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Update on Fleet Marks and Dilithium
dastahl
Member Posts: 185 Arc User
Greetings!
There has been a lot of talk lately about the changes to the Foundry daily mission, and I wanted to take some time to give a comprehensive and complete overview of why we made this decision.
Fleet Marks were introduced in Season 6 as a reward that can be used by Fleets to advance Fleet Holdings. Due to the fact that Fleet Marks are spent by Fleets to advance Fleet Holdings, it is intended that Fleet Marks are to be rewarded for completing Fleet-based gameplay.
We monitor the amount of Fleet Marks earned by each character and each player every day. We do so for game design reasons to ensure that the amount of progress Fleets are making on Fleet Holdings is as expected.
After the release of Season 7, we noticed that the amount of Fleet Marks players were earning per day started declining. As we expected, it was mostly due to the introduction of new content and the new Reputation system. Players were now spending less time in missions that granted Fleet Marks, and more time in missions that granted Dilithium and Rep Marks. We adjusted this at the time by adding Fleet Marks to the Foundry and Fleet Action dailies. The Foundry daily subsequently was turned into a 30 minute repeatable, which made Foundry missions an amazingly easy source of Fleet Marks, but because of the drop in Fleet Marks at the time, we left it in as a temporary bonus that would last up through our Anniversary.
Concurrently, we also closed a major loophole in Foundry missions in Season 7 which removed Dilithium rewards from what many considered "exploitative" Foundry missions (literally "log in click a button" get a boat of Dilithium). The number of players who were exploiting this type of mission was vast and so there were several weeks where we aggressively adjusted Dilithium rewards in order to keep Dilithium earnings back in line with our goal of getting more Dilithium into players hands without using the exploit. Due to the tuning we?ve done with Season 7, players are now earning more Dilithium than ever without the Foundry exploit.
We know based on progression data that there is further room to add more Dilithium to the economy and so today we have added in additional rewards to Foundry missions that grant a daily amount of Dilithium in addition to scaling rewards based on the gameplay of the Foundry mission. This now makes qualified Foundry missions an excellent source of Dilithium.
As part of this change and now that we?re past our Anniversary, we have removed the wrapper mission that granted the additional 50 Fleet Marks every 30 minutes for playing a single Foundry mission. We did this for a number of reasons. While we want players to enjoy Foundry missions, they should not be the one stop shop for all Rewards in the game. They are now arguably the single best source of Dilithium per mission, and they should not also be the best source for Fleet Marks. Another reason is that Fleet Marks should be for Fleet Gameplay and we will begin adjusting where Fleet Marks are granted to keep Fleet Marks in line with our Fleet gameplay goals.
Over the next several months we will be adjusting where Fleet Marks are granted to be more in line with our original design - Fleet Marks are for Fleet Gameplay. This means that Fleet Marks will be granted in more places where Fleets group up for missions, because the reason you need Fleet Marks is to benefit the Fleet.
This leads me to a frequent Ask Cryptic question that I want to address - Why are the Fleet Holdings so challenging to complete for small Fleets?
We monitor Fleet sizes and Holding progress and we do understand that small Fleets are finding Fleet Holdings to be expensive in both Fleet Marks and Dilithium.
Let me take a moment to explain our philosophy behind the Fleet Holdings so that there is a better understanding of our actions when we adjust economies like this.
First, keep in mind that that Fleet sizes in STO range from 1 member up to 500 members.
When we were crafting the Fleet System, we considered two options for how Fleet Marks and Fleet Progression would behave. There are pro's and con's to both options we considered.
Option A was that Fleet size would determine the maximum tier for Fleet Holdings. The larger the Fleet, the higher the Fleet Holding Tiers could achieve. This is how many other MMOs gate Guild progression, but we felt that it is artificially limiting to the many active small Fleets in STO.
Option B was to allow Fleets of any size to achieve all tiers of Fleet Holdings. The drawback is that because Fleet sizes range so much, we had to find a balance so that Large Fleets had some challenge, while still allowing small Fleets to achieve all tiers, albeit at a much slower pace. If you are in a Fleet less than 25 players, then it is expected to be more challenging than the norm.
So from our perspective we choose the sensible Option B, with the goal of ensuring that our active large Fleets had a decent challenge and wouldn?t complete the Fleet Holdings overnight. It needed to be a challenge for 500 member Fleets. It is a sign that you went through extreme effort to achieve the goal.
The end result of this decision is that smaller Fleets may achieve maximum Starbase sizes, but it is expected to be much harder. You can achieve all tiers, but you are doing so at a great disadvantage, especially if you are under 25 Fleet Members or your Fleet Members don't play at least three times a week.
