I really hope that they will elaborate more, especially when it comes to Fleet Marks. What is going to happen? We going to see an overall increase in base rewards? Fleet System adjustment?
I don't like the idea of a Fleet Mark bonus weekend, because it's an overall reduction of daily intake for the sake of a small boost for a few hours during the weekend when this officer is in play.
Or they could add Fleet Marks to the other rep grinds. Why should Defera be the only thing outside the queue that gives Fleet Marks? But I agree, Fleet Marks are the real concern with this change.
Or they could add Fleet Marks to the other rep grinds. Why should Defera be the only thing outside the queue that gives Fleet Marks? But I agree, Fleet Marks are the real concern with this change.
Speaking of Defera... Why does Defera award large amounts of fleet marks for individual play while other missions like on Nukara give none? I think they need to set a standard on the marks and follow it so it makes sense. Long ago it was said that fleet marks were going to be given for teamed missions but yet STFs don't have them and Defera does... and this was the reason they were taken from Nukara and the foundry.
/rant
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I spend 3 hours during each weekday grinding fleet marks for my alt toon because starting from scratch is a pain. If you're going to be taking away the 3 hour bonus mark event, I hope you leave some way of earning extra marks each day for 3 hours.
some xp-weekend every few months is absolutely no solution to the amount of xp that is needed to level reputations up and buy the gear for a new toon. If theres one event that really must stay around its mirror incursion.. easy solution, just make it available all the time if you take the events out.
Tour the Galaxy will not be as popular as it once was unless you either increase the rewards, or allow it to be run any number of times in an hour once again.
I call it bull, we need every day fleet-marks not 1 or 2 times a month, same with expertise, if you doing the rep-system you need the marks every day and not 1x a month.
And again cryptic is "fixing" something thats not broken...
Yeah pretty much this. I'm still trying to figure out how nerfing the hourly events is a good thing. With this new system, well, now we have no reason at all to log in during the week. And even better, we have to cram a weeks worth of grinding into two days. Yeah, sounds like a great system, way to go. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only reason Cryptic is doing this is the same reason they nerfed the tour and the foundry and the Dyson sphere; players were making too many marks/ec/dil for their liking. So they swing the nerf hammer and feed us this abortion of a system. Oh, and don't forget wasting the time and resources "revamping" the same busted, tired episodes that no-one does anyway instead of coming up with new content. Between this, the above stated nerfs, making the game way too easy and ARC, STO is starting to get well past the point of being TRIBBLE. Makes me wonder what other completely TRIBBLE things (oh, I'm sorry, I meant "improvements") Cryptic/PWE will think up to keep TRIBBLE up this once great game. But hey, it was fun while it lasted.
I don't care what the header says, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, an "ARC user".
The ONLY way this can be pulled off as being ok is if there is a bonus EVERY week.
Knowing them we will only see one weekend a month. I think they look for ways to take stuff away all the time while selling it as a feature.
You want an actual good idea? Put marks as rewards from pvp.
The Priority One podcast recently brought up a good point about this change. What is going to happen to the Crafting Events?
Are crafters going to just get shafted? - having to pay the extra dilithium all the time and deal with Particle Traces becoming even harder to come across? The latter WILL bleed over into the powered alien artifact(and, by proxy, console) market as well. It will undoubtedly hit fleets still developing their starbase science branch too.
Thankfully I didn't really care about the hourly events (sure, the added marks were nice if by chance STFing by the right time, but nothing I'd need).
But what is the ship in the background in the blog's pic right above the Intrepid class saucer?
(There's also a part of the Daeinos warbird down left in the pic.)
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Thankfully I didn't really care about the hourly events (sure, the added marks were nice if by chance STFing by the right time, but nothing I'd need).
But what is the ship in the background in the blog's pic right above the Intrepid class saucer?
(There's also a part of the Daeinos warbird down left in the pic.)
Looks to me like the 1000-day Veteran Fed equivalent to the Daeinos (can't remember the name) with maybe a Jem-Set on for purple trails and nacelles? The orange on the front of the ship looks like the phaser lotus visuals.
