Yeah, no question that this sucks- no gamma marks and the daily bonuses are no more. Most of the gamma marks I have are account rewards earned by my vanguard. Looks like I'll be going elsewhere.
Yeah, no question that this sucks- no gamma marks and the daily bonuses are no more. Most of the gamma marks I have are account rewards earned by my vanguard. Looks like I'll be going elsewhere.
See. GQ battlezone and swarm TFO.
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!
You can do a good job of pointing out things that others miss.
You can do a good job applying Vulcan logic in debating a topic at length.
But sometimes during occasions like this, all people need is a simple acknowledgement that their concerns are valid to them.
Need for what though? To feel better about themselves? Also... "valid to them"? If you refuse to do ground because you never learned to play it... that's you making life hard for yourself.
You can do a good job of pointing out things that others miss.
You can do a good job applying Vulcan logic in debating a topic at length.
But sometimes during occasions like this, all people need is a simple acknowledgement that their concerns are valid to them.
Need for what though? To feel better about themselves? Also... "valid to them"? If you refuse to do ground because you never learned to play it... that's you making life hard for yourself.
I liked your video "assimilate this"! Not many use blades these days although it can be fun when a group decides to go for blades only doing defera hards or a borg ground.
Did you really punch a borg's head right off? I had a good crit with a very nice Nausicaan Tegolar sword a long time ago that severed a bad guy's leg from it's body. Was rather shocked tbh Never seen that animation since.
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.)
I have not had any good experiences with random ques in other games, I might try a few here just to see if they are just as bad but I tend to avoid the things like the plague.
As for the other stuff: patrols, amateur scenarios, and most of the junk is all irrelevant since they do not award marks of any kind.
As for the other stuff: patrols, amateur scenarios, and most of the junk is all irrelevant since they do not award marks of any kind.
Not really true. Romulan patrols gives romulan marks and the delta patrols gives delta marks.
I forgot about the Romulan patrols (I never knew about the Delta ones) which might be a way (though inefficient) to get Romulan and Delta marks, but as a general rule patrols do not award marks.
Bad Idea in my opinion.
I enjoy running the Tholian and Borg red alerts and play them everyday.
If you take them away and only make them available on the weekends - I'm just likely to play less.
When I get a chance to log on, I enjoy playing the content I like to play, as a matter of fact, that's what drew me to this game in the first place,("Play the way you like" - remember that?) taking that option away from me can't be a good thing - please find another way.
Well they once again hit the nuke button when they were suppose to answer the phone (no offense). I don't know what the exact goal was by making this change. Was it to make the other ques the only option during the weekdays? Was it to slow down users from gaining the reps. marks they needed (they already has a 30m cooldown or afk penalty if they didn't participate). Was to make the red alert more special (I hope not as the rewards are not really that better, they should have including dil/r&d mats/1 elite mark or something that actually makes it worthwhile only getting these on such randomness of events? Is this meant to replace endeavours or have another set of events you can put on the weekend event rotation (much like what goes on in NWN Online).
For whatever reason, you picked the wrong idea again. Sure people mostly used the red alerts to get whatever they needed out of them and they could do it on any day they wanted. You had a cooldown for that specific event. Now someone can fight for each mark over what (however many reps there currently are and any added with the new expansion in less than a week and so in that time gained enough possible for the next week ahead and do much less during the weekday.
When you see the imbalance of ra's being done versus que's perhaps players are telling you something, perhaps bugs, doesn't work, takes too long, not worth the effort, the competitive ques as one said on the first page of this post almost always leads to unbalanced team (of course pvp is like that as well). I didn't play the other ques as there was no one playing them. Once again I think an incentive to play them would have helped, but not at the expense of the RA's. It simply is near impossible to get anyone to que up for any of the other stf's. So find a way to make them look more valuable and with that you only changed the rewards/incentive and not have to wreak havoc over the moving of something people like to a small event instead.
]So now the Borg only attacks on Thursday 10am and gives up on Monday at 7am. Talk about making no sense. If I was the Borg invading I would invade at various times on a different day or hour or whatever to make sure we weren't letting the alliance know this is when we will assault.
I know I will be jumped on by fanboys who always defend everything being done. Good for that group, but what the need of the many over the needs of the few or the one. Why not when an account first logs in, they have to vote on a change and given X number of days or hours before they will be a Did Not Vote selection. See if the base truly likes it or because there is no other star trek game online that gives us what STO does we are shackled (sp?) to the choices of a few. If CBS the current ip holder, they know to read the ratings and ask people about shows, even if they are going to go where they want to go with a property.
