With the various responses on how people completed the Hard "Complete this STF x time(s)", I think I finally understand what the current requirement really is:
"TRIBBLE you, I, endeavor system, set whatever requirement I want without telling you, lol! Figure it out yourself if you can!"
"Resolved an issue with the listed requirement for TFO completions in medium difficulty which were incorrectly stating you need 0/1 when it should have been 0/3. "
Okay I have a theory here, mind it's only a theory. Easy is do the TFO one time on any difficulty including normal. Medium is do the TFO type three times on any difficulty including normal. Hard is then do the difficulty one time, but on advanced or higher. Only the "advanced or higher" fell out of the description somehow.
As I said this is a theory only so far, but it's the one thing I could think of that fits the facts such as I have them right now. (Or this is even buggier than we thought which is just as likely.)
Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it.
Harvest Materials (Ground) is poorly worded and seems draconian in its requirements.
Nowhere in the description of the mission does it say it can only be a ground level R&D material scan point as Dilithium Mining can produce the same material requirements while on the ground.
It sounds very nice and all... but there's nothing NEW here. We do just the same things we've always done. More shooting. More shooting. More shooting.
How about exploration? How about expanding some of the main worlds, like Earth, Andor, Vulcan, and so on, so we can visit other, new places and do interesting things there? How about giving us some new ship interiors, like the TMP Enterprise (which would also be appropriate for the Miranda, Excelsior, Constellation, and more)? How about adding features TO the interiors, making them useful and valuable?
I could go on, but I think the point is made well enough. I weary of doing the same thing all the time.
"Resolved an issue with the listed requirement for TFO completions in medium difficulty which were incorrectly stating you need 0/1 when it should have been 0/3. "
Okay I have a theory here, mind it's only a theory. Easy is do the TFO one time on any difficulty including normal. Medium is do the TFO type three times on any difficulty including normal. Hard is then do the difficulty one time, but on advanced or higher. Only the "advanced or higher" fell out of the description somehow.
As I said this is a theory only so far, but it's the one thing I could think of that fits the facts such as I have them right now. (Or this is even buggier than we thought which is just as likely.)
That is correct. They said they fixed it but when I got he TFO for Gravity Kills it was still missing the correct requirement in the descriptions.
My Solution to the whole thing would be to make the non-personal Endeavors, just TFO missions once every 48hrs, TFO are team missions anyway.
Then Personal Endeavors, then have it where you do the damage or Heals or Dabo etc... every 24hrs
My Solution to the whole thing would be to make the non-personal Endeavors, just TFO missions once every 48hrs, TFO are team missions anyway.
Then Personal Endeavors, then have it where you do the damage or Heals or Dabo etc... every 24hrs
Yeah, I think this is more the way to go... remove things that can't be done solo from the personal endeavors system, and remove things that CAN be done solo from the global endeavors system.
Tonight I did: Universal - TFO 'Days of Doom' Easy - Kill Dewan Anthropods Medium - Kill Tholians on Ground Hard - Kill Voth in Voth BZ
Out of all four Reward Boxes: Tons of EC (make that a sh*t-ton) R&D Materials (including one Elite) Reroll Token
'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.'
Haven't commented on Personal Endeavours so far as what I've been given has pretty much matched what I expected to see in an easy or medium or hard task, but today's has now left me wondering if the system needs tweaking..
Easy : destroy five Herald Ships
Medium : heal shields (space) (off the top of my head I think it was to 50,000)
Hard : harvest materials (space) (six in total)
Haven't commented on Personal Endeavours so far as what I've been given has pretty much matched what I expected to see in an easy or medium or hard task, but today's has now left me wondering if the system needs tweaking..
Easy : destroy five Herald Ships
Medium : heal shields (space) (off the top of my head I think it was to 50,000)
Hard : harvest materials (space) (six in total)
LOL! I think it is backwards.
"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
Haven't commented on Personal Endeavours so far as what I've been given has pretty much matched what I expected to see in an easy or medium or hard task, but today's has now left me wondering if the system needs tweaking..
Easy : destroy five Herald Ships
Medium : heal shields (space) (off the top of my head I think it was to 50,000)
Hard : harvest materials (space) (six in total)
Hmm... I got the same for the first item on the list but the other two were very different.
