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Cryptic, the Officer of the Watch can save your bacon
izdubar6
Member Posts: 38 Arc User
Good job on reversing some of bad ideas in Season 7. I don't want to harsh your mellow, but the problems with Season 7 are really is deeper than just a few events and their payouts. It's your whole design document for dilithium. If I didn't know better it's a copypasta from another type of game for a different kind of audience. But that's besides the point, it's ultimately a type of social engineering that rarely succeeds, even more so in a game that has been limping along for 2+ years. You've got a playerbase that is used to the game being a certain way, that meshed well with their busy adult lifestyle. Thinking that people have to grind for 4 hours a day in a certain way before they can think of having fun is a complete failure in game design and doesn't serve your customers well. STO is a good game, but it's not good enough to enforce a grueling grind on players. Season 6 was rough for my small fleet, but we took it as a challenge. Your changes to Season 7 saw my fleet disband.
Don't be so anal about how/when/where people get dilithium. Instead of removing, you should be adding more sources. You instituted the 8k daily refining cap for a good reason. That endpoint on daily character advancement should be all you ever need.
Your metrics only tell you part of the story of what your customers are doing. Half of all MMO players are over 30. How many of your players are over 30 and have busy lives? How many are in a fleet and want to contribute to that treadmill but feel they don't have to time or resources to? How many small fleets of family and friends are there (fleets that would rather break up than be submerged into a large fleet)?
Don't be so anal about how/when/where people get dilithium. Instead of removing, you should be adding more sources. You instituted the 8k daily refining cap for a good reason. That endpoint on daily character advancement should be all you ever need.
Your metrics only tell you part of the story of what your customers are doing. Half of all MMO players are over 30. How many of your players are over 30 and have busy lives? How many are in a fleet and want to contribute to that treadmill but feel they don't have to time or resources to? How many small fleets of family and friends are there (fleets that would rather break up than be submerged into a large fleet)?
- There is a useless quest on the player starbase that gives a measly 5 fleet marks. Up the payout to 50 fleet marks and 1440 dilithium. It's not an instant payout, and there's always the chance that a player will draw the short straw and get the escort freighter quest or the "scan stuff outside the base" quest. (Those suck if you're in a cruiser, btw).
This gives players a simple baseline of advancement in the game. It's a hook that will get them to log in daily, feel they've accomplished something and can then move on to their activity of choice. The players gain fleet marks, which will keep small/medium fleets on the fleet holdings treadmill, and just enough dilithium to entice them to grind out more. No one wants to log in for a job, but like a drug dealer, this "free taste" gets them to log in more reliably into the game.
It also gives a reason to visit the fleet starbase (as there are very few reasons to actually go there often!) and revitalizes content that is dead. It also encourages players to join a fleet, which can also fulfill your goal of making people forge social ties. - Replays of story content on elite should give a small amount of dilithium, say 480. This recycles even more content that people ignore after running once. Some missions are easier than others, obviously. Do not freak out when players find that mission. Just slap a 20 hour cooldown on the dilithium payout, but still allow the mission to be run with standard rewards.
Post edited by izdubar6 on
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this is a wonderful idea! even without the dillithium!
and no, i don't think people would misuse that, cause warping to starbase also means warping away from another content and a long way back.
this could save many small fleets. previously - i got 6x50 fleet marks a day just for farming officer reports.
now i am grinding nukara and waiting in the queue for hours just to get some what - 30 marks?
disaster.
pls cryptic IMPLEMENT in today's patch
yeah, they thought about Dillithium about EC's, Lobi, about Contraband, about Omega and Romulan Marks, about everything..
But they totally forgot Fleet Marks..
The big difference of time needed to grind Romulan Marks to get a project going and the time needed to farm Fleet Marks is just laughable.
Cryptic - get the fleet marks goin'!
You can't just stop daily influx of 50 FREE marks pro character and give us NOTHING in return!
If I would know this is coming, i would NEVER start an own fleet starbase.
It should be 50, which is fair enough for small fleets as they get to starbase level 4 and 5 where projects are 900 and up. And also keep a dilithium component so players won't feel so demotivated on the new grinds and item costs.
This is an excellent idea! It will save small fleets, which will die otherwise.
I would also hope that star bases play a more important role for fleets in the future. For all the resources they need no-one visits them, they barely use them (perhaps the odd meeting, or to visit the vendors) and they don't offer exclusive functions that ESD or DS9 don't have.
What would be cool is a series of fleet specific missions that play out like episodes of a story arc. All the missions require a team from your own fleet and feature instances where teamwork is required. Some can take place within the star base itself to take advantage of the environments available.
The missions would be more structured than the fleet actions we have now, and have a story to them so each mission follows on from the last - even an open ended one so you can repeat the entire arc for the rewards. Kinda like easier STF's so any level of fleet member can get involved.
Steered a little off topic here. But yeah, officer of the watch would be a good start.