Well they once again hit the nuke button when they were suppose to answer the phone (no offense). I don't know what the exact goal was by making this change. Was it to make the other ques the only option during the weekdays? Was it to slow down users from gaining the reps. marks they needed (they already has a 30m cooldown or afk penalty if they didn't participate). Was to make the red alert more special (I hope not as the rewards are not really that better, they should have including dil/r&d mats/1 elite mark or something that actually makes it worthwhile only getting these on such randomness of events? Is this meant to replace endeavours or have another set of events you can put on the weekend event rotation (much like what goes on in NWN Online).
For whatever reason, you picked the wrong idea again. Sure people mostly used the red alerts to get whatever they needed out of them and they could do it on any day they wanted. You had a cooldown for that specific event. Now someone can fight for each mark over what (however many reps there currently are and any added with the new expansion in less than a week and so in that time gained enough possible for the next week ahead and do much less during the weekday.
When you see the imbalance of ra's being done versus que's perhaps players are telling you something, perhaps bugs, doesn't work, takes too long, not worth the effort, the competitive ques as one said on the first page of this post almost always leads to unbalanced team (of course pvp is like that as well). I didn't play the other ques as there was no one playing them. Once again I think an incentive to play them would have helped, but not at the expense of the RA's. It simply is near impossible to get anyone to que up for any of the other stf's. So find a way to make them look more valuable and with that you only changed the rewards/incentive and not have to wreak havoc over the moving of something people like to a small event instead.
]So now the Borg only attacks on Thursday 10am and gives up on Monday at 7am. Talk about making no sense. If I was the Borg invading I would invade at various times on a different day or hour or whatever to make sure we weren't letting the alliance know this is when we will assault.
I know I will be jumped on by fanboys who always defend everything being done. Good for that group, but what the need of the many over the needs of the few or the one. Why not when an account first logs in, they have to vote on a change and given X number of days or hours before they will be a Did Not Vote selection. See if the base truly likes it or because there is no other star trek game online that gives us what STO does we are shackled (sp?) to the choices of a few. If CBS the current ip holder, they know to read the ratings and ask people about shows, even if they are going to go where they want to go with a property.
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.)
It’s got longevity for me due to being Star Trek and my large time/money investment but if you could see my metrics and play hours my running queues have plummeted and these changes are going to kill most of the last of that off. I used to run 1 queue almost every day.
My entire friends list has left the game and all 5 fleets my main and alts are in have had everyone quit due to poor changes by the devs. Just as bad the 2 once full Armadas are now all but dead as well. In all my years in STO I have not seen a drop off like this and I have never been so isolated. This is very concerning for me and at least 2 of those fleets where at the fleet population cap but are now dead.
My concern is the devs recently have been acting very similar as the devs of Star Wars Galaxy right down to the people like yourself who appear to blindly support them no matter how bad the idea. I do not want Star Trek Online to keep going down that path and ending up in the same way with the servers shut down. I am speaking out as I want Star Trek to keep being successful and I am seeing all the same warning signs as what happened over there.
I agree some dead queues need fixing but this isn’t the way to fix them. Between random STF and RA these changes are going to kill off a lot of queues which used to be played which is going to throw the queue population balance even further out of equilibrium. The changes are not only look like they are going to kill RA's but its looks like a large amount of queues which only had moderate plays are going to have a very large drop off as well.
I know I will be jumped on by fanboys who always defend everything being done.
Doubtful, there are only about 2 or 3 of those left around here and they're largely ignored. The majority of the player base is finding it harder and harder to defend Cryptic these days, even if you really want to.. it's just really hard to defend them and sound rational at the same time.
Red Alerts trivialized gaining 'any' reputation mark. Nothing else lets you gain two dailies worth of rep marks with a fresh level fifty toon that fast. Which was amplified by the short waiting times compared to other popular queues let alone the unpopular ones. Do I wait two minutes for that ISA or hop into that RA after ten seconds?
Of course they had to go.
On the other hand there are those really annoying queues you would not want to be caught dead in their backyard. Bug Hunt for example. Nothing more fun than having a 50/50 chance that Lt vanDerpface faceplants itself into unavoidable suicide at the end failing your otherwise flawless elite run that way. And that is by far not the only example of horrible design choices.