Medium was do some Polaron Damage in space. I've got a Reliant Advanced Light Cruiser outfitted with Pols, so doing any TFO did the job.
Hard was kill some Gorns on Nimbus III. I just went ahead and replayed - https://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_A_Fistful_of_Gorn
Got a really Great Purple DOFF for my trouble.
I'm currently taking a personal break from STO, burn out from Personal Endeavors was one of the direct contributing factors. The level of stat advantage at its maximum seems very high and there's little else I could do in the game but the two top tier endeavors that would give as much progress to incidental stat advantages. 4 small activities over two days but structure as a disconnected grind from the rest of the game. The result for me was rapid burn out as I followed through the daily sets of random tasks, using whichever character had the appropriate build, taking STO entirely piece meal, to the point where playing STO was the reductive minimum gameplay experience of MMORPG grinding.
I appreciate giving players suggestions but with the heavy meat of account wide stat bonuses the system isn't being subtle about encouraging the grind. Compare the stats here to the trait, duty officer, skill, or equipment systems. Each builds a sense of character or setting. PE's are grinds in the barest possible form, offering linear expansion for direct tasks without engaging in any element of world building or story telling (engaging some other process than skinner box incentivization.) I can't even see them as elements of personal growth because what I do for endeavors has absolutely no diegetic significance or consistency. On one day killing 120 scorpions on Nimbus might allow to ascend to a new level, others no. Every element of the game but one (leveling up) is meaningless when engaging this system. I'm ultimately and simply doing stuff to maintain playtime statistics, irrespective of how it minimizes my perception and appreciation of activities in the game (per skinner box dynamics.)
To be honest, I think the system needs to be cut down in large part. Expanding endeavors? Great, overlap two or maybe even three of the regular sort. Daily alerts? That's something other games have done (ex. Warframe) but it's worth noting that such games typically have disconnected skirmishes baked into their format (the closest thing STO has are TFO's, but even those benefit from narrative context. Randomized per day might not be the best way to do it, try randomized set of dailies per week, with those sets of endeavors building towards an appreciable theme that might register in player experience and fold into other events in our character's career.) Account perks? Too far, or at least up through 15 levels and to their current magnitude. Compared to what we received through, say, T6 reputations those are foreground bonuses and holding them off at a considerable distance which most players probably won't attain isn't mitigation for these issues. That's trying to balance an excessive grind by it's excessiveness rather than direct actions taken to limit the degree to which this can become a primary gameplay focus.
And for this to be a release priority over, say, expanding sector space exploration, further bridge officer development, expanding doffs, or improving the Foundry...it's very disheartening. There's a lot you guys could do which would add to character, setting, or story telling through system design, as you've already done in other updates.
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!
Hey folks. Does anyone know if there's a way to access the Endeavour level up window apart from via the Endeavor Tracker HUD element? The HUD element vanishes once you've completed all endeavours.
There is Endeavor access in the UI where you can access your Bridge or Small Craft Bridge.
'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.'
And for this to be a release priority over, say, expanding sector space exploration, further bridge officer development, expanding doffs, or improving the Foundry...it's very disheartening. There's a lot you guys could do which would add to character, setting, or story telling through system design, as you've already done in other updates.
The idea that this system has "priority" over those is baseless. That it came out before them is simply due to the fact of how relatively simple the system is compared to the others on that list, not a statement about priorities.
It's a literal statement that the personal endeavor system was deployed in preference of any alternative which would have contributed in some way to setting, story, or character development in some way, however oblique (which BTW I'm not referring to your select interpretations of system overhauls though I'll direct you to the title of this thread for specific discussion on those points) and that dev time was allocated in its development. If against plausibility this system (specifically codifying a minimalist daily grind and coupling it to a potent long term progression system for best skinner box effect) was the only one could have conceivably be implemented (which I think is simply lacking of creative thinking), then alternatives such as simply running overlapping universal endeavors would have been both more direct to the intention of wanting to give players a bit more direction (without institutionalizing grind) and even less work than the current system (allowing dev time to be spent elsewhere.)
It's not a compelling argument to suggest that Cryptic implemented this as a freebee and that its shape, in full, represents the only way it can be done. Such is both tautological and selectively unaware of the dynamics and costs involved.
