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@Geko - Idea for enticing players to other queued events
eradicator84
Member Posts: 1,116 Arc User
While listening to Part 1 of Priority One's interview with Captain Geko, I formed this idea.
iirc Geko said something along the lines that some queued events barely get any traffic, and that he wanted players to play a variety of content. Not only that but players will always gravitate towards the path of least resistance to get their currency/rewards of choice.
He did mention upping rewards, but I don't think it'll be enough, some content (like ground events) will just never be as popular as space is more fun to play in (imo anyway). And if the rewards were upped high enough to make them enticing again they just become the new path of least resistance and the current ones would get abandoned.
You kind of need a way to entice players to play all the various content they otherwise would not.
My thought regarding queued events, make the payouts for each event scale up the longer you haven't played it.
Have all events maintain a minimum reward, this is what's rewarded (currently) or a little less to balance it out, to players that play that content often and perhaps play it just because they like it.
However, if a toon hasn't played a particular queued event for a couple days (or however long is fair), then the rewarded dil AND mark payout for that event is double or (preferably) tripled. Once they play it the timer and rewards reset.
The idea being that is becomes too tempting to ignore for those gravitating towards time put in vs rewards received type grinding. Sure they may only do it once every two days or what ever, but they're then queuing for it, and those players that want to play it just because it's fun actually have a critical mass to get those queued events triggering more often.
This creates a path of least resistance every X days/however long for the grinders across all the events, forcing them (if they are soley about time vs payout) to play all the various event content to get the best payouts.
With everyone queuing for different events constantly, I think you'll see all the events come to life in terms of numbers playing them.
iirc Geko said something along the lines that some queued events barely get any traffic, and that he wanted players to play a variety of content. Not only that but players will always gravitate towards the path of least resistance to get their currency/rewards of choice.
He did mention upping rewards, but I don't think it'll be enough, some content (like ground events) will just never be as popular as space is more fun to play in (imo anyway). And if the rewards were upped high enough to make them enticing again they just become the new path of least resistance and the current ones would get abandoned.
You kind of need a way to entice players to play all the various content they otherwise would not.
My thought regarding queued events, make the payouts for each event scale up the longer you haven't played it.
Have all events maintain a minimum reward, this is what's rewarded (currently) or a little less to balance it out, to players that play that content often and perhaps play it just because they like it.
However, if a toon hasn't played a particular queued event for a couple days (or however long is fair), then the rewarded dil AND mark payout for that event is double or (preferably) tripled. Once they play it the timer and rewards reset.
The idea being that is becomes too tempting to ignore for those gravitating towards time put in vs rewards received type grinding. Sure they may only do it once every two days or what ever, but they're then queuing for it, and those players that want to play it just because it's fun actually have a critical mass to get those queued events triggering more often.
This creates a path of least resistance every X days/however long for the grinders across all the events, forcing them (if they are soley about time vs payout) to play all the various event content to get the best payouts.
With everyone queuing for different events constantly, I think you'll see all the events come to life in terms of numbers playing them.
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I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The 2 day delay (or probably longer, maybe 4-7 days is more appropriate) is to make sure it's a loosing equation if they just don't play anything for 2-7 days waiting for max payout offers. They'd still need to do events daily, but which events could be decided by ones offering substantially more as they haven't played it for a long time.
People will play their favourite regular events every day as you and I do, but if there's something like 2-3k dil ore + 2-300marks on offer for doing the 20 man fleet defence (something I haven't seen trigger KDF side for months) would you not be willing to queue for that instead?
People already stay away from some events, the idea is to give them a reason to queue. Once there's enough you'll get this critical mass that'll allow the event to be triggered way more often than they are now. Like STFs and mine trap etc atm.
This sort of effect is seen with Crystaline elite event. The juicy rewards are gone but people are still keenly queuing for it, because the citical mass is there, despite the elite imo being not great for time vs marks payout (not to mention ship repairs).
From cryptics point of view, that'd be a good problem to have.
At least many players are playing all of the various content.
No i think you miss the point. I on at least the days that i am able, as in not working that day or working a short day, i play everything at least once. If i can queue for it.
