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Fleet Marks and Dilithium - Still not Enough
bugshu
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Its obvious that Cryptic being overstingy with fleet marks and dilithium hurt the game.
Maybe they honestly believed that people would "earn" more dilithium if they made people work harder for it. Obviously that hasnt been the case and dilithium keeps rising in value.
Fleet marks have been especially problematic. Every fleet in the game has seen sharply reduced progression. Frankly most fleets are stuck.
Increasing payouts for dilithium mining is nice but it still wont be popular. Its boring and you could triple the payout and there still would be more fun and more efficient ways to get dilithium. As a time gate its a fail. As a fun mission its a huge fail.
Reducing investigate officer reports from 3 missions to 1 will help a little but not a whole lot. It now becomes the most efficient way to get fleet marks and you dont have to do the boring Cryptic missions over and over and over to get the marks. Certainly there are player made missions better than Cryptics grind missions. The problem is that Cryptic is still trying to gate players time and tell them what they have to do. Some people dont like foundry missions. I honestly doubt players will rush to do foundry missions to ease the fleet mark crises for fleets dead on projects.
Certainly this isnt going to bring back people playing with alts as they might do 3-4 foundry missions a week if they feel like it but the people that alted 8-10 characters a day for the log in bonus mission were the ones pushing fleets forward.
Cryptic seriously underestimated how much fleets depended on the daily log in bonus for those marks and the dilithium. It hurt the game and it hurt their revenues. They are trying to backpedal a bit here but its not enough. People are not playing their alts anymore and many are not logging in daily to get their log in bonus.
Say what you want about calling the log in bonus an exploit or laziness or whatever ... but I will tell you this. People liked being able to log in, contribute to their fleet, chat, say hi, and do something positive that helped themselves and others without huge needs of time and effort. Most people are nice in this world when it doesnt cost a lot. Time gates and work make it less fun to be nice.
Cryptic made their game too hard and out of reach for most players. You can do well with 1 toon or maybe even 2-3 if you try hard but its more work than fun and few people have enough time to work to make a great toon and then have leftovers to share with fleets and friends. STO is segregating players from the Whales that buy Zen to those that they feel should be pushed out of the game. I did not ask or want Cryptic to go free to play but I will dern well tell you that if you are going to offer something to someone as a free gift that you better well let them enjoy it.
Todays changes were a step in the right direction but a long way away from the journeys end of making this game fun again. This was a bandaid on a gushing wound. The Log-In bonus needs to be restored or mission rewards need to be increased 1000%. Removal of the log in bonus to the STO economy was like what would happen if the Fed raised interest rates to 10%. Todays action would be what would happen if the fed then lowered them to 9.5% ... sure it helps but more needs to be done.
Cryptic knows it made a huge mistake when they took away the login bonus which is the reason they did todays backpedal.
Just quit inching backwards.
Admit your mistake and return the log in bonus and quit calling it an exploit. It was and is an important part of the game.
Maybe they honestly believed that people would "earn" more dilithium if they made people work harder for it. Obviously that hasnt been the case and dilithium keeps rising in value.
Fleet marks have been especially problematic. Every fleet in the game has seen sharply reduced progression. Frankly most fleets are stuck.
Increasing payouts for dilithium mining is nice but it still wont be popular. Its boring and you could triple the payout and there still would be more fun and more efficient ways to get dilithium. As a time gate its a fail. As a fun mission its a huge fail.
Reducing investigate officer reports from 3 missions to 1 will help a little but not a whole lot. It now becomes the most efficient way to get fleet marks and you dont have to do the boring Cryptic missions over and over and over to get the marks. Certainly there are player made missions better than Cryptics grind missions. The problem is that Cryptic is still trying to gate players time and tell them what they have to do. Some people dont like foundry missions. I honestly doubt players will rush to do foundry missions to ease the fleet mark crises for fleets dead on projects.
Certainly this isnt going to bring back people playing with alts as they might do 3-4 foundry missions a week if they feel like it but the people that alted 8-10 characters a day for the log in bonus mission were the ones pushing fleets forward.
Cryptic seriously underestimated how much fleets depended on the daily log in bonus for those marks and the dilithium. It hurt the game and it hurt their revenues. They are trying to backpedal a bit here but its not enough. People are not playing their alts anymore and many are not logging in daily to get their log in bonus.
Say what you want about calling the log in bonus an exploit or laziness or whatever ... but I will tell you this. People liked being able to log in, contribute to their fleet, chat, say hi, and do something positive that helped themselves and others without huge needs of time and effort. Most people are nice in this world when it doesnt cost a lot. Time gates and work make it less fun to be nice.