Personal endeavors on the other hand give players tasks that require them go out and play content they may not otherwise for tangible rewards. Be it using energy types you don't normally, going to battlezones you haven't been to in awhile, doing TFOs that are rarely played, personal endeavors are a relatively small, and easy to implement, system that encourages people to play more of the game, and make more areas of the game more active. It will likely have a bigger overall gain for the game like the random TFO system did compared to any other the other things suggested that Cryptic work on.
There are tangible rewards associated for these activities and personal endeavors includes mainline elements such as healing. Battlezones, TFO's, and episodes all provide their own payouts and have been incentivized through existing universal endeavors. The only PE I've seen thus far that wasn't a part of core gameplay, didn't include resource payouts natively, or include payouts through universal endeavors is killing scorpions en masse on Nimbus (in the style of boars in WoW...) What daily endeavors do, most simply, is point players in a direction of an activity (often incentivized on its own) and provides additional incentivization for participation. It is the direct form of a skinner box as it breaks its content down piecemeal for easy compartmentalization (which fits the system but also reduces perception down to its base level of grinding without plot, setting, or character providing context for those activities) with the effect magnified by the number and frequency of personal endeavors versus universal.
That's great if someone is wanting to play STO and doesn't have the initiative to decide for themselves (though it's worth noting that this effect was also being accomplished by the universal endeavor system, and in moderation. This person is served by having this motivator supplied on a daily basis, which is highly questionable in terms of their long-term engagement and burn-out potential [versus cycling interest]), the little nudge may help them to get into other things and they won't necessarily be fixed into a terminal grind. But with perks providing sizable stat boosts (I've already exceeded the restricted per-character buffs I've received from T6 reps, the reward/effort was not comparable which is unbalancing to core design and system interactions) and one of the longest potential grinds in the game that "necessarily" doesn't hold well. The system actively encourages habitual participation and the mode of doing so is highly reductive (ie filling daily progress bars for its own sake.) The gameplay on offer here is a disconnected grind stretched monolithically (see. extent of perk points) and offered as a prime motivator for daily activity through comparative gains..
It needs work. As I said, I'm burned out from this and I can neither support its implementation or recommend analogous expansions in future. It's antithetical to what I consider good game design though I am aware that modern AAA and mobile gaming is pushing in this direction and that STO may simply be taking the reductive approach to daily motivators and design in order to meet new expectations. After 9 years the genre has changed considerably. Disagree? Fine, but this feedback stands.
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!
It literally isn't as all of those things are still being worked on in the form of new missions, and TFOs, which continue to advance and expand the setting, story, and character development, of STO. You seem to have this backward notion that the devs can only do one or the other at any given time, and that they aren't working on both at the same time. This is simply untrue, that this specific part of what they are working on isn't story based doesn't mean story based content isn't still the focus.
No, you're just being spurious with respect to my post and the topic at hand. This system simply doesn't contribute to the narrative art form of game design which is ultimately what justifies the medium's existence beyond the crass "well, we've got nothing better to do at the moment and this company wants our money, so....why not fill an empty tautology?" It fails a basic design criteria that separates games from skinner boxes. Ie. providing context which engages in cognitive process above neurochemical feedback loops which mitigates for their destructive effect on player psychology in RPG's, (leading to both burnouts and a shift from engaging with elements such as gameplay and story and becoming fixed on the rewards/effort calculation of any given activity, making it more difficult to engage with players on a human level and in sustainable long term player-dev relationships. This is why adding more context is important, the simpler the skinner box the easier it is for players to obsess about rewards. It enables this mindset.)
Everything else in STO from weapon upgrades to doffs satisfies this in some way. Performance increases have diegetic significance (arguably not enough but the attempt is made never the less.) Personal endeavors do not and the form of their implementation exasperates the issue. This is a criticism of their design, specifically and the rest of STO is the counterpoint as opposed to an excuse. Cryptic could have either done more to integrate this into the world, characters, or mechanics of being a Starfleet captain (compensating directly for the problematic nature of such a simplified incentive system) or made it a less obtrusive expansion of the endeavor system with respect to the frequency of personal endeavors (3 per day, potentially occupying a significant part of a play session), the differences between them (the heavy imbalance between rewards trivializes gameplay-related preferences, such that the choice for the harder two becomes automatic) and the knock on effect the large accumulation of account perks has relative to other forms of progression (it puts an emphasis on the habitual grinding of randomly designated activities for arbitrary and notable stat point increases. This is an RPG at its minimum.) Note that this is phrased directly as actionable feedback through feasible adjustments of the existing personal endeavor system to reduce their reductive impact on player experience (habitual grinding is baked into their core design. Whether you chose to engage with it is a personal question but that choice doesn't excuse issues with the explicitly defined mechanics of this system [as with many issues in system design, content design, and balance.])