Of course players are angry if the only advancement option is perceived as horrible.
Back to my stupid idea.
How about finding some middle ground, something that requires a little more effort but still lets players avoid the queues they really hate
Enter commendation reports.
For those who do not know immediately what those are. Above 110k xp in any duty officer category you can trade in 10k xp for a small amount of fleet marks on your fleets starbase.
Why not make those award a choice box instead?
You cannot really hit those immediately when your reputations unlock at level fifty because it requires a bit of commitment to get to 100k doff xp in any of the categories.
Sounds like something to me that could be a viable alternative. *shrugs*
Doffing isn't (or shouldn't be) the solution to a lack of gameplay options.
And by gameplay I mean actual activity within the game world.
There's not an easy fix to kael becoming a target, thats par for the course for community managers in the face of bad decisions.
Maybe he needs to step aside and let someone else take the flak instead of being a barrier, I'd suggest the numpty that thought culling gameplay based content would be popular.
You can do a good job of pointing out things that others miss.
You can do a good job applying Vulcan logic in debating a topic at length.
But sometimes during occasions like this, all people need is a simple acknowledgement that their concerns are valid to them.
Need for what though? To feel better about themselves? Also... "valid to them"? If you refuse to do ground because you never learned to play it... that's you making life hard for yourself.
I liked your video "assimilate this"! Not many use blades these days although it can be fun when a group decides to go for blades only doing defera hards or a borg ground.
Did you really punch a borg's head right off? I had a good crit with a very nice Nausicaan Tegolar sword a long time ago that severed a bad guy's leg from it's body. Was rather shocked tbh Never seen that animation since.
I know I will be jumped on by fanboys who always defend everything being done.
Doubtful, there are only about 2 or 3 of those left around here and they're largely ignored. The majority of the player base is finding it harder and harder to defend Cryptic these days, even if you really want to.. it's just really hard to defend them and sound rational at the same time.
The rest of your post was excellent.
Lol! he Red Alert change was inevitable. ISA was the quickest and easiest actual TFO and this gave similar rewards for less effort....
Good they finally did this, they were easy mode and needed to be gone or something like this done.
There is no CD on them now, so getting marks is actually easier on the w/e, too easy, they need a CD.
Id prefer them like before once,a red Alert appear in one sector for awhile.
The Red Alerts, esp the BORG also need a rebalance, it takes me 2mins to clear it, solo. Man i could get thousands of marks, before this change i could do a ship Mastery in few hours, now gonna be even quick, why dont they scrap mastery then?
Current ques also need rebalancing, better rewards and linked into the Endevours, both daily and weeklies.
Better idea is the sector way as mentioned, also you should nt know who it is, it could be Borg or someone else, but then its just a Fleet Alert, so scrap that one.
Dont half TRIBBLE it, take the one more step and do it right for once after all these years.
What's funny is that kael even took to twitter to whine about all the negative reactions (the feedback on reddit is overwhelmingly against this idea.)
You think you're frustrated kael? Imagine being on this side.. watching your bad ideas destroy this game and being powerless to do anything about it.
Now THAT is frustrating.
As per usual, the only feedback of ANY description regarding this comes from social media. I am so sick of that.
Seconded. I am glad they're looking at the battlezone, but I know a lot of people filed bug reports last year on it and it didn't have effect. It feels the best metric or feedback is to not show up, sometimes.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
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I haven't been playing as much as I used to, but I seem to recall any particular 'weekend event' didn't necessarily happen every weekend, so you may only see a specific event once every couple of months?
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I haven't been playing as much as I used to, but I seem to recall any particular 'weekend event' didn't necessarily happen every weekend, so you may only see a specific event once every couple of months?
That's correct, weekend events occupy a rotation and depending on how long that rotation is, a particular event may only happen once every two months (judging from what we have right now.) That said, with these now a thing I would expect there to be fewer dormant weekends and Cryptic can opt to increase the frequency of a particularly popular item (so while the full rotation may cycle over a span of months, something like the RA's could pop once every 3 or 4 weeks if that's called for.)
If the RA's were 'easy mode' what you do consider CCA to be?!
Easy mode but with a much weaker impact on the reputation and ship mastery system. It's difficult to effectively level from CCA runs alone (even if you opt to finish off the tholians at the end of the round.) Plus Cryptic has looked into improving CCA mechanics through the revamp of the last crystalline event (some things, which proved themselves well, may eventually be ported back over to the normal queue.)