Cryptic made their game too hard and out of reach for most players. You can do well with 1 toon or maybe even 2-3 if you try hard but its more work than fun and few people have enough time to work to make a great toon and then have leftovers to share with fleets and friends. STO is segregating players from the Whales that buy Zen to those that they feel should be pushed out of the game. I did not ask or want Cryptic to go free to play but I will dern well tell you that if you are going to offer something to someone as a free gift that you better well let them enjoy it.
Todays changes were a step in the right direction but a long way away from the journeys end of making this game fun again. This was a bandaid on a gushing wound. The Log-In bonus needs to be restored or mission rewards need to be increased 1000%. Removal of the log in bonus to the STO economy was like what would happen if the Fed raised interest rates to 10%. Todays action would be what would happen if the fed then lowered them to 9.5% ... sure it helps but more needs to be done.
Cryptic knows it made a huge mistake when they took away the login bonus which is the reason they did todays backpedal.
Just quit inching backwards.
Admit your mistake and return the log in bonus and quit calling it an exploit. It was and is an important part of the game.
Post edited by bugshu on
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But on a different note, you mentioned 'log in bonus' several times... care to explain what that is, exactly?
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Ya I still don't get why people are surprised when their 5 man fleet is taking a long time to do something designed for 25-30
Foundry Mission Database
Check out my Foundry missions:
Standalone - The Great Escape - The Galaxy's Fair - Purity I: Of Denial - Return to Oblivion
Untitled Series - Duritanium Man - The Improbable Bulk - Commander Rihan
The original poster is correct here imo. The took so much away from players with the Season 7 release, and fleet mark rewards need to be increased by a lot.
Dilithium rewards need to be increased by alot as well...but most of the player base left in this game is content with what they are getting (or not getting).
This is becoming just another overseas Korean grind fest.
I agree
What the heck is a log in bonus?
Dilithium, thankfully, has been made much easier to collect these days. What's exasperating me is the fact that dilithium still hovers around the 100 dil per Zen mark. However, you can blame your fellow players for that. They set the prices.
Still, the current system has burned out my fleetmates and makes them reluctant to contribute to fleet projects.
man alive, if you cant earn dilithium by playing the game as it is currently, then nothing will be enough. they are throwing it as us at the moment.
actually play the game once in a while, or just move on.
People come to MMO's to achieve and accomplish. When its easy and fun people are happy and when its not they find something else to do.
The log in bonus gave small fleets a chance to advance. People say oh it was too easy and it was an exploit ... but I cant name you a single fleet at tier 5 including the mega majors. So it was never "too easy".
Also people played their alts and inactive players would log in and get their clicky bonus and then log out. It gave people a reason to show up, to play all their alts, to help their fleets.
In the past you used to could buy $10 of zen and get 400,000 of dilithium on the exchange. Now you get 100,000 dilithium on the exchange. Its going to fall further. Maybe this helps people who never buy zen and convert dilithium to zen but its terrible for the people who bought zen and throw some of it into fleet projects.
Cryptic is saying you need more dilithium if you want to enjoy this game. And we want you to have less dilithium so we are going to give you less. If they both tell me I need dilithium to enjoy their game and they want me to have less of it ... Its fair to suggest that they do not want me to enjoy their game.
It must suck to walk around not knowing what the word "exploit" means...
Encouraging people to quit playing the game is probably not best for the long term health of the game.
Your right, the people who log on, click 3 consoles, get their dilithium and log off was doing wonders. how will the game survive without them?
Give 50 fleet marks for stranded in space and then talk to me about playing the game. Give 1440 dilithium for doing the vault and then talk to me about playing the game.
There are 83 story missions in this game and how many of them pay fleet marks or dilithium. Oh yeah .... none. Sometimes you can get small dilithium containers during rerun weeks but thats negligable and Im not sure thats there anymore.
You only get dilithium and fleet marks from a few missions and people get tired and bored of them quickly. And people with multiple toons get extra bored when they have to earn gobs of dilithium for every toon doing the same old boring missions over and over and over.
When you have "played" the game over 20 times with each mission and you still cant buy what you want then you have a right to complain. I bet you cant name a Cryptic designed mission that Ive played less than 100 times. You bet, Id like to have a log in bonus so I dont have to play each one 900 times more for 9 more alts.