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...this is nice and all...but some of these endeavors seems to be bugged and does not work...at all...or are basically impossible to do.
The ground mat ones for example that I have gotten several times now. There seems to be no ground materials generated to collect anymore. Do comp queue is basically can't do unless you log in at prime time on weekends only. Several of the do X queue seems to either be partially or completely broken.
Look, I like the idea of these things...but when like half the ones I get are broken or are things that just can't be done because it makes you do content that nobody plays...yeah...
So main suggestion...take queues out of the personal endeavors period. These are personal endeavors so they should be something you can do yourself. And unless you wanna make queues something you can start on your own, they should be left out of personal endeavors.
As for the ground mats ones...come on guys...either let it be any ground mini game or just remove these. The only way to do these is to do a mission that has a wave game on the ground built into the mission. That is silly.
@coldnapalm
For ground materials do the zaria mission to rescue deferi prisoners. There are two generated there.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Easy : Kill Voth in the Dyson ground battle zone. 👍
Medium : Destroy Undine ships in the Dyson space battle zone. 👍
Hard : Gain salvage from equipment drops... 🤔
Edit : I completed the Dyson ground battle zone last night to gain the universal endeavor. As a result I had a lot of equipment drops and completed the hard endeavor in just over a minute earning 1000 Dil and 750,000 EC. Even without playing the zone had I gone to Argala I'd have probably racked up the same amount of drops in a single run.
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Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
I can actually understand why we dont all have the same endeavors, can you picture 5,000 people all going to nukra prime to kill tholians on ground, Noone would get any. LOL. so you give x number of people all diff endeavors so they dont have the entire game going after the same thing.
> @tomilak said: > I can actually understand why we dont all have the same endeavors, can you picture 5,000 people all going to nukra prime to kill tholians on ground, Noone would get any. LOL. so you give x number of people all diff endeavors so they dont have the entire game going after the same thing.
They are 'personal' endeavors after all.
'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.'
Comments
"TRIBBLE you, I, endeavor system, set whatever requirement I want without telling you, lol! Figure it out yourself if you can!"
Okay I have a theory here, mind it's only a theory. Easy is do the TFO one time on any difficulty including normal. Medium is do the TFO type three times on any difficulty including normal. Hard is then do the difficulty one time, but on advanced or higher. Only the "advanced or higher" fell out of the description somehow.
As I said this is a theory only so far, but it's the one thing I could think of that fits the facts such as I have them right now. (Or this is even buggier than we thought which is just as likely.)
Nowhere in the description of the mission does it say it can only be a ground level R&D material scan point as Dilithium Mining can produce the same material requirements while on the ground.
And after the harvesting:
Lol
Same here!
That is correct. They said they fixed it but when I got he TFO for Gravity Kills it was still missing the correct requirement in the descriptions.
My Solution to the whole thing would be to make the non-personal Endeavors, just TFO missions once every 48hrs, TFO are team missions anyway.
Then Personal Endeavors, then have it where you do the damage or Heals or Dabo etc... every 24hrs
Quality of Life Improvements for the Mission Journal
Enhancement for the Duty Office Assignments
Enhancement for Admiralty Missions
Enhancement for Accolades and Reward
Enhancement Bridge Officers
Yeah, I think this is more the way to go... remove things that can't be done solo from the personal endeavors system, and remove things that CAN be done solo from the global endeavors system.
[FED] Tholian Space Accolade
You fight three ship at a time.
Tholian ships can be found in the Archer System... you also get Romulan Marks for it. Or can do one of those Romulan Ques with Tholians.
Universal - TFO 'Days of Doom'
Easy - Kill Dewan Anthropods
Medium - Kill Tholians on Ground
Hard - Kill Voth in Voth BZ
Out of all four Reward Boxes:
Tons of EC (make that a sh*t-ton)
R&D Materials (including one Elite)
Reroll Token
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.'