CCA may be popular, but that popularity only affects the PVE system through being a point of aggregation, which are inevitable (favorites will develop by any criteria.) The popularity of alerts neutered the design goal of reputations (encouraging players to play specific content for specific rewards) to nominally act as a stop-gap solution to PVE population distribution problems (blocking rep progress). Only, the effect was to make it even more difficult to find matches in other reps because player need was so neatly satisfied by a couple low-effort queues.
That's a TRIBBLE situation, ie. where one activity becomes the sole focus in an expansive video game. For an MMO especially, that heavily risks increasing the rate of burnout in the population. It does behoove the devs to act on that, because that will affect the game's bottom line and prospects for longevity.
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!
Well they once again hit the nuke button when they were suppose to answer the phone (no offense). I don't know what the exact goal was by making this change. Was it to make the other ques the only option during the weekdays? Was it to slow down users from gaining the reps. marks they needed (they already has a 30m cooldown or afk penalty if they didn't participate). Was to make the red alert more special (I hope not as the rewards are not really that better, they should have including dil/r&d mats/1 elite mark or something that actually makes it worthwhile only getting these on such randomness of events? Is this meant to replace endeavours or have another set of events you can put on the weekend event rotation (much like what goes on in NWN Online).
For whatever reason, you picked the wrong idea again. Sure people mostly used the red alerts to get whatever they needed out of them and they could do it on any day they wanted. You had a cooldown for that specific event. Now someone can fight for each mark over what (however many reps there currently are and any added with the new expansion in less than a week and so in that time gained enough possible for the next week ahead and do much less during the weekday.
When you see the imbalance of ra's being done versus que's perhaps players are telling you something, perhaps bugs, doesn't work, takes too long, not worth the effort, the competitive ques as one said on the first page of this post almost always leads to unbalanced team (of course pvp is like that as well). I didn't play the other ques as there was no one playing them. Once again I think an incentive to play them would have helped, but not at the expense of the RA's. It simply is near impossible to get anyone to que up for any of the other stf's. So find a way to make them look more valuable and with that you only changed the rewards/incentive and not have to wreak havoc over the moving of something people like to a small event instead.
]So now the Borg only attacks on Thursday 10am and gives up on Monday at 7am. Talk about making no sense. If I was the Borg invading I would invade at various times on a different day or hour or whatever to make sure we weren't letting the alliance know this is when we will assault.
I know I will be jumped on by fanboys who always defend everything being done. Good for that group, but what the need of the many over the needs of the few or the one. Why not when an account first logs in, they have to vote on a change and given X number of days or hours before they will be a Did Not Vote selection. See if the base truly likes it or because there is no other star trek game online that gives us what STO does we are shackled (sp?) to the choices of a few. If CBS the current ip holder, they know to read the ratings and ask people about shows, even if they are going to go where they want to go with a property.
Since we can't "Like" anything posted directly, I just quote the above and add - "Well said."
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..."
Why not when an account first logs in, they have to vote on a change and given X number of days or hours before they will be a Did Not Vote selection.
Because crowd sourcing development decisions is a complete non-starter. Human mobs are incapable of making creative or even just constructive decisions. Mob behavior is driven by an aggregation of self-interest moderated by reciprocal psychology held by members of that perceived group, prohibiting change which works against that immediate self-interest of the individual or group.
Ie. it's a sure way to lock the game into rigor, eschew challenging decisions which break from the status quo (like this one), and effectively ensure that the game will die a relatively quick death (through the aggregation of short sighted decisions which the mob found pleasing to its interests and sense of self-identity.) Mobs may be self-satisfied with their judgement and capabilities (agreeing with the zeitgeist is a survival tactic in those attuned to implicit human communication. Ie. the neurotypical), but note that doesn't replace perception, thoughtfulness, and astute judgement in the real world.
Things work because some decisions are left to people with the technical expertise to understand consequences in complex systems with long term popular reactions left to moderate at a general level. Best to follow that model, ie. the one set by civilization.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,581Community Moderator
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See. GQ battlezone and swarm TFO.
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 can do a good job applying Vulcan logic in debating a topic at length.
But sometimes during occasions like this, all people need is a simple acknowledgement that their concerns are valid to them.