And fleets are especially problematic because 99% of them have ground to halts on their projects and the other 1% are massively slowed. There isnt a fleet that has made it past tier 3 without at least one person buying massive amounts of zen or everyone availing themselves of the log in bonus.
Putting a carrot too far ahead of the cart is not fun for the mules. And we want to have fun and be respected as players and not beat like mules.
A LOT of people begged for better rewards for good Foundry missions, to encourage both making and playing Foundry missions, and this proves that Cryptic was listening.
We went from 3 missions required down to 1 ... drastically improving the rewards for playing Foundry missions that were more than just click-n-win.
We went from a Daily to a mission with a 30 minute cooldown.
980 Dilithium is not a bad reward for 15-30 minutes of play time. Sure some missions are worth more than that, but this allows players to play the content they want to play.
We kept the 50 fleet marks.
So what I'm basically reading is that you want the clickie missions back.
Which is not going to happen. It's not good for STO, and this change is good for STO.
I'm going to applaud Cryptic for this one.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
How will the game survive indeed if you have less players, people playing less, and people buying less.
Games do close and I can name you dozens that have.....
DStahl could go back and try to work for city of heroes again or something ......
Oh wait ...
Lets see who designed COH....
That would be Cryptic....
Who said COH had a free to play model worth of emulation ....
That would be Cryptic.....
Who said COH was on the right track by making players grind more and giving them less...
That would be Cryptic.....
Who said COH had the best Microtransaction store in MMO's
That would be Cryptic......
Its well and good to have City of Heroes as your role model .....
Except .....
Oh yeah - It failed
Survival is an issue when a games not fun
There are 2 reasons to play a mission.
One its a fun mission.
Two it offers a good reward.
Offering better rewards does not change the fun of the foundry missions. They dont magically become better or worse. They are the same. If people thought they were fun then they would play them a lot. However, thats not the case. Dont get me wrong there are some great missions. There are some stinkaroos.
Generally many people view the foundry missions as Cryptics lazy way to create content without spending money to do it. Cryptics 83 story missions are dwarfed by the foundry missions and lets face it 50 or so of those missions were built before the game started. I doubt 33 of the story missions have been developed in the 3 years the game has been open. Less than 1 a month is pretty lame.
So we get down to how much should a foundry mission be rewarded. I posted before the foundry ever opened that people wouldnt play them much unless they were rewarded for doing so. Finally Cryptic is allowing for rewards but only if the time gates exceed 30 minutes or more. People with 10 characters arent going to spend 300 minutes a day doing foundry missions. Most arent going to be spending 60.
You cannot take other peoples time for granted. And you cannot dictate fun. You are still gating peoples time and you are dictating fun and neither of these things is going to go over so well over long time frame. You are going to get people grading great missions a 1 because it took 35 minutes to do a foundry mission and they wanted to spend a bare minimum of 30.
Im all for increasing the rewards for foundry. This is a good thing. Kudos for Cryptic for doing it. But its not enough and it doesnt come close to replacing what was lost and its not going to be a magic wand getting fleet projects moving forward again.
Players are going to want to ice skate to get free ships, and play ise 1000 times for the fastest way to get dilithium and omega marks. They are not going to play foundry until they believe that its the fastest and easiest way to get rewards in the game. And it is not.
And people want to be rewarded and have fun. They have jobs where they live for the grind. Its easier to work a job for an hour, make $10, and buy zen and convert it to dilithium than it is to work an hour and get dilithium in game. Except a jobs not always fun and many dont want to trade one form of drudgery to avoid another.
When STO becomes non stop drudgery it will die. If someone enjoys doing starbase blockade 1000 times then more power to them. Hey note me, I have room in a fleet for you and we can use the marks. Many think its drudgery after the first 20 times or so.
The only new content STO has to offer that hasnt been done 50 times by every player in the game is foundry and thats sad. And they are pushing people hard to do it because they know they dont have much else to offer.
The log in bonus let people enjoy the game without drudgery and frankly I think its needed.
And frankly, Im sick of people complaining about players with 10 alts or more that used it. By the time they levelled up 10 alts and equipped them and bought ships for them and outfitted them, and costumed them .... those guys arent lazy.
They are just tired of doing the same drudgery over and over again. Calling them lazy and telling them you need to gate their time and force them to grind more just is pure disrespect and you have your most dedicated players wondering why they play this game.
Frankly, its a mistake
You can play:
STFs
PvP
Story Missions
Foundry (playing, obviously silver players need dil to get started authoring)
Featured Episodes
New Romulus
Nukara
Defera
Red Alerts
Doff System
Tau Dewa alerts
Fleet Actions and other PVE queue events
All these cost you no dilithium to play unless you want to spend it on gear or something.
So you don't get to tier 5 starbase. That doesn't stop you playing any of the above, enjoying is up to you.
Exploits get hotfixed. It was not an exploit. The devs knew about it and even buffed that mission to get starbases kickstarted. Just because it got your panties in a wad doesn't make it an exploit. You should look up the definition of a game exploit so you're not being shown a fool the next time you spout that lame talking point.
The log in bonus made small and medium fleets semi-competitive.
You have your opinion, and that's fine. But the rewards and fun aspect are not as bad as you claim, I think... if people really didn't like this game or how much rewards they get, they wouldn't be playing at all. But they do
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
The clickers helped fleets a lot, most of the time as soon as I got my 1440 Dilithium I would turn around and just put that into a fleet project from 7 toons (was 15). Now I rarely sign onto my other toons. 7 toons x 1,440 = 10,080 Main and Alt Fleet were getting that much Dilithium per day from me now they get 0 +/-.
The harder it is to get Dilithium the less likely users will be willing to part with it. The more Dilithium a user has the more likely people will spend it. It is that simple.
Ideally a high level Starbase is meant to be built up by 100's of players. It's not really Cryptic's fault that people don't want to do that.
Sure, I'd like to earn Fleet Marks easier/faster, but am I upset? Not really, it was a design choice.
They have the exact opposite effect of what PWE wants, which is to keep people playing over time.
The real answer is to balance rewards across ALL types of content, so people can have fun playing whatever aspect of the game they like to play and to get people to try stuff they haven't played through before. STO has a long way to go in that regard, but it's the right path.
I don't think anyone can honestly tell me that doing a clickie was fun. It's not fun. It's a chore. But we did it because we were disproportionately rewarded for it.
That's simply not good for the game. It's negative conditioning that's actually contrary to the behavior they ought to encourage. My name is not Pavlov and I am not a dog (though I have been known to drool occasionally); I shouldn't feel like ringing a bell or clicking a button is a worthwhile activity.
If you aren't getting enough rewards from playing the stuff you actually like to play, then that's where the problem lies and that's what needs to be fixed.
And yes, I am a fan of STO. Would it make sense for me to be a volunteer mod if I weren't? But anybody who knows me also knows I'm not afraid to criticize Cryptic and PWE if I think they deserve it. So far nobody's told me what to say... and if they did, I'd quit.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
If I wanted to get fleet marks I have to generally do missions that do not give dilithium, or I have to do the random Fleet Events thing which is easily the least appealing option because I simply can't stand several of the fleet events because they are not well designed and are complete mindless zerg fests.
I've currently given up on dilithium, I do not have time as I'm constantly trying to grind out Romulan marks for several toons as well as expertise for a few newly minted 50s that don't have 5 million+ expertise like my main.
I think that a major improvement would be the following:
All Missions that grant Mark rewards should also grant an amount of dilithium. (STFs already do this)
All missions that grant a mark reward should also grant an appropriate amount of Skill/expertise as part of the final reward.
Romulan & Omega rep systems should have an prject that allows for the conversion of each respective type of mark into fleet marks at a loss.
I.e.
1) Romulan Project allows for changing 50 RMs to 35 FMs. (loss of 30%)
2) Omega Project allows for changing 50 RMs to 35 FMs. (loss of 30%)
Then they should not allow small/medium fleets to build bases.
Agreed.
I also think they should give a 25% bonus of dilithium awarded to subs/LTS players - this does not allow them to go over the 8K refining cap - but just means less missions need to be completed to hit that cap.
I don't see how that solves anything. Just because it's impractical for small/medium fleets to build bases does not mean it's impossible. It's just far more time-consuming and impractical.
Also, on the topic of clickes, they weren't "fun" no, but they were quick and easy. And didn't require any real effort to do to get something that's pretty time-consuming. Also, only time I've ever seen the "Sexy" dance emote...
I find your rude little rant quite amusing. you insult me over using the word exploit and yet you call it a log in bonus. its not a log in bonus. if it was, cryptic would call it such, everyone would get it for logging in, you would not have to do a foundry daily and rely on player created mission to get it and cryptic would not have removed it. its not a log in bonus as much as you want to think it is.
the foundry was designed for player created stories. it was not designed for grind missions or once touch clickies. that was what they said a long time ago. players are using a loophole and exploiting the system to benefit themselves in a way that was never intended by its initial design.
a player with 20 or 30 alts, could log in and out over the space of 5 or 10 minutes and accumulate 20, 30, maybe 40k of dilithium in no time at all. if that is not exploiting the original intent then i dont know what is.
maybe cryptic tolerated it, or turned a blind eye to it if they did not find it too much of an issue at first, but it clearly was an issue as they changed it. their speed at updating the foundry has never been quick but its gone now. their tolerance and speed of fixing does not make it any less of an exploit.
as an example, do you consider people who AFK events getting log in bonuses? people who AFK are exploiting events and missions to their benefit and the detriment of the team yet no one has ever fixed it, yet its exploiting something to their own benefit. it may not be a codding exploit, or a bug exploit but its still a exploit.
It seems that a lot of players can only be happy if they have a T5 Starbase xD
Or they must really have a ****ty life that find a 3clickes mission essential to their happyness :-P
Actually, I feel I should correct you here.
CoH did not fail. For some inexplicable reason, it's new masters decided that enough was enough, got rid of the devs, and closed the game. It was still profitable and it was still pretty popular.
On topic: I think the OP is just whining for whining's sake. The changes to Officer Reports is brilliant, especially if you find some decent Foundry missions that don't take too long. Get a full group together, and that's half an hour of fun with your fleet mates, and 250 marks. Repeatable every half hour. What's not to like about that?
So let's see if I got this right. Cryptic allows players to only have to do one (let's make sure you got this, only ONE) foundry mission to get a nice little chunk of dil and 50 fleet marks. AND it only has a 30 minute cooldown. Whereas the old one took you 15 minutes (loading time etc) and gave you 1440 dil and 50 marks, and then had a 20 hour cooldown. So you could only do it once a day. However this new Investigate reports requires you to actually do some work (30 minutes tops), BUT you can do it more than once per day. So this being said, you lose out on 480 dil per run, but you can do it more than once, which has the potential to allow you to get 12x what you would have gotten over that 20 hour period, and OP still isn't satisfied. Ok...
Next up, Cryptic DRASTICALLY reduces both the resource requirements and time it takes for the reputation system, while completely eliminating the dilithium requirements for both tiering up and unlocking new items. Granted purchasing items requires dilithium, but it's supposedly top of the line gear, so supposedly worth it. And OP still isn't happy. Ok...
Next, we have fleet actions. They now give a nice chunk of dil, and once a day, each one can get you fleet marks, while at the same time you can also get a nice chunk of skill points (for those of us not at level 50 or levelling new toons) and nice drops (the NPCs do occasionally be kind and give good things), and there are actually lots of people doing them, whereas before you were lucky if a gorn minefield or sb24 gave you a queue. So more dil, fleet marks, and possible gear. And OP STILL isn't happy. Ok...
Next up, STFs. They gave us back our dilithium in those STFs, and the NPCs also drop far more often than they did before. And some of those drops are actually quite nice (especially from tac cubes and regular cubes). AND we got our end of battle loot back. And you can get mk XII purple gear from it again. But OP still is not happy. Ok...
I could go on and on about how ludicrous this whole thread is, but I will simply state that despite what you said OP, their changes aren't just a step in the right direction, it's more than a lot of players deserve. You want everything to be given to you almost free. You want things to fall over at your feet. You want instant gratification, without bothering to actually do anything. Well you sir are a part of a very very SMALL minority that will never be happy. I pity you more than anything.
P.S. As for the Tier 5 Starbase? There won't be any of those until around february of next year fastest I think. It was predicted it would take that long anyways, even with everyone doing every project with them adding them every 20 hours/40 hours. I say again, INSTANT GRATIFICATION. And it was stated very specifically, starbases were designed for 25 people. Not 2, not 5, but 25.
And now what this thread has earned:
*facepalm
huh?
i thought i am the dude who see the glass half empty
honest:
this with the clicky missions - forget them. it was like a bug, cheating or something like that.
the foundrymissions aren't made for this and the daily too.
the solution how it came now is great! really!
the fleetbase wasnt never planned for a handful of dudes finish it within a few weeks/month.
small fleets will reach their limit at TIER III and this is ok.
see it from 2 sides:
if you get something, just fur the log in - people make 100 muleaccounts :rolleyes:
now you can enjoy foundrymissions and get a reward what is more than ok. really!
this is a fine solution for all sides:
for the devs, the foundryauthors, large AND small fleets
i love the changes!!