Easy : destroy five Herald Ships
Medium : heal shields (space) (off the top of my head I think it was to 50,000)
Hard : harvest materials (space) (six in total)
LOL! I think it is backwards.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Hmm... I got the same for the first item on the list but the other two were very different.
Medium was do some Polaron Damage in space. I've got a Reliant Advanced Light Cruiser outfitted with Pols, so doing any TFO did the job.
Hard was kill some Gorns on Nimbus III. I just went ahead and replayed -
https://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_A_Fistful_of_Gorn
Got a really Great Purple DOFF for my trouble.
I appreciate giving players suggestions but with the heavy meat of account wide stat bonuses the system isn't being subtle about encouraging the grind. Compare the stats here to the trait, duty officer, skill, or equipment systems. Each builds a sense of character or setting. PE's are grinds in the barest possible form, offering linear expansion for direct tasks without engaging in any element of world building or story telling (engaging some other process than skinner box incentivization.) I can't even see them as elements of personal growth because what I do for endeavors has absolutely no diegetic significance or consistency. On one day killing 120 scorpions on Nimbus might allow to ascend to a new level, others no. Every element of the game but one (leveling up) is meaningless when engaging this system. I'm ultimately and simply doing stuff to maintain playtime statistics, irrespective of how it minimizes my perception and appreciation of activities in the game (per skinner box dynamics.)
To be honest, I think the system needs to be cut down in large part. Expanding endeavors? Great, overlap two or maybe even three of the regular sort. Daily alerts? That's something other games have done (ex. Warframe) but it's worth noting that such games typically have disconnected skirmishes baked into their format (the closest thing STO has are TFO's, but even those benefit from narrative context. Randomized per day might not be the best way to do it, try randomized set of dailies per week, with those sets of endeavors building towards an appreciable theme that might register in player experience and fold into other events in our character's career.) Account perks? Too far, or at least up through 15 levels and to their current magnitude. Compared to what we received through, say, T6 reputations those are foreground bonuses and holding them off at a considerable distance which most players probably won't attain isn't mitigation for these issues. That's trying to balance an excessive grind by it's excessiveness rather than direct actions taken to limit the degree to which this can become a primary gameplay focus.
And for this to be a release priority over, say, expanding sector space exploration, further bridge officer development, expanding doffs, or improving the Foundry...it's very disheartening. There's a lot you guys could do which would add to character, setting, or story telling through system design, as you've already done in other updates.
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!
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.'
Awesome, thanks. The one place I didn't think to look. Oops
It's a literal statement that the personal endeavor system was deployed in preference of any alternative which would have contributed in some way to setting, story, or character development in some way, however oblique (which BTW I'm not referring to your select interpretations of system overhauls though I'll direct you to the title of this thread for specific discussion on those points) and that dev time was allocated in its development. If against plausibility this system (specifically codifying a minimalist daily grind and coupling it to a potent long term progression system for best skinner box effect) was the only one could have conceivably be implemented (which I think is simply lacking of creative thinking), then alternatives such as simply running overlapping universal endeavors would have been both more direct to the intention of wanting to give players a bit more direction (without institutionalizing grind) and even less work than the current system (allowing dev time to be spent elsewhere.)
It's not a compelling argument to suggest that Cryptic implemented this as a freebee and that its shape, in full, represents the only way it can be done. Such is both tautological and selectively unaware of the dynamics and costs involved.
There are tangible rewards associated for these activities and personal endeavors includes mainline elements such as healing. Battlezones, TFO's, and episodes all provide their own payouts and have been incentivized through existing universal endeavors. The only PE I've seen thus far that wasn't a part of core gameplay, didn't include resource payouts natively, or include payouts through universal endeavors is killing scorpions en masse on Nimbus (in the style of boars in WoW...) What daily endeavors do, most simply, is point players in a direction of an activity (often incentivized on its own) and provides additional incentivization for participation. It is the direct form of a skinner box as it breaks its content down piecemeal for easy compartmentalization (which fits the system but also reduces perception down to its base level of grinding without plot, setting, or character providing context for those activities) with the effect magnified by the number and frequency of personal endeavors versus universal.