My character Tsin'xing
Did you really punch a borg's head right off? I had a good crit with a very nice Nausicaan Tegolar sword a long time ago that severed a bad guy's leg from it's body. Was rather shocked tbh
I have not had any good experiences with random ques in other games, I might try a few here just to see if they are just as bad but I tend to avoid the things like the plague.
As for the other stuff: patrols, amateur scenarios, and most of the junk is all irrelevant since they do not award marks of any kind.
I forgot about the Romulan patrols (I never knew about the Delta ones) which might be a way (though inefficient) to get Romulan and Delta marks, but as a general rule patrols do not award marks.
I enjoy running the Tholian and Borg red alerts and play them everyday.
If you take them away and only make them available on the weekends - I'm just likely to play less.
When I get a chance to log on, I enjoy playing the content I like to play, as a matter of fact, that's what drew me to this game in the first place,("Play the way you like" - remember that?) taking that option away from me can't be a good thing - please find another way.
For whatever reason, you picked the wrong idea again. Sure people mostly used the red alerts to get whatever they needed out of them and they could do it on any day they wanted. You had a cooldown for that specific event. Now someone can fight for each mark over what (however many reps there currently are and any added with the new expansion in less than a week and so in that time gained enough possible for the next week ahead and do much less during the weekday.
When you see the imbalance of ra's being done versus que's perhaps players are telling you something, perhaps bugs, doesn't work, takes too long, not worth the effort, the competitive ques as one said on the first page of this post almost always leads to unbalanced team (of course pvp is like that as well). I didn't play the other ques as there was no one playing them. Once again I think an incentive to play them would have helped, but not at the expense of the RA's. It simply is near impossible to get anyone to que up for any of the other stf's. So find a way to make them look more valuable and with that you only changed the rewards/incentive and not have to wreak havoc over the moving of something people like to a small event instead.
]So now the Borg only attacks on Thursday 10am and gives up on Monday at 7am. Talk about making no sense. If I was the Borg invading I would invade at various times on a different day or hour or whatever to make sure we weren't letting the alliance know this is when we will assault.
I know I will be jumped on by fanboys who always defend everything being done. Good for that group, but what the need of the many over the needs of the few or the one. Why not when an account first logs in, they have to vote on a change and given X number of days or hours before they will be a Did Not Vote selection. See if the base truly likes it or because there is no other star trek game online that gives us what STO does we are shackled (sp?) to the choices of a few. If CBS the current ip holder, they know to read the ratings and ask people about shows, even if they are going to go where they want to go with a property.
Excellent
My entire friends list has left the game and all 5 fleets my main and alts are in have had everyone quit due to poor changes by the devs. Just as bad the 2 once full Armadas are now all but dead as well. In all my years in STO I have not seen a drop off like this and I have never been so isolated. This is very concerning for me and at least 2 of those fleets where at the fleet population cap but are now dead.
My concern is the devs recently have been acting very similar as the devs of Star Wars Galaxy right down to the people like yourself who appear to blindly support them no matter how bad the idea. I do not want Star Trek Online to keep going down that path and ending up in the same way with the servers shut down. I am speaking out as I want Star Trek to keep being successful and I am seeing all the same warning signs as what happened over there.
I agree some dead queues need fixing but this isn’t the way to fix them. Between random STF and RA these changes are going to kill off a lot of queues which used to be played which is going to throw the queue population balance even further out of equilibrium. The changes are not only look like they are going to kill RA's but its looks like a large amount of queues which only had moderate plays are going to have a very large drop off as well.
Doubtful, there are only about 2 or 3 of those left around here and they're largely ignored. The majority of the player base is finding it harder and harder to defend Cryptic these days, even if you really want to.. it's just really hard to defend them and sound rational at the same time.
The rest of your post was excellent.
As I understand it the underlying issue is this:
Red Alerts trivialized gaining 'any' reputation mark. Nothing else lets you gain two dailies worth of rep marks with a fresh level fifty toon that fast. Which was amplified by the short waiting times compared to other popular queues let alone the unpopular ones. Do I wait two minutes for that ISA or hop into that RA after ten seconds?
Of course they had to go.
On the other hand there are those really annoying queues you would not want to be caught dead in their backyard. Bug Hunt for example. Nothing more fun than having a 50/50 chance that Lt vanDerpface faceplants itself into unavoidable suicide at the end failing your otherwise flawless elite run that way. And that is by far not the only example of horrible design choices.
Of course players are angry if the only advancement option is perceived as horrible.
Back to my stupid idea.
How about finding some middle ground, something that requires a little more effort but still lets players avoid the queues they really hate
Enter commendation reports.
For those who do not know immediately what those are. Above 110k xp in any duty officer category you can trade in 10k xp for a small amount of fleet marks on your fleets starbase.
Why not make those award a choice box instead?
You cannot really hit those immediately when your reputations unlock at level fifty because it requires a bit of commitment to get to 100k doff xp in any of the categories.
Sounds like something to me that could be a viable alternative. *shrugs*
Thoughts?
And by gameplay I mean actual activity within the game world.
There's not an easy fix to kael becoming a target, thats par for the course for community managers in the face of bad decisions.
Maybe he needs to step aside and let someone else take the flak instead of being a barrier, I'd suggest the numpty that thought culling gameplay based content would be popular.
Realistically, dismemberment isn't what usually happens because death animations just don't have the dead guy in pieces.
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
There is no CD on them now, so getting marks is actually easier on the w/e, too easy, they need a CD.
Id prefer them like before once,a red Alert appear in one sector for awhile.
The Red Alerts, esp the BORG also need a rebalance, it takes me 2mins to clear it, solo. Man i could get thousands of marks, before this change i could do a ship Mastery in few hours, now gonna be even quick, why dont they scrap mastery then?
Current ques also need rebalancing, better rewards and linked into the Endevours, both daily and weeklies.
Better idea is the sector way as mentioned, also you should nt know who it is, it could be Borg or someone else, but then its just a Fleet Alert, so scrap that one.
Dont half TRIBBLE it, take the one more step and do it right for once after all these years.
Seconded. I am glad they're looking at the battlezone, but I know a lot of people filed bug reports last year on it and it didn't have effect. It feels the best metric or feedback is to not show up, sometimes.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
That's correct, weekend events occupy a rotation and depending on how long that rotation is, a particular event may only happen once every two months (judging from what we have right now.) That said, with these now a thing I would expect there to be fewer dormant weekends and Cryptic can opt to increase the frequency of a particularly popular item (so while the full rotation may cycle over a span of months, something like the RA's could pop once every 3 or 4 weeks if that's called for.)
Easy mode but with a much weaker impact on the reputation and ship mastery system. It's difficult to effectively level from CCA runs alone (even if you opt to finish off the tholians at the end of the round.) Plus Cryptic has looked into improving CCA mechanics through the revamp of the last crystalline event (some things, which proved themselves well, may eventually be ported back over to the normal queue.)
CCA may be popular, but that popularity only affects the PVE system through being a point of aggregation, which are inevitable (favorites will develop by any criteria.) The popularity of alerts neutered the design goal of reputations (encouraging players to play specific content for specific rewards) to nominally act as a stop-gap solution to PVE population distribution problems (blocking rep progress). Only, the effect was to make it even more difficult to find matches in other reps because player need was so neatly satisfied by a couple low-effort queues.
That's a TRIBBLE situation, ie. where one activity becomes the sole focus in an expansive video game. For an MMO especially, that heavily risks increasing the rate of burnout in the population. It does behoove the devs to act on that, because that will affect the game's bottom line and prospects for longevity.
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!
Since we can't "Like" anything posted directly, I just quote the above and add - "Well said."
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..."
Because crowd sourcing development decisions is a complete non-starter. Human mobs are incapable of making creative or even just constructive decisions. Mob behavior is driven by an aggregation of self-interest moderated by reciprocal psychology held by members of that perceived group, prohibiting change which works against that immediate self-interest of the individual or group.
Ie. it's a sure way to lock the game into rigor, eschew challenging decisions which break from the status quo (like this one), and effectively ensure that the game will die a relatively quick death (through the aggregation of short sighted decisions which the mob found pleasing to its interests and sense of self-identity.) Mobs may be self-satisfied with their judgement and capabilities (agreeing with the zeitgeist is a survival tactic in those attuned to implicit human communication. Ie. the neurotypical), but note that doesn't replace perception, thoughtfulness, and astute judgement in the real world.
Things work because some decisions are left to people with the technical expertise to understand consequences in complex systems with long term popular reactions left to moderate at a general level. Best to follow that model, ie. the one set by civilization.
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!
But that is a topic for another forum.