We understand that we could have introduced a handicap for small fleets into the design, but that solution could and would be exploited. In trying to find a way to exploit the system, we would end up having to create a wealth of rules and regulations behind how the handicap works and at the end of the day it is not in line with our goals of ensuring that top tier Fleet progression is a great accomplishment. (congrats btw to the Fleets that are just now hitting this tier!)
That said, we continue to investigate options that may help small Fleets without making it a cake-walk for Large Fleets. Because of our decision to not limit tiers based on guild size, we will not be scaling all projects based on Fleet size. What we will continue to do is find ways for small Fleets to play hard and gain the Fleet Marks and Dilithium needed to advance the Starbase. While there are always exceptions, for the most part, the data shows that small fleets are more starved for Dilithium than they are for Fleet Marks. Thus we continue to add more Dilithium to help all players, and along with that, small Fleets.
Likewise, even though we've removed Fleet Marks from the now super Dilithium rich Foundry mission, we will be adding Fleet Marks to other events, but not immediately. Look for us to further classify Events and Fleet Actions as having Fleet Marks in the near future. We are also entertaining suggestions to merge fleets or other ways that small Fleets can accelerate their progress.
Just as max level players are now earning far more Dilithium than they ever have due to adjustments that we've made along the way, we will continue to adjust Fleet Marks in the same way.
Hopefully this post helps to explain our position and why we continue to make the decisions we do. We want Fleet Progression to be a reward for Fleet Gameplay. We want players to earn more Dilithium. We want Foundry missions to have useful rewards. We want small Fleets to only be limited by group effort, not by artificial caps on progress.
We will continue to make progress towards those goals and welcome your feedback. Nothing is every "final" in MMOs, and your constructive comments are always valued.
Thank you for your understanding.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the changes to the Foundry daily mission, and I wanted to take some time to give a comprehensive and complete overview of why we made this decision.
Fleet Marks were introduced in Season 6 as a reward that can be used by Fleets to advance Fleet Holdings. Due to the fact that Fleet Marks are spent by Fleets to advance Fleet Holdings, it is intended that Fleet Marks are to be rewarded for completing Fleet-based gameplay.
We monitor the amount of Fleet Marks earned by each character and each player every day. We do so for game design reasons to ensure that the amount of progress Fleets are making on Fleet Holdings is as expected.
After the release of Season 7, we noticed that the amount of Fleet Marks players were earning per day started declining. As we expected, it was mostly due to the introduction of new content and the new Reputation system. Players were now spending less time in missions that granted Fleet Marks, and more time in missions that granted Dilithium and Rep Marks. We adjusted this at the time by adding Fleet Marks to the Foundry and Fleet Action dailies. The Foundry daily subsequently was turned into a 30 minute repeatable, which made Foundry missions an amazingly easy source of Fleet Marks, but because of the drop in Fleet Marks at the time, we left it in as a temporary bonus that would last up through our Anniversary.
Concurrently, we also closed a major loophole in Foundry missions in Season 7 which removed Dilithium rewards from what many considered "exploitative" Foundry missions (literally "log in click a button" get a boat of Dilithium). The number of players who were exploiting this type of mission was vast and so there were several weeks where we aggressively adjusted Dilithium rewards in order to keep Dilithium earnings back in line with our goal of getting more Dilithium into players hands without using the exploit. Due to the tuning we?ve done with Season 7, players are now earning more Dilithium than ever without the Foundry exploit.
We know based on progression data that there is further room to add more Dilithium to the economy and so today we have added in additional rewards to Foundry missions that grant a daily amount of Dilithium in addition to scaling rewards based on the gameplay of the Foundry mission. This now makes qualified Foundry missions an excellent source of Dilithium.
As part of this change and now that we?re past our Anniversary, we have removed the wrapper mission that granted the additional 50 Fleet Marks every 30 minutes for playing a single Foundry mission. We did this for a number of reasons. While we want players to enjoy Foundry missions, they should not be the one stop shop for all Rewards in the game. They are now arguably the single best source of Dilithium per mission, and they should not also be the best source for Fleet Marks. Another reason is that Fleet Marks should be for Fleet Gameplay and we will begin adjusting where Fleet Marks are granted to keep Fleet Marks in line with our Fleet gameplay goals.
Over the next several months we will be adjusting where Fleet Marks are granted to be more in line with our original design - Fleet Marks are for Fleet Gameplay. This means that Fleet Marks will be granted in more places where Fleets group up for missions, because the reason you need Fleet Marks is to benefit the Fleet.
This leads me to a frequent Ask Cryptic question that I want to address - Why are the Fleet Holdings so challenging to complete for small Fleets?
We monitor Fleet sizes and Holding progress and we do understand that small Fleets are finding Fleet Holdings to be expensive in both Fleet Marks and Dilithium.
Let me take a moment to explain our philosophy behind the Fleet Holdings so that there is a better understanding of our actions when we adjust economies like this.
First, keep in mind that that Fleet sizes in STO range from 1 member up to 500 members.
When we were crafting the Fleet System, we considered two options for how Fleet Marks and Fleet Progression would behave. There are pro's and con's to both options we considered.
Option A was that Fleet size would determine the maximum tier for Fleet Holdings. The larger the Fleet, the higher the Fleet Holding Tiers could achieve. This is how many other MMOs gate Guild progression, but we felt that it is artificially limiting to the many active small Fleets in STO.
Option B was to allow Fleets of any size to achieve all tiers of Fleet Holdings. The drawback is that because Fleet sizes range so much, we had to find a balance so that Large Fleets had some challenge, while still allowing small Fleets to achieve all tiers, albeit at a much slower pace. If you are in a Fleet less than 25 players, then it is expected to be more challenging than the norm.
So from our perspective we choose the sensible Option B, with the goal of ensuring that our active large Fleets had a decent challenge and wouldn?t complete the Fleet Holdings overnight. It needed to be a challenge for 500 member Fleets. It is a sign that you went through extreme effort to achieve the goal.
The end result of this decision is that smaller Fleets may achieve maximum Starbase sizes, but it is expected to be much harder. You can achieve all tiers, but you are doing so at a great disadvantage, especially if you are under 25 Fleet Members or your Fleet Members don't play at least three times a week.
We understand that we could have introduced a handicap for small fleets into the design, but that solution could and would be exploited. In trying to find a way to exploit the system, we would end up having to create a wealth of rules and regulations behind how the handicap works and at the end of the day it is not in line with our goals of ensuring that top tier Fleet progression is a great accomplishment. (congrats btw to the Fleets that are just now hitting this tier!)
That said, we continue to investigate options that may help small Fleets without making it a cake-walk for Large Fleets. Because of our decision to not limit tiers based on guild size, we will not be scaling all projects based on Fleet size. What we will continue to do is find ways for small Fleets to play hard and gain the Fleet Marks and Dilithium needed to advance the Starbase. While there are always exceptions, for the most part, the data shows that small fleets are more starved for Dilithium than they are for Fleet Marks. Thus we continue to add more Dilithium to help all players, and along with that, small Fleets.
Likewise, even though we've removed Fleet Marks from the now super Dilithium rich Foundry mission, we will be adding Fleet Marks to other events, but not immediately. Look for us to further classify Events and Fleet Actions as having Fleet Marks in the near future. We are also entertaining suggestions to merge fleets or other ways that small Fleets can accelerate their progress.
Just as max level players are now earning far more Dilithium than they ever have due to adjustments that we've made along the way, we will continue to adjust Fleet Marks in the same way.
Hopefully this post helps to explain our position and why we continue to make the decisions we do. We want Fleet Progression to be a reward for Fleet Gameplay. We want players to earn more Dilithium. We want Foundry missions to have useful rewards. We want small Fleets to only be limited by group effort, not by artificial caps on progress.
We will continue to make progress towards those goals and welcome your feedback. Nothing is every "final" in MMOs, and your constructive comments are always valued.
Thank you for your understanding.
Post edited by dastahl on
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Comments
Non mega-fleets get no help for higher tier projects, and Cryptic "might" add fleet marks to other things "eventually"?
Not encouraging.
No thank you.
There is no other endgame content that has not been played ad infinitum, other then building the starbase. I don't mind the time, but I do mind the lack of content.
I will no longer be playing this game until such time as fleet mark rewards are restored to the level they were last week.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
1. Aside from more fleet content I'd like to see some way of earning fleet marks by simply running any content with exclusively fleet members (amounts that would not take away from fleet content being the best source overall for FMs).
2. I also think its essential to implement systems to allow for mergers (at the expense of any committed resources). But only at a holdings level. The other aspects of fleet merging should be handled through inter-player diplomatic channels.
3. Furthermore, perhaps now is the time to explore inter-fleet alliances, whereby smaller fleets in particular can commit to initiating joint advancement projects with other fleets in order to advance. The benefits of such player interactions and commitments could be lower requirement costs, or reduced wait times.
4. One final point on the foundry dilithium rewards: Right now, it is extremely unclear -ingame- whether or not -any- foundry mission offers -any- type of reward. I suggest some clarification be added to the UI sooner rather than later.
p.s. in an unrelated but relatively important note, the QA department need some serious attention, the recent patch was far from flawless. Its as if QA has no defined checklist or understanding of the extent of changes a patch has to test, before release.
Also, this whole thing about "leave your feedback here and we will look over it" was more of a stahl tactic to buy time until you all released something like this, trying to explain why this was done.
Fact is I don't want to wait months while you figure things out. If you make a change this drastic to the game, you need to have something to replace it now...not months from now.
But I have to hand it to you. You got me. You got me good. Got me for plenty of cash. Well played. Don't spend it all in one place.
Fact Check:
1. Fleets under 25 are going to have a hard time completing projects = by design.
2. We will be adding more Fleet Marks, just not on Foundry missions. We will be making several changes up until the May update in order to bring Fleet Mark earning back in line: including reclassifying the difference between Events and Fleet Actions, Adjusting (increasing/decreasing) Fleet Marks with a focus on giving more Fleet Marks in Fleet Based Events, Possibly merging Fleets, Possibly offering other incentives for Small Fleets.
3. Data shows, most small Fleets are far more starved for Dilithium than they are for Fleet Marks. There is need for both, but more need right now for Dilithium than Fleet Marks - thus today's change. More Fleet Marks are coming - just not in Foundry play.
and a loot bag at the end of those missions could help to encourage players to play them, so no more dead queues.
is that too difficult to do?
In every place,
The deeds of men remain the same..."
That doesnt change the fact that they were bad decisions, and you keep making them.
"Sensible Option B" really doesnt seem so sensible, does it? Maybe there was a reason why most other mmo's chose the blue pill...
Removing fleet marks, suddenly and arbitrarily from these missions has effectively halted the progress of small fleets. Why not... I dont know... make the changes together? Remove the one, put them somewhere else, instead of having a void of who knows how many weeks where people get frustrated, quit, and then never come back.
This was a *big* change, it was announced at the last minute and only if you knew where to look... pretty underhanded if this was indeed something that you hashed out over some time, instead of just what is pretty clearly just caving in to a very very very small number of loud people who couldnt stand the fact that people were not playing the foundry, their missions, in their way.
Sudden about-faces like these are *never* good for an MMO, and most people - if you are lucky - will only stick around for one or two, then they are gone forever. You cant afford to keep doing this. The market is saturated and there's plenty of other games that dont constantly and consistently TRIBBLE over the player base, one segment at a time.
The doors, Mister Scott!
My fleet mates are disgusted fomr sb system. No one want to join a T2-T3 fleet. We cant make the fleet grow anymore.
I have now two options : i go back to solo mode and dont care for sb. And then dont get the 'best' that the game has to offer.
I quit.
Here's a clue, alot of us didn't ask for this change, but went with it because we liked, and had hopes for the game. Fleet missions have been sub-par since day one. You pug a 20 man fleet match and see how you do. The pay scale for the amount of effort and time you have to put into it would be declared child labor in some countries.
Season 7 started broken, and is still broken today. You break more things than you fix every patch. Half of our Tau Dewa missions are broken/glitched and your worried about FMs in The Foundry? Seriously?
Why is it if anythings to the players benefit it gets nerfed or removed, but if its to Cryptics
benefit it gets ignored or never fixed?
Someone stated it quite well earlier: 'Star Trek Online: Into Darkness.' because thats where your taking it...
1. Add Dilithium rewards (static amount) to every Cryptic-made mission in the game, including the Featured Episodes. These Dilithium rewards should be an average of what a player-made Foundry mission might yield. I was picking up 6-700 Dilithium on some Foundry missions earlier, while others were considerably less. An average of 480 Dilithium per Episode might not be a bad idea, and it would promote the usage of actually running YOUR missions as well as the Foundry content.
2. Add Fleet Mark rewards to every Fleet Action in the game. I understand Fleet Marks is a currency intended for Fleet activities, but as you well know, you don't even need to be in a fleet, to participate in "Fleet Actions" despite the name. And the current "Fleet Events" which were added in Season 6, may require you to be in a fleet, it does NOT require the entire group to be in the same fleet. Yet strangely, they reward Fleet Marks (but Fleet Actions currently -don't- reward Marks).
Add them to the old Fleet Actions for sure. AND add a large bonus, like 100 to 200, to the daily Fleet Action wrapper.
Cryptic acknowledges the sad amount of Fleet Marks awarded, yet removes the one thing that helped with that and has plans to maybe think about considering thinking about putting something in to offset the removal of said rewards.
No choices in content and more grinding.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
If that is what you mean, can we have more "fleet" things to do?
More queued missions?
Something do with the starbase?
Because right now it isn't useful. Is there a plan?
Maybe do that fleet mission daily hourly?
Taking something away and not replacing it with something that you arbitrarily call more "fleet"like is bound to get people upset.
Did you not think this was going to upset people?
Also, don't forget the KDF. The faction is starved for content and because of that is starved for people.
Now it is alot harder to progress in the fleet starbase and it will starve the faction more.
I'm hoping to see new fleet missions in the future, A LOT more. Missions that offer more variety and unique gameplay to compliment what we already have.
This perfectly sums up most of my frustrations with this current system.
As a member of a smaller, less-than-3 logs a week RP fleet, I find that the current requirements for every tier and project are simply not worth working towards because of how much it taxes the individual members of the fleet. It has been a massive undertaking just to get our fleet to tier 2, with myself having over 230k worth of contributions to this, others have had 100k and up.
This is simply a broken system. The excuse "We are afraid of exploits and would have to make tons of rules to combat them, so we won't add a handicap" smacks of lazy developing. Yes, this is a free to play game, but there are those of us that pay for monthly subs (or at the very least have been very loyal in using the Zen/C-store system). This makes me worry for future additions to the title.
I find it odd that you ask for "further input on how smaller fleets can accelerate their progress" but yet the input we already gave you has been brushed aside due to the "difficulty" of implementing it.
It's simple: Make it so that the requirements for the tiers (i.e. the average amount of resources per member) increases/decreases based on the number in the fleet. Smaller fleets would have a lowered requirement because of their fewer numbers, but one that was still a challenge to attain, larger fleets would have a higher requirement but it would all average out.
As I said, the current system is needlessly taxing, especially on smaller fleets and has led to the utter disinterest and dissatisfaction you're seeing here.
U.S.S. Indianapolis NCC-94668
90th Special Operations Task Force
While it is true that the foundry may be run mostly by the single player, it is also true that many of the same fleet were running foundry missions simultaneously while not in a group with each other.
Definitely need more variety of game play for Fleet Marks. And you guys need to do this NOW.
Also, this does not make me very excited
You should be able to contribute to your fleet by earning marks through solo play (like the Daily Fleet mark mission on the Starbase.) We need more of these type of missions please.
I have issue with this statement, as I can do the Temporal Ambassador, a solo only mission and get fleet marks. The way I see it, I am part of a fleet, all my gameplay is fleet gameplay.
It's a game, and there's no reason to get mad over changes a company makes. Even if you're paying/have paid for the game
And yes this is serious. I have no problem with having things removed, then replaced elsewhere in a few months
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
1) Compounded now by an inability to gain any meaningful fleet marks without mind-numbing grinding of six missions for pitiful rewards (8 if you include the one or two you get out of the romulan instances). Small fleets want to be able to work towards these things. They don't want to be faced with an absurd, boring grind that they have no real expectation of finishing. At the moment, you've squarely placed starbase completion in the latter category.
2) What will these changes be? When will they occur? What do you expect fleets who relied on IOR to make any actual progress to do in the meantime?
3) I don't even know how to respond to that. How in <insert deity or higher power of choice here>'s name does a need for one resource justify the removal of another resource's availability?
www.divisionhispana.com
I like these ideas.
When you joined a supergroup there, you could switch to "Supergroup Mode", this would allow you to earn the currency Prestige no matter what content you did in the game, at the expense of regular in-game rewards.
So 'flying the flag' for your fleet in this way means there's a choice over which kind of 'currency' you wish to earn at any one time.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
WHOOPS.. Too simple a solution. That happy was making players talk there.. Forget I mentioned it...
How about Option C: MAKE THE HOLDING COSTS SCALE! It cannot POSSIBLY be that hard to add into a system a mechanic that takes the number of characters in a fleet and does simple math to generate the costs. I'm taking Introduction to Computer Programming, Programming 101, right now. I've had 5 classes, in a class that uses C++ (the language this game is coded in, you said it in the 3-Year Q&A), and I could probably do it!
Or, how about Option
Really, Dan? You DESIGNED the system to TRIBBLE OVER your players? When's that been good for business? "Oh, our customers don't like this, let's make it worse." I'm an LTS, I've bought ZEN on rare occasion. I've supported this game, and I say NAY. A business doesn't make money when the customers are pissed, because angry customers don't buy their stuff. I DARE you to make a poll asking whether or not people approve of these changes and how the system works. I'm willing to bet the negative response rate would be over 80%.
Stop shafting small fleets!
The subtlety is appreciated.