That's great if someone is wanting to play STO and doesn't have the initiative to decide for themselves (though it's worth noting that this effect was also being accomplished by the universal endeavor system, and in moderation. This person is served by having this motivator supplied on a daily basis, which is highly questionable in terms of their long-term engagement and burn-out potential [versus cycling interest]), the little nudge may help them to get into other things and they won't necessarily be fixed into a terminal grind. But with perks providing sizable stat boosts (I've already exceeded the restricted per-character buffs I've received from T6 reps, the reward/effort was not comparable which is unbalancing to core design and system interactions) and one of the longest potential grinds in the game that "necessarily" doesn't hold well. The system actively encourages habitual participation and the mode of doing so is highly reductive (ie filling daily progress bars for its own sake.) The gameplay on offer here is a disconnected grind stretched monolithically (see. extent of perk points) and offered as a prime motivator for daily activity through comparative gains..
It needs work. As I said, I'm burned out from this and I can neither support its implementation or recommend analogous expansions in future. It's antithetical to what I consider good game design though I am aware that modern AAA and mobile gaming is pushing in this direction and that STO may simply be taking the reductive approach to daily motivators and design in order to meet new expectations. After 9 years the genre has changed considerably. Disagree? Fine, but this feedback stands.
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!
No, you're just being spurious with respect to my post and the topic at hand. This system simply doesn't contribute to the narrative art form of game design which is ultimately what justifies the medium's existence beyond the crass "well, we've got nothing better to do at the moment and this company wants our money, so....why not fill an empty tautology?" It fails a basic design criteria that separates games from skinner boxes. Ie. providing context which engages in cognitive process above neurochemical feedback loops which mitigates for their destructive effect on player psychology in RPG's, (leading to both burnouts and a shift from engaging with elements such as gameplay and story and becoming fixed on the rewards/effort calculation of any given activity, making it more difficult to engage with players on a human level and in sustainable long term player-dev relationships. This is why adding more context is important, the simpler the skinner box the easier it is for players to obsess about rewards. It enables this mindset.)
Everything else in STO from weapon upgrades to doffs satisfies this in some way. Performance increases have diegetic significance (arguably not enough but the attempt is made never the less.) Personal endeavors do not and the form of their implementation exasperates the issue. This is a criticism of their design, specifically and the rest of STO is the counterpoint as opposed to an excuse. Cryptic could have either done more to integrate this into the world, characters, or mechanics of being a Starfleet captain (compensating directly for the problematic nature of such a simplified incentive system) or made it a less obtrusive expansion of the endeavor system with respect to the frequency of personal endeavors (3 per day, potentially occupying a significant part of a play session), the differences between them (the heavy imbalance between rewards trivializes gameplay-related preferences, such that the choice for the harder two becomes automatic) and the knock on effect the large accumulation of account perks has relative to other forms of progression (it puts an emphasis on the habitual grinding of randomly designated activities for arbitrary and notable stat point increases. This is an RPG at its minimum.) Note that this is phrased directly as actionable feedback through feasible adjustments of the existing personal endeavor system to reduce their reductive impact on player experience (habitual grinding is baked into their core design. Whether you chose to engage with it is a personal question but that choice doesn't excuse issues with the explicitly defined mechanics of this system [as with many issues in system design, content design, and balance.])
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!
@coldnapalm
For ground materials do the zaria mission to rescue deferi prisoners. There are two generated there.
Easy : Kill Voth in the Dyson ground battle zone. 👍
Medium : Destroy Undine ships in the Dyson space battle zone. 👍
Hard : Gain salvage from equipment drops... 🤔
Edit : I completed the Dyson ground battle zone last night to gain the universal endeavor. As a result I had a lot of equipment drops and completed the hard endeavor in just over a minute earning 1000 Dil and 750,000 EC. Even without playing the zone had I gone to Argala I'd have probably racked up the same amount of drops in a single run.
It really wasn't 'Hard'.
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“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
At least now they're acknowledging it but no mea culpa for wasting players' time at the beginning trying to accomplish those goals.
> I can actually understand why we dont all have the same endeavors, can you picture 5,000 people all going to nukra prime to kill tholians on ground, Noone would get any. LOL. so you give x number of people all diff endeavors so they dont have the entire game going after the same thing.
They are 'personal' endeavors after all.
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.'