Red Alerts and Deep Space Encounters need help

mustrumridcully0

It seems to me Red Alerts and Deep Space Encounters really need some help. They don't seem very popular, and if I had to guess, it is also because they aren't particularly rewarding.

Red Alerts
The play without cool down might sound appealing, but it really isn't all that great, since you don't get Bonus Marks or Bonus XP anymore. They need something to set them apart from the Random TFOs, and lack of cooldown isn't enough.

Their repetitiveness isn't necessarily bad - I loved to use the Borg Red Alerts Tactical Cube to test a new ship build, for example.
But that only worked when I could play them any time, not just on special weekends. I can't anymore, so there are no meaningful rewards, no interesting gameplay, and no build-testing utility.

Deep Space Encounters
I am not even sure the name is correct anymore - maybe it's enemy signal contact, or something else.
They appear sporadically on the sector space map. If you enter them, you fight a small enemy group. You seem to almost never meet other players there anymore.

The old Deep Space Encounters were a lot of fun to me, even when solo - they spawned large numbers of enemies, so you could do your own "gauntlet" runs and see how many enemies you beat. It was fun darting with a Defiant through a horde of Cardassian ships. But... all that is no more.

But now, you only fight one or two enemies at a time if there is no one else. That's really dreary. And the more interesting parts that also increase the rewards are only triggered if there are more players in the map, and since you rarely have even more than one player, that never happens. So yo have an uneventful, boring sequence of fights for some unexciting reward.

They really need to be livened up in some way. I think what this really needs is that it must be more fun if you do it alone. More enemies, maybe bonus Starship Mastery XP, even when solo. If it's fun solo, more people will play them, and the group parts can become more fun, too.

davefenestrator

I agree, the old sector space encounters like the Tholians near New Romulus used to be a fun challenge that tested a build. If you were the only one in the encounter you had to be very careful.

The scaled-down version is ungeared new player friendly, but also boring so I ignore them.

rattler2

I think they should make the old Pre Legacy of Romulus patrols repeatable. Maybe tie it into an hourly rotation thing as to which one would give increased rewards or something special like some of the more rare loot drops.

mustrumridcully0

rattler2 wrote: »

I think they should make the old Pre Legacy of Romulus patrols repeatable. Maybe tie it into an hourly rotation thing as to which one would give increased rewards or something special like some of the more rare loot drops.

That might be nice, too, just to have something extra to do. But maybe Cryptic considers that content too old to deserve that much attention, and don't want new players accustomed to better quality missions to see them and get disappointed? I don't know.


But I found the old Deep Space Encounters had their own charm in allowing you to fight larger enemy groups and people could join dynamically, and I really wish the new ones would reflect that ability.

warpangel

Red alerts should be turned back to being alerts, appearing at random times and accessible instantly without queue wait. They were much better as an occasionally appearing change of pace than yet another queue to grind.

Then ditch the choose-all spoilmarks so the daily box can be enabled again and put the XP bonus back in. Basically the way they were before queueification. If they want to improve the format a bit, making the alert visible in all social maps in addition to sector space would be useful for people to notice when it's on.

There are currently what, 4 alerts in the game...could get a pretty nice rotation going with them.

DSE's I don't even know. I tried one once after the revamp and all I could think was "why does this exist?" I did all the old ones for the accolades, but the new ones seem just completely pointless.

ltminns

Actually, five. Don't forget the forgotten Temporal Marauders aka Na'kuhl.

asuran14

i can agree that honestly how they implemented the red alerts, as well as how they have left the deep space encounters left them in a state of limbo. Though I think the bigger issue is that there is only finite an narrow form of reward that a lot of these form of content give out, which causes players to evaluate which specific content is the best content to use to get said reward/s out of making it that there is always content that is largely seen by many as irrelevant by some players. Expanding the amount of rewards given out to include some rewards specific to different forms of content, than you would have additional reasons for players to do other forms of content, even if that content gave out less of rewards like marks/dil/xp compared to other content like for instance stf content. Also adding new rewards to the different forms of content (deep space encounters, stfs, red alerts) would keep that content relevant without unbalancing the reward structure (marks, dil, xp), it is an unpopular method yet it is tried an true method of keeping content relevant an desired to be played.