The way to make Ground more interesting to people is to INCREASE the rewards for it. So say you normally get 50 base fro ground infected and 75 base for infected space, why play ground? space is faster and grants you more marks and dil. Make things equally worthwhile to play.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Well yes, the minimum (current) payouts needs to be appropriately adjusted so they're fair, of course
Perhaps you're missing my point. I'm presuming all events pay out fairly/equally. My idea sits on top of that, to get people playing content they otherwise would not.
I'm not going to play ground STFs even if they paid equal (either lump sum or time per reward) amounts of rewards to space STFs. I just dont like them. Simple.
However if they suddenly paid out triple the amount, I'd be more tempted to play that content. Especially for those after good time vs reward payouts.
No i do understand your point.
You are missing mine.
You think more people will play content if they get bomb rewards once in a vlue moon if they dont play it. So i get triple if i play azure once a week. Thats your point.
My point is you get more for azure everyday, that is in line with other stf's. This way you have a reason to play them.
Noone plays azure and vault because the rewards are junk. Better rewards is more reason to play.
Cause with your way i still wouldnt bother playing azure once in a blue moon, my way i can add more missions to my rotation. Especially with more people queueing for them.
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
However, I for one rather hate the stupid cool down timers etc... I would say forget this attempt to force people to do what you (Cryptic) wants and just let them do what they want.
With that said: I loathe doing ground STF's as the ground game takes notably longer and is done far worse than Space making it feel clunky and unpleasant to play in most cases.
Let us look at Infected as a great example... If you can manage to get your team to work together enough to even start to get somewhere you still have to deal with narrow catwalks in a game that does not have anywhere NEAR the control to justify requiring you to try to tight-rope walk these things. To make matters far worse should you die you cannot simply respawn like in space you have to get rezzed but you cannot get that because the boss will chain-lighting strike you and kill you and your helper. Then again if you fell into the plasma you are just SoL anyway. It is a total mess where most of the challenge lies in bad control and the Boss actively trying to stop your team work. Not a very good model.
I gotta say that all makes it way more of a challenge. General rule of thumb is Eng's do the rezzing as they can toss a cover shield to help cover while things happen. The cat walks arent even there in elite, you have to jump. And if you fall in the plasma you just have to have a very patient and helpful teammate. I suggest for grounds always going through PublicEliteSTF, great helpful people in there.....
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Space STF and even someone that does not know the pattern can fly in, take hits and do damage.
You want an insane space mission? Force three ships into a narrow area and all three to have to run a sensor sweep at the same time as enemy ships may spawn and shut the whole attempt down. As just a tiny piece of one section. That is how ground maps currently work. Space, shoot stuff, this pattern preferred. Slow down those bad guys. Yay we won.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I know there are fleets that do the 20-man fleet defense, but those events are pointless to queue, because you'll just get random non-fleet members leeching your fleet's pay. Every non-fleet member essentially is a loss of 5% of the mission pay. There is simply no good reason to queue this event as a result.
Wouldn't that just result in players staying out of the game and not playing at all until it's worthwhile to play again?
For example: I despise ground combat in STO and I usually stick to CSE, ISE, Ensnared, CE and the occasional athmosphere assault. Now if the rewards for those 5 queues were to go down and those for ground events quadrupled, I'd still not be playing ground, but I'd take a break until it would be affordable to play my favorite ones again.
As much as i would like to see ground be more relevant like it used to be, i think the random nature of the previous system was pretty unfair, I played lot and i mean a lot before i got my first high level drops, I already had the Vorn Superior service medals before getting a single peice of MKXII gear
On the fleet defence, you don't loose anything, its not suposed a mine mine mine mindset, somebody else got the rewards for participating in the event fleet or not fleet , they got queued they get payed
If, say, ISE gets 200 jumpers, then the rewards for every other event goes up. However, once Azure Nebula starts getting 200 jumpers, the reward goes back to "normal" and the other events (Big Dig? Minefield? SB24?) keep going up...
This way, it's not "wait for max reward", it's "if you want max payout play these events that nobody wants to be in", but once people are "in there", it shouldn't "need" the enticement anymore...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
So pretend I've 20-30 mins to play something for the day. Everything pays out evenly/fairly. Why would I play a ground mission if I don't like grounds, or CSE if I think it's too hard? I'll just hop into ISE or ISN and be done for the day. Familiar and easy.
No reason for me to try or do something else.