So... Why did the ARC launcher today automatically change itself to the beta version without permission? I am not exactly a fan of beta software. And I did NOT sign up for the beta participation. I might have to resort to finding the old original launcher without ARC if Cryptic insists on putting beta software as a mandatory update on my machine :mad:
What has ARC got to do with hourly events. You would be better off posting this under the Arc threads currently active.
Yeah its not to get to VA or LG per say its all that expertise like for myself across all my characters I have 100's of millions of expertise but still I have many characters who suffer from not having what they need because where a lot of alts have 5-8 million expertise each it doesn't do any good on the ones that are newer.
Another thing is that the difference in space and ground for expertise isn't balanced you get like a ratio of around 1k to 1 expertise between space and ground. Is like for me I have an assembly line of marauders so all these tour of the galaxy and academy and such I don't bother with them because I have a system that doesn't involve them to get my dilithium so thats why I don't care much for most of those hourly events.
Perhaps adding Expertise to the Account Bank would be a good solution for you. :hmm
Or they could add Fleet Marks to the other rep grinds. Why should Defera be the only thing outside the queue that gives Fleet Marks? But I agree, Fleet Marks are the real concern with this change.
That's an excellent point, Fleet Marks should be earned in any team queued event...I think they said that when we started with the Fleet Mark and Starbase system. It simply makes sense. I even appreciate the five fleets marks I get out of the CE even if I go with Nukara marks. Now I think it could be upped a little, sure, but if you queue up for three hours straight and have a small amount of fleet marks for each mission you can get a nice supplemental fleet mark bonus there.
I too am hoping that the mark hourly events will be retained. The rewards on the weekend event would have to be fairly astronomical in order to cover the gap. Not that I oppose that, especially in the smaller fleets the fleet action rewards can seem rather pitiful as time goes on.
A smaller fleet mark reward added to story missions and episodes isn't a bad idea either.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
I have to say, I am not in favor of this change. Not everyone has access or the ability to play on a limited time window such as what is being presented. If I am unable to log during the revamped Bonus Example Marks Weekend, I'm screwed for a LONG time before I am able to benefit from it again, having to wait for all the other Mark-specific type weekends to pass.
The hourly system provides a highly flexible window for participating in a specific desired event. The bonus mark weekend was nice, but I ultimately was online for fewer total hours over the course of the weekend than I spent during the week itself.
An interesting comparison that can perhaps be made is looking at World of War craft's original battleground weekends. For a long time, a specific pvp battleground was chosen (and rotated with the others) and playing games in that battlefield during that weekend resulted in bonus currency. After quite some time, it was deemed too restrictive to the playerbase, as it basically penalized you if you didn't log in during the window, or logged in infrequently. It was later changed so the bonus 'holiday' would last all week, to much acclaim by the playerbase.
These same arguments apply to several of the other events in the current hourly rotation. Crafting, trace gathering, Mirror Universe...these are all things that people look forward to with anticipation, albeit some more than others. It seems the argument for the change basically boils down to "there are events that people don't do, so lets change that." Perhaps we should be looking at why specific events are less popular and make changes to them individually instead of trying to revamp an entire system.
I think the best solution is to keep the hourly rotation and add special mark-specific weekends like we just had.
Looks to me like the 1000-day Veteran Fed equivalent to the Daeinos (can't remember the name) with maybe a Jem-Set on for purple trails and nacelles? The orange on the front of the ship looks like the phaser lotus visuals.
I'm looking forward to this. I usually do the events when they come up. Unless it is one I don't care for. So I'm looking forward to the new style of events and see what happens.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
So... instead of being able to do a specific event more or less whenever I want...
I am forced to wait weeks for it to return... that is a totally great and wonderful Idea that of course won't fire back!
And no, I will not play each and every event just because they are here, this update will only lead to me playing less and only when "my" event is online but maybe that is the plan, ease the serverload to specific times so you can cut a few servers and "save" some money.
Looks to me like the 1000-day Veteran Fed equivalent to the Daeinos (can't remember the name) with maybe a Jem-Set on for purple trails and nacelles? The orange on the front of the ship looks like the phaser lotus visuals.
Ah thanks, yes, now I see the saucer and the secondary hull. Still, it's all twisted, I guess it's the discharge it's flying through...
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
I have to say, I am not in favor of this change. Not everyone has access or the ability to play on a limited time window such as what is being presented. If I am unable to log during the revamped Bonus Example Marks Weekend, I'm screwed for a LONG time before I am able to benefit from it again, having to wait for all the other Mark-specific type weekends to pass.
The hourly system provides a highly flexible window for participating in a specific desired event. The bonus mark weekend was nice, but I ultimately was online for fewer total hours over the course of the weekend than I spent during the week itself.
An interesting comparison that can perhaps be made is looking at World of War craft's original battleground weekends. For a long time, a specific pvp battleground was chosen (and rotated with the others) and playing games in that battlefield during that weekend resulted in bonus currency. After quite some time, it was deemed too restrictive to the playerbase, as it basically penalized you if you didn't log in during the window, or logged in infrequently. It was later changed so the bonus 'holiday' would last all week, to much acclaim by the playerbase.
These same arguments apply to several of the other events in the current hourly rotation. Crafting, trace gathering, Mirror Universe...these are all things that people look forward to with anticipation, albeit some more than others. It seems the argument for the change basically boils down to "there are events that people don't do, so lets change that." Perhaps we should be looking at why specific events are less popular and make changes to them individually instead of trying to revamp an entire system.
I think the best solution is to keep the hourly rotation and add special mark-specific weekends like we just had.
I agree. Yes some events can be nixed such as the Vault Shuttle Event, etc, but removing everything currently in the hourly events in favor of just weekends only is not a good idea in my opinion.
Tweak the existing hourly events if need be a bit and add these weekend bonuses on top of them, yes. Don't remove all of the events in favor for a weekend only system.
Would be nice if the devs bother to answer this, but I know you wont, anyways, the problems with the hourly events, it is that they are hard to find, newer players don't have a clue about where to go, what to do, who to contact, these hourly events are like Bigfoot, everybody talks about them, but no one has seen one.
We need to be able to have a link where we can click like we do for normal PVE events and have some kind of slot that reads (HORLY EVENT click here). The the events needs to give us the opportunity to click something that will warped us there so we don't spend 3 hours running through the galaxy trying to find out where the heck is XY22
well then all I gotta say is you/they are not looking hard enough when it was right in plane sight the whole time, its not hard to hit "J" and see the hourly event right there and then que up for said event, no need to go and find where to go when it would take you there when enough players are qued to the same event.
out of everything 8.5 was bringing this was the one I thought was the mistake, for one yes people do the events even not during the bonus hour but was that not the whole idea of the que system to do it whenever the so player choosed and by chance if it was during the bonus hour time great they got bonus marks. I have ALOT of characters and depending on who or what I was in the mood for I would check the hourly event calendar all the time to see what was running especially if I was leveling a character like now and know that Mirror invasion will be later tonight for me great that will push me to 50 or very close to it atleast I also use that event to get the expertise that I use for the rep system anyways as always I may not agree with this but will deal with it I do not entirely say that this will be a bad thing just think getting rid of the hour events is going to hurt more than do good not everyone will be able to do a weekend event as you plan to do here, would almost like to see something like you did in the past when the STF's would have a bonus once a week but would rotate which mission got the bonus. I guess as long as the calendar itself is kept up so players will see whats coming in the month that this might work well. I guess we shall see.
The only thing I'm concerned about is the Mirror Event.
It's a large portion of the playerbases favourite way to level up alts, a weekend event of mirror would be amazing as we could have a levelling weekend - but turning it into a standard event with a 1h cooldown would make it completely useless and kill it off.
I really hope you go for the former!
Same. I LOVE Mirror Invasion for all the same reasons, plus the Dilithium. Most of my characters reached lvl 50 quickly because of that event.
A small part of the hourly events system was to provide small fleets an opportunity to earn extra fleet marks to help their progression.
The demand for fleet marks is daily. Slowing down options for earning fleet marks will again impact small fleet progression. This is not the same issue as reputation marks, which are not as extremely large a demand as holding progression.
Playