how I didn't say "spread the population across all queues" or indeed mention spreading at all in referring to that equilibrium (physically spreading the population isn't strictly necessary given the mechanics of the random queue system, though it is a secondary consequence of both it and the removal of RA's. It'll likely never reach full evenness, even to an approximate degree, though regardless note that evenness is not synonymous with an equilibrium in a system with more than one input or any kind of constraint [ex. Hardy Weinberg: when P=/=0.5, P^2=/=Q^2])
See fallacy of the extreme in rhetorical contradiction (something to avoid in your writing.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Instead of making them better, you made them worst. I'm not sure if this deserves a golf clap or the Picard double facepalm.