Now lets pretend I have 10 alts. Again everything pays out evenly. I haven't time to play long winded events that take too long. I want to get in, earn some dil/marks and get on to the next alt in my play time period. So I play colony, ise and kase. (I don't know if they're the best as I don't play like this, just presuming). I'll have a set list of events to do as they're quicker and easier so I can move on. 20 man events may well be out of the question.
I've already agreed with you that increasing rewards for some events is absolutely needed (Atmosphere assault being one, Azure as you mentioned is another), and it would help. Geko said in the podcast he will review the rewards offered.
So I'm presuming all events will be looked over and rewards adjusted accordingly.
Having rewards match or be more fair across the board would certainly help. Problem is it isn't going to happen.
Should Azure really, REALLY pay out the same as HSE? What about Mine Trap or No Win, where does Colony come in? Should they all payout 1000 dil and 100 marks regardless?
I highly doubt all missions will ever payout the same (even in a time per reward calculation), simply because each mission varies in length and difficulty, and thus payout. Grinders will just continue playing the ones that are easiest and quickest, those with little time play the few missions that match their needs. Those that hate ground continue to play space.
I'm not going to start playing IGE simply because it pays the same as ISE.
I've a fleet mate that flat out simply refuses to play shuttle missions.
You could raise unpopular ones above payout standards to get traffic but then those would just be the new farming missions at the expense of the rest.
Not every one/toon plays every mission every day, so they will have favorites and go toos. If Cryptic wants people to play not as fun/desirable/equitable missions, they need to offer something above and beyond normal, and not have it exploitable.
Your point about raising low paying missions will get those that like the other missions to play them more, absolutely. It won't get those with little time or that simply hate certain content to play them. Something like my idea would.
I agree to a degree and loved its simplicity, but there's a reason it got dropped. The luck of the draw factor. Some had played hundreds of hours in one mission and received no drop.
Besides this issue isn't just with STFs. It's all non favorable (for whatever reason) events. So tech drops would be nice but then you'd need tech for each queued event that somehow wasn't based on luck.
Rep system is much cleaner. The STFs and their rewards were created and designed before a rep system was even conceived of, so there will be some mismatch with those.
There's anti leeching measures already being tested so I don't foresee that being a problem in the near future. As for non fleet members taking away your fleets loot, thats a non issue. Do a private queue and put 20 of your fleeties in there. Not enough? PUG it, I don't exactly feel like others are stealing marks away from my fleet when playing with other randoms in Fleet Alert. Unsure how you can think otherwise.
Yep, that could work too
Just some sort of system the dynamically adjusts to what players are or are not playing. Your suggested system would certainly be more responsive and dynamic.
Maybe for every 30 mins an event hasn't been kicked off the prizes go up by x%.
Many of the other queued events are not queued because they are undesirable to play with others, or just plain undesirable. With events such as SB24, the presence of others is simply unwelcome. They do not help at all, and can quite likely turn the entire exercise into a total waste of time. Others are just plain terrible. Take, for instance, Big Dig...even when you win, the entire exercise was a waste of time, because the best reward you could possibly get...is still trash. Generic Ground Gear just isn't worth anything. Therefore, just by attending, you have already lost. Combined with the same terrible mechanics as SB24, and it becomes clear the mere existence of the mission is a troll.
In a fleet event, any member who is not a member of your fleet is a leech, period. Any marks won do not go to your fleet. I would rather have a member of the fleet AFK than any non-member. At least then our marks go to US, and not some leeching outsider.
If you do this, the point remains: The event queue never pops. Lots of unpopular missions are actually run, as purely private events, because the existence of outsiders in the mission is counterproductive.
Because if that slot is not filled by a fleetmember, you are farming someone else's fleet marks, and they are leeching the marks that SHOULD be going to YOUR fleet.
SOLUTIONS.
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1.)
* Mission rewards are not at all sensible or normalized for the amount of effort required to do the mission. Missions that take 5 minutes and can be facerolled by one good player often give the same payout as missions that take an experienced team 10-15 minutes.
* Gather statistics about how long missions actually take, and normalize reward magnitude based on play time.
==============================================
2.)
* Missions are not equal in difficulty, and some are downright nightmares or even uncompleteable unless people know what to do. Anybody's tried to PUG cure ground elite or lost every single civilian on Mine Trap knows what this feels like.
* Review the design of some missions and make sure everything is winnable- maybe not with all bonus objectives, but basically winnable- for players that have no experience and are impervious to suggestion. I know some people will spit on me for this, but you can't have hardcore missions and easycake missions side by side because all you're doing is punishing hardcore-level players when people who can't cope wander in. As an alternative: the long-requested feature whereby a person is not allowed to queue for advanced missions until they have demonstrated basic proficiency in other places.
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3.)
* Not all mission rewards are relevant at all times. I have all the Romulan gear I want... Why, then, would I play a mission that only gives Romulan marks? The reputation system creates a transient need to farm a specific reward and then a persistent apathy toward any mission reward which is not mutable aka fleet marks or dilithium. Same for gear: If what I have is already ten times better than what I'm being given as a reward, then what I'm really getting is usually 5 wasted seconds as I right click and recycle it.
* Every single mission should give a choice of faction marks or fleet marks. No exceptions. Missions that currently give gear should give us a choice of accepting gear (it shows us what the item is first), or of accepting a cash prize in EC. This keeps mission rewards relevant to all players.
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4.)
* Player population is not sufficient to keep 30 queues moving at a reasonable rate. Personally I like to play KAGE. It's ground, it's not too difficult, it lets me get my borg-slashing fix. But it's almost impossible at off hours to get a game going. If I have to wait more than a few minutes, I'm not going to stay in that queue because it's boring as hell sitting there waiting for it and I can't get involved in anything else.
* From your stat-gathering project, identify which mission queues have the least traffic and put them into a random 2 hour rotation. Call it the current tactical alert, or something. If you play a mission while it's the current alert, you get double rewards for your first win. This both incentivizes less popular missions and increases the effective player population to keep queues moving by focusing them into specific missions.
Holy artichokes. Way to community, bro. Mind telling which fleet you belong to so that I can save you some time and steer all non-misanthropes away from it?
Um... I have seen that Boss arc her shot using the cover shield as a hop along the chain. Engineers are generally the least needed or wanted in that fight. A few tacts and a few medics usually can get the job done if you are lucky.
Platforming should also never be required in STO because the controls are WAY too bad for smooth platforming. It reminds me a lot of the early days of 3D video games where the camera seemed to have issues following you right and all your jumps and movement always seemed a bit off because your character would not really go the way you were aiming right away but instead had to sort of "turn" into it or would just go the way they were facing instead.
Now that sounds even better. So basically if you look at the ques you would see that anything that is not being qued much ATM will give you a boost if you que for that mission whereas the ones currently being qued to death just give out normal.
I think that solution is the best one I have heard so far.
It's all rather elementary stuff. At least with space it feels as though the auto firing/hit miss makes sense due to more automated systems/technology etc. That's one of the only inadvertent effects space has going for it in that regard.
Look it's not about bribing players to play the content.. It's about providing content that players actually want to play.
Now if you can only get devs like Geko to stop force feeding us TRIBBLE packaged as chocolate we can start discussing why content as horrible as dinos with laser faces are being put into the game. That's where you'll start discovering that this garbage is not without misguided intent.
Currently, you're allowed to queue up for ONLY 3 PvE queues at a time. Period. No deviations. You get 3 queues to pick from. So which ones are you going to choose? Duh ... the ones that other people are signing up to join!
That's a problem. It means that only the "popular" content gets demand, and everything else gets sidelined BY that demand.
Solution:
If a PvE queue has less than 20 players in it currently (ie. four teams of 5 or one group of 20), then players can sign up for that PvE queue FOR FREE and not have it count against their "you get 3 PvE queues" limit. This means that signing up to join "unpopular" content does not preclude you from being able to get into "popular" content, thereby removing one of the obstacles imposed on content that is not as popular as the Flavor of the Month. Once a PvE queue for a Low Participation instance forms a team and launches, people who have already signed on for it are NOT kicked off their signups for it under some misguided notion of retroactively imposing the Rule Of Three for signups.
Ideally this would remove one of the major DISincentives that exists in regards to signing up for PvE queues that are not "popular" to the exclusion of all else. In so doing, it would make it EASIER for those less popular sections of content to start actually see some player participation, rather than basically NONE. If people can sign up for more queues than just the 3 most popular/populated ones then the amount of content getting played regularly ought to *begin* to diversify somewhat.
Another possibility, which could be done in tandem with the above, is that any PvE Queue that has less than 20 Players in it (so as to cover the 5 man vs 20 man content equivalency) will have NO COOLDOWN TIME on its PvE Queue when completed. That way, content that is "not popular" can be rerun "immediately" by groups after completing it if the demand for that content is "low enough" that there really isn't any competition to get into it. The determination for whether or not to impose a cooldown would thus be determined upon/after completion and leaving the instance map (so that people who finish that content don't "count" against the 20 Player limit for being "in" that content). This then removes yet another DISincentive to playing content that is not currently heavily favored, because it allows groups of players to continue working together after having "found" each other (and their shared common interest), rather than scattering them again.
In regard to the OP's suggestion of doubling and tripling rewards ... that sounds a little misguided to me, as far as the mechanics of such things go. I say that because of the "stair step" nature of the incentives that brings about, which is perhaps too "blocky" of a structure for a rewards incentive.
Perhaps an alternative would be that if a particular Captain does not participate in a PvE Queue during a Bonus Marks Event, that AFTER that event is over, every PvE Queue that that Captain did not participate since the *previous* Bonus Marks Event in receives a +1% Bonus to its rewards payout. Note that this would mean that on average a variety of PvE Queues would be gaining something on the order of +2% or +3% PER DAY that they are not played, such that after a month of remaining untouched they'd be offering a nearly +100% reward payout (in terms of currencies of marks and dilithium and EC, etc.). That way you get a slowly rolling buildup of *incentive* to play a variety of content, rather than just sticking with a select few "Farm" PvE queues.
This formulation would achieve the same ends, but be more of a "slow pressure cooker" creating incentives to diversify the content that people play, rather than a sudden "breakpoint" stair step advantage. It acts more as a "nudge" than as a "push" for players to diversify which content they CHOOSE to play at any given time. The downside to this option I'm postulating is that it would require altering the PvE Queue UI so as to be able to display this relevant information, which isn't as trivial a task as it sounds. Another downside is that it would increase the amount of "bookkeeping" necessary for each Captain, and therefore may not be an ideal solution to the problem, considering server resources and loading issues.
Protonic Kool-Aid Down The Drain Cruiser
Immortal BOff Skills combo for Ground
Que waiting room times are the big indicator of what I sign up for. I a few alts, so I don't have time to twiddle my thumbs. I sign up for the things turning,but I could be 1 more on that starbase blockade. All i need is 3 more (because there is always 1 person signed up for it) to have flexibility to start a new queue in the blockade.
I feel strongly about a "Blue Light Special" n missions ala KMart.
Get the three Borg Space opts in a day, get marks and dil
Get the three ground ones in a day, get marks and dil
Get all three on Hive space, get marks and dil and an accolade....
Save X colonists on Mine trap, get the elachi device and save all the engineers, get marks and dil
save X number of ships on Azure, blow up the flag ship and save all the remans on Ensnared, get marks and dil
etc, etc.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
The "big 3", if you will, STFs are always full of players. At any time, the average wait is less than a minute. Compared to upwards of 30 minutes for less popular events and then there's the queues that almost never pop. I think one reason is STFs are a place for people to show off their latest DPS wonder, but the main reason I believe is dilithium. Players need a TRIBBLE-ton of dilithium.
Most days, I have only a short time to STO. I use that time for what I need most. I grind what Dil I can. Where I can earn Dil is limited and that is where you will find me. On days when I have more time, I will venture out to get other things I need, like fleet marks or marks for whatever Rep I may be running, but even then I'm still doing Dil runs.
Players will follow the Dil. Getting more players into any given event is then simply a matter of adjusting the Dil reward.
People have paraphrased devs saying that Elite STFs give too much reward for the time investment, and this may be true. If that doesn't change though, good luck getting people to do anything else. Adding dilithium to other events will make them more popular, even if the mark reward isnt quite as high as the STFs are currently.
The dilithium of those events gives people a way to play enjoyable space content as a way to accumulate dilithium ore for their characters. Remember: People want events to still give good rewards after they have finished the associated reputation system. Dilithium is the best way to do that.