1. IRP is effectively dead, 50 fleet marks per person is gone
2. Defera marks are nerfed to 60% of their old value, our fleet running a group of 5 brings in 200 less marks per night
3. Season 7 is a major bomb, in S6 the population skyrocketed.. in S7... people logged on, went meh, and left.
Officer of the watch needs a major boost, 5 marks is only worth doing if you are passing by that area, so maybe it gets done 1-2 times a week, sometimes never. 50 marks and 1440 dil is excessive though, I'd remove the dilithium and change it 30 marks (there are now 2 officer of the watches) so in effect you'd keep the original 5 each and an additional 50 to replace IRP.
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The whole system of dil/exchange is 1/2 baked. Any type of exchange system can be manipulated by those with enough resources, already making it a bad idea for a game. The resources on SB were based around 25 people they say. What 25 robots who dump everything into it? Dil for doffs kills doffing for most people especially new players. Stuff needs to be based around 25 casual players, hardcore players will burn through everything reguardless. Making the rest of the playerbase playtime a "pain" fest not a great plan.
One problem is they say we dont cap our dil daily, yet they base rewards as if everyone does. Metrics are fail, 1/2 the story leads to more problems then anything. Have you ever heard 1/2 of a persons story that got into a fight? Then based everything you did off that 1/2 a$$ed info? Im thinking there would be a 2nd fight realllllly quickly.
WoW Dailys were pretty quick 20-30mins when you got it down and you were done, and free to i donno PLAY THE GAME. Thats how it needs to be, by the time most of us are done getting Dil we are burnt out and log off. If people had to spend less time doing this and more free time to play, PVP might pick up if it wasnt so utterly ignored and broken, people might spend time learning the foundry, or playing more foundry missions. Crazy right?!
Stats and metrics honestly mean nothing because you never get a whole picture from it. You can limit variables as much as you like but never eliminate them all.
Dil needs to be added to all time based activaties. All missions should give some Dil. 10+min missions should atleast be 480. Things like 15min ESTF deserve 960-1440 because of added diff.
The really short missions that people used to run for exp like some of the dividian could give 180 or so. Anything we put time into should reward us back something. Crafting is fragged and instead of remove Dil cost to atleast help the sucky crafting they leave it as is till they completely reinvent the wheel AGAIN.
Low level players have a harder time starting out because no dil, no energy credits, and missions give neither. It needs changed. Scaling EC reward on level would help everyone out. LVL 1 = 100, LVL50 = 10,000. You can get more by vendoring a MKX part but atleast it helps cover repairs consumables we now have to buy to dump into another grind system.
Dil needs to be given no matter how a player wants to play the game. People might do more missions if the Dil was there. We can only refine 8k a day anyhow so why does it matter how easy it is for us to cap out? Unless cryptic really doesnt want us capping out which seems to be the case....
Question is, why? Anyone with 1/2 a brain should be able to guess most players are part of a family with a life and cant do 2-4 hours a day per toon to cap dil to get rep/gear/starbase. Besides if we spend all our game time just grinding resources, doesnt that miss the point of a game? Shouldnt we be playing stuff cause its fun and rewarded like wise? Why does it seem so backwards here, we play for the rewards not cause its fun?
I still think that a dilithium reward is needed, as I think the OotW can solve the problems Cryptic introduced with S7. Fleets are Mark starved, so 50 marks (because once you get to level 4 and 5, 30 is going to paltry!) is good enough, you'll still struggle if you only rely on it for mark generation. Players have a crushing need for dilithium and not enough time to farm it, a baseline reward of dilithium helps solve this and promotes daily logging in (which keeps them invested in the game and more likely to buy something). 1440 isn't that much and they'll still have to get the rest of their refinement allotment elsewhere, but they won't be chained to spending all their time getting it.
daily as a fast source of fleet marks means our starbase has come to a complete halt.
Putting the fleet marks into the starbase daily would solve this issue, and make it useful
Dilithium would be nice too, but I would be happy with just the marks as well, as they are now
the hardest currency to accumulate for our little fleet!
Joined in March, 2011. Lifer since December, 2011.
incorrect. If you transwarp in using the Fleet Base Transwarp you will be returned to your original sector when you leave your base.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
so fat chance it is going to happen.
It would actually be easier to solve the Dilithium dilemma by reducing across the board Dil costs for all Starbase projects. Dil has to remain valuable and that is based on supply and demand to establish value. We now have to pay 100 times more Dil for recruitment missions to get common Doffs which are still required for SB projects. Even with the change from requiring specific specialization to just a career field for this Doffs we are paying out so much more Dil for all Doff mission and usage that Dil value has become obscene. Being forced to spend Fleet Credits to easily and quickly get those Doffs also taxes a resource players should have for betterment of there own characters and purchase of Fleet Ships and gear.
Omega marks are another issue. Notice how long it takes to get into an STF now? Queue up and wait 10 minutes? In the mean time we can't run other missions because we are waiting in queue and might lose progress if we start something else. So Omega marks are now more time consuming to get and are a major component of the rep system. They are incredibly valuable.
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
Yeah, they spent dev time on it, and it was a complete waste of time and money on their part. This guy needs a use. Give him fleet marks and some dilithium, and I'll pray I don't get that patrol/scan mission.