- It would have been nice to be able to earn the marks during the recent events. We just finished 2 3-week events (both of which were Disco-related content) where we were rewarded marks of choice in addition to vouchers. I ran both events A LOT - at least 200 times in total (based on the number of vouchers I have). I converted the extra marks for unrefined dil ore in most cases, but don't really need that either since I have ~1-3 million unrefined on each alt. Not including marks for the new reputation, especially in those Disco-oriented queues, seems to be a calculated decision that is not player friendly.
What's the logic in allowing players to earn marks for a Reputation that has yet to make it to the game? That's nonsensical. Just because you want a leg up on a new Rep does not make the decision "not player friendly."
Arguably this should have been included at the launch of Age of Discovery, but I get the feeling that all this is being put together and released as it is completed in a kind of "spinning plates" scenario so I can't fault them for releaseing things piecemeal.
One can infer a great many things, but the idea of a roadmap is to provide clarity on direction, so inference is less necessary. As for whether a reputation that will require hours of grinding and upwards of 70 days to complete would be considered a "major" item sufficient to include in a roadmap is a subjective point. I've providing feedback to say, "yes, a new reputation that takes 70 days and grinding thousands of marks per alt is both 'major' enough both to include in a roadmap AND not to subsume under the nondescript 'Major Update' banner." You need not agree, but that is my feedback.
As for wanting a leg up, no, that really wasn't my point although I understand how my previous post can be construed to say that.
My point was that withholding a key piece of information reduces the ability of a player to make informed decisions about how to spend one's time in-game. If I'm going to have to grind for Disco marks in a month or so, I doubt that I would have spent as much time as I did in either event queue. I could have made different choices on how to spend my finite game playing time with just a little bit more information - which, surprise, was deduced by OP the last full day of the current event. Yes, it was my decision to grind away at the event queues, but I did so based on the information (and game goals and targets) I had at the time.
My objection is the appearance of a rationing of information and clues that might otherwise have led players to spend less time in-game in these specific queues. Now, of course, if it turns out that these two queues are not the primary means for getting the new Disco marks, then some of this is mitigated since I won't be running these queues all over gain. But, even that doesn't negate the fact that I spent a lot more time in-game for the past 6 weeks than I might otherwise have done if "new reputation" had been communicated earlier in the roadmap.
Player choice and informed decisions by players, not a "leg up" or complaining about the quality of the queues or implementing a new reputation. Merely, a request to let me have enough information to improve efficient decision making.
So...where's the new 'Starbase One' or 'Phavo Outpost' Fleet Holding? (Hey can't have a new Expansion without the appropriately themed Fleet Holding.)
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 hope the Season 2 EV suits get to be part of this Rep somehow. Even if it's the armor visuals. I rather like the look of them.
The thruster suits or the general purpose ones? The general purpose suits are one of the better adaptations from TOS, essentially the old suit with better materials and less bulk. I wish they would have tried to update the forcefield helmets (yes, the nylon mesh was supposed to represent a force field according to Roddenberry) instead of substituting those glass and metal ones though.
If the devs can actually come up a new and worthwhile motif out of the overly derivative Discovery show for the new rep that would be a very good sign for the game's future.
No more Fleet Holdings!! As it is, Dranuur drained us.
'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.'
'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.'
No more Fleet Holdings!! As it is, Dranuur drained us.
It's still draining us.. in our (full) armada there is only one of the fleets that's fully completed, others are still working on the dranuur holdings.
I'am really hoping they don't launch another fleet holding for years. As a fleet leader, i'am putting almost all my dilithium in the fleet XP projects, but now I really hope we can finish the holding for our fleet soon (almost there), and that I can finally have some dilithium for myself.
I thought I was at that point just before they came up with the dranuur holding, but than it didn't happen. I'am really hoping they don't do that thing again now.
Very bad form if they release a Rep just to make people do the same old content a hundred times again.
It'd be fine if they included 2 more TFOs for marks AND a nice single player missions chain that awarded a nice lump sum of marks on the initial play-through to let players bank some marks on this tardy Rep grind.
Another reputation seemed inevitable. While I'm not looking forward to the ridiculous amount of time I'm going to spend click, click, clicking, what really bothers me is:
- Why wasn't this featured prominently on the roadmap? What good is a roadmap that doesn't include significant landmarks?
- It would have been nice to be able to earn the marks during the recent events. We just finished 2 3-week events (both of which were Disco-related content) where we were rewarded marks of choice in addition to vouchers. I ran both events A LOT - at least 200 times in total (based on the number of vouchers I have). I converted the extra marks for unrefined dil ore in most cases, but don't really need that either since I have ~1-3 million unrefined on each alt. Not including marks for the new reputation, especially in those Disco-oriented queues, seems to be a calculated decision that is not player friendly.
As a few folks have pointed out, participating in the events and completing (or not) the reputations are all up to the individual to do as they please. It's all up to the player to choose how they want to play, what to prioritize doing, and how best to maximize enjoyment of the game.
However, the operative word there is "choice." How can we make informed decisions about how to spend our time when we don't have key pieces of information?
There's a fill all button now. It's just Click.
The roadmap was concerned with new stuff, with the best will in the world, this is new stuff on an old pattern. Not unexpected, not surprising. For me it ain't unwelcome, I'd like some new STFs to hammer. Normally I'm not a big fan of ground stuff, but the recent Pahvo thingy was a blast, I enjoyed nearly every time in there. Oddly it was the space one that bored me rigid. That was a refreshing change? Kinda? I do agree it should have been at least mentioned in the roadmap, but I'm not super upset about its omission.
Earning marks for a rep that isn't in game? No. I think introducing the rep at the start of this Disco season and tying the event STFs (I know, TFOs now, I'm a creature of habit) would have been better, but ehh. Things happen when they happen. So it goes.
How can we make informed decisions about things when we don't know what the future holds? New things happen, change is good. Aside from Cryptic introducing the rep at the beginning instead of what seems to be mid to late season, I have no problem here. All I'll need are 30 marks a day, I can earn enough for a week in a couple of hours of fun. If it ain't fun, don't bother, ignore the carrot. It's not essential.
New reputation grinds were always going to happen. That's the nature of this game, there will always be new carrots to dangle for us to chase. As long as there is a variety of fun and enjoyable ways to earn the marks for the Disco rep, I don't see a problem for myself. I play this game because I enjoy playing this game. That's enough for me.
It's only a single click to FILL the project. There are still valuable game time and many,many clicks to reach that point, as well as clicks to claim the project and inventory management (sell, discard) clicking.
"How can we make informed decisions about things when we don't know what the future holds?" - isn't that the crux of my point? While WE don't know what's going to happen, THEY do. It's not like we're debating an act of some deity or a probabilistically distributed RNG-based event. It's a planned event that's on many calendars, just not any to which players have access.
Of course, there will always be new things to do in the game and new grinds. But, why is it such anathema to people to have a clearer sense of when these new grinds will be introduced so we can plan accordingly. It's not like springing it on us adds to our overall pleasure and excitement by surprising us like some twist in a suspense novel.
We will all have different priorities and constraints, as well as find personal pleasures and enjoyments from different aspects of the game. Finding middle ground that appeals to the different player segments is always a complex balance.
Here's an idea, once any one of your Characters on an Account completes T6 in ANY Reputation, ALL existing and future Reputations are automatically considered Sponsored.
We sort of already have that.
At the start of Age of Discovery, they made the Sponsor ship tokens obsolete when they introduced automatic sponsorship once a rep got to Tier 5. As long as you got a character through all of the prior Reps, going from T1 to T6 on an alt gets reduced from 70 to 50 days.
What you want is to have any rep that comes out for the future to be this same 50 day grind for any character, but they're not going to do that. If you want to level the Rep, you will have to do it like you've done before.
What I'm getting from most of this thread is "We want something new to work on" and "We don't want something new to work on". At the same time.
All the talk about new grinds and no content and "to much clicking"... it almost sounds like people want things just handed to them. MMOs generally have grind. With how quickly we can go through story missions... of course we're gonna need more than that. As mentioned before, if you don't want to do a new Rep, then don't do it. Its not mandatory.
At least it would be something to do.
Just another example of "Can't please everyone" in this thread.
What I'm getting from most of this thread is "We want something new to work on" and "We don't want something new to work on". At the same time.
It's actually really simple..
People want content.. but they want new content. Not a copy/paste TFO, not another click fest copy/paste stupid reputation.. not a reskin of something we already have.
Apparently, that stuff is coming, so we will just have to wait for it.. but news of a 13th click fest reputation is not something they should really expect people to be excited about.
What I'm getting from most of this thread is "We want something new to work on" and "We don't want something new to work on". At the same time.
All the talk about new grinds and no content and "to much clicking"... it almost sounds like people want things just handed to them. MMOs generally have grind. With how quickly we can go through story missions... of course we're gonna need more than that. As mentioned before, if you don't want to do a new Rep, then don't do it. Its not mandatory.
At least it would be something to do.
Just another example of "Can't please everyone" in this thread.
Some of us want things to work on, others want things just handed to them.
They have released several major bug fixes in the last few months, including fixing the infamously broken warp nacelle issues.
Although I think they have a new one. My Crossfield's saucer doesn't spin when I "transwarp" now. Still spins when I trigger a Spore Jump using the console in combat though.
I stopped playing this game for a few years and recently returned. Five reps to go through from scratch on 13 characters is not fun, not even a little. Luckily I'm already past the phase of upgrading the previous 7 to tier 6. Its not the grinding out the marks/actually playing the game thing that is the bad part, though, its the clicky UI and the loading screens.
Log on, pick the main "sponsor" and fill out reps. Yes I'm glad its autosponsor now, that is an improvement. That's a click to open the right UI, then click to the Rep. tab, then fight the scroll bar to find the Reps. Then its click on the rep, click accept the rewards for the last project, click twice for the new project, ctrl click to save one click to fill the new project, thankfully another improvement. 5 clicks for each day for each reputation, for each character, without considering the inventory spam or the extra clicks to go up a tier. But then you click to logout, click the next character, and repeat the process, going through loading screens in the meanwhile.
For one reputation that's 7 clicks per character+ loading screens, and remember all you're doing is slotting/reslotting projects. For me working on T6 for all characters, that ends up being about 27 clicks times 13 characters which is ~351 clicks per day just to do reputations. Only then can I start playing the game.
Do I need to do them all? Strictly speaking no, but practically yes. I can't for the life of me keep straight what every reputation offers, nor what each character will need or want. Some things look good in their descriptions on the wiki, but turn out to be hot garbage. It is also a fairly good source of dilithium. It ends up being easier just to level every character to T6 and then figure out what works and what doesn't. I also don't want to upgrade things when I haven't worked out what equipment the character is going to want upgraded, so personally, I have to get reputation out of the way to figure out what to do next.
The real question though isn't why am I bothering doing them, it should be why does it take so many clicks to do it? Why can't this be further streamlined so I can spend more time playing the game instead of clicking through a pointless task? Why not have it auto slot and autofill reputation advancement projects with a checkbox somewhere? Is there any real justification for continuously asking me to manually input reputation projects just to get T6? It is a rhetorical motion as it is.
Comments
I could be inferred to have been part of the Roadmap under the heading Major Update.
What's the logic in allowing players to earn marks for a Reputation that has yet to make it to the game? That's nonsensical. Just because you want a leg up on a new Rep does not make the decision "not player friendly."
Arguably this should have been included at the launch of Age of Discovery, but I get the feeling that all this is being put together and released as it is completed in a kind of "spinning plates" scenario so I can't fault them for releaseing things piecemeal.
Yeah...
And it's ST:D based too.
Looks like this is the first rep I WON'T be doing.
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
Hate spoilmarks? Don't use them. It's your choice.
As for wanting a leg up, no, that really wasn't my point although I understand how my previous post can be construed to say that.
My point was that withholding a key piece of information reduces the ability of a player to make informed decisions about how to spend one's time in-game. If I'm going to have to grind for Disco marks in a month or so, I doubt that I would have spent as much time as I did in either event queue. I could have made different choices on how to spend my finite game playing time with just a little bit more information - which, surprise, was deduced by OP the last full day of the current event. Yes, it was my decision to grind away at the event queues, but I did so based on the information (and game goals and targets) I had at the time.
My objection is the appearance of a rationing of information and clues that might otherwise have led players to spend less time in-game in these specific queues. Now, of course, if it turns out that these two queues are not the primary means for getting the new Disco marks, then some of this is mitigated since I won't be running these queues all over gain. But, even that doesn't negate the fact that I spent a lot more time in-game for the past 6 weeks than I might otherwise have done if "new reputation" had been communicated earlier in the roadmap.
Player choice and informed decisions by players, not a "leg up" or complaining about the quality of the queues or implementing a new reputation. Merely, a request to let me have enough information to improve efficient decision making.
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..."
The thruster suits or the general purpose ones? The general purpose suits are one of the better adaptations from TOS, essentially the old suit with better materials and less bulk. I wish they would have tried to update the forcefield helmets (yes, the nylon mesh was supposed to represent a force field according to Roddenberry) instead of substituting those glass and metal ones though.
If the devs can actually come up a new and worthwhile motif out of the overly derivative Discovery show for the new rep that would be a very good sign for the game's future.
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.'
Oh yea, I SO hope Dranuur is the holding to end holdings. Then again I hoped T6 reps was the ultimate rep release to end reps... DOH!
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
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.'
Oh shut up please!
It's still draining us.. in our (full) armada there is only one of the fleets that's fully completed, others are still working on the dranuur holdings.
I'am really hoping they don't launch another fleet holding for years. As a fleet leader, i'am putting almost all my dilithium in the fleet XP projects, but now I really hope we can finish the holding for our fleet soon (almost there), and that I can finally have some dilithium for myself.
I thought I was at that point just before they came up with the dranuur holding, but than it didn't happen. I'am really hoping they don't do that thing again now.
It'd be fine if they included 2 more TFOs for marks AND a nice single player missions chain that awarded a nice lump sum of marks on the initial play-through to let players bank some marks on this tardy Rep grind.
That's just it. At this point a new Reputation is just a Timegate in Content's clothing.
There's a fill all button now. It's just Click.
The roadmap was concerned with new stuff, with the best will in the world, this is new stuff on an old pattern. Not unexpected, not surprising. For me it ain't unwelcome, I'd like some new STFs to hammer. Normally I'm not a big fan of ground stuff, but the recent Pahvo thingy was a blast, I enjoyed nearly every time in there. Oddly it was the space one that bored me rigid. That was a refreshing change? Kinda? I do agree it should have been at least mentioned in the roadmap, but I'm not super upset about its omission.
Earning marks for a rep that isn't in game? No. I think introducing the rep at the start of this Disco season and tying the event STFs (I know, TFOs now, I'm a creature of habit) would have been better, but ehh. Things happen when they happen. So it goes.
How can we make informed decisions about things when we don't know what the future holds? New things happen, change is good. Aside from Cryptic introducing the rep at the beginning instead of what seems to be mid to late season, I have no problem here. All I'll need are 30 marks a day, I can earn enough for a week in a couple of hours of fun. If it ain't fun, don't bother, ignore the carrot. It's not essential.
New reputation grinds were always going to happen. That's the nature of this game, there will always be new carrots to dangle for us to chase. As long as there is a variety of fun and enjoyable ways to earn the marks for the Disco rep, I don't see a problem for myself. I play this game because I enjoy playing this game. That's enough for me.
"How can we make informed decisions about things when we don't know what the future holds?" - isn't that the crux of my point? While WE don't know what's going to happen, THEY do. It's not like we're debating an act of some deity or a probabilistically distributed RNG-based event. It's a planned event that's on many calendars, just not any to which players have access.
Of course, there will always be new things to do in the game and new grinds. But, why is it such anathema to people to have a clearer sense of when these new grinds will be introduced so we can plan accordingly. It's not like springing it on us adds to our overall pleasure and excitement by surprising us like some twist in a suspense novel.
We will all have different priorities and constraints, as well as find personal pleasures and enjoyments from different aspects of the game. Finding middle ground that appeals to the different player segments is always a complex balance.
We sort of already have that.
At the start of Age of Discovery, they made the Sponsor ship tokens obsolete when they introduced automatic sponsorship once a rep got to Tier 5. As long as you got a character through all of the prior Reps, going from T1 to T6 on an alt gets reduced from 70 to 50 days.
What you want is to have any rep that comes out for the future to be this same 50 day grind for any character, but they're not going to do that. If you want to level the Rep, you will have to do it like you've done before.
All the talk about new grinds and no content and "to much clicking"... it almost sounds like people want things just handed to them. MMOs generally have grind. With how quickly we can go through story missions... of course we're gonna need more than that. As mentioned before, if you don't want to do a new Rep, then don't do it. Its not mandatory.
At least it would be something to do.
Just another example of "Can't please everyone" in this thread.
It's actually really simple..
People want content.. but they want new content. Not a copy/paste TFO, not another click fest copy/paste stupid reputation.. not a reskin of something we already have.
Apparently, that stuff is coming, so we will just have to wait for it.. but news of a 13th click fest reputation is not something they should really expect people to be excited about.
Although I think they have a new one. My Crossfield's saucer doesn't spin when I "transwarp" now. Still spins when I trigger a Spore Jump using the console in combat though.
Pretty much.
Log on, pick the main "sponsor" and fill out reps. Yes I'm glad its autosponsor now, that is an improvement. That's a click to open the right UI, then click to the Rep. tab, then fight the scroll bar to find the Reps. Then its click on the rep, click accept the rewards for the last project, click twice for the new project, ctrl click to save one click to fill the new project, thankfully another improvement. 5 clicks for each day for each reputation, for each character, without considering the inventory spam or the extra clicks to go up a tier. But then you click to logout, click the next character, and repeat the process, going through loading screens in the meanwhile.
For one reputation that's 7 clicks per character+ loading screens, and remember all you're doing is slotting/reslotting projects. For me working on T6 for all characters, that ends up being about 27 clicks times 13 characters which is ~351 clicks per day just to do reputations. Only then can I start playing the game.
Do I need to do them all? Strictly speaking no, but practically yes. I can't for the life of me keep straight what every reputation offers, nor what each character will need or want. Some things look good in their descriptions on the wiki, but turn out to be hot garbage. It is also a fairly good source of dilithium. It ends up being easier just to level every character to T6 and then figure out what works and what doesn't. I also don't want to upgrade things when I haven't worked out what equipment the character is going to want upgraded, so personally, I have to get reputation out of the way to figure out what to do next.
The real question though isn't why am I bothering doing them, it should be why does it take so many clicks to do it? Why can't this be further streamlined so I can spend more time playing the game instead of clicking through a pointless task? Why not have it auto slot and autofill reputation advancement projects with a checkbox somewhere? Is there any real justification for continuously asking me to manually input reputation projects just to get T6? It is a rhetorical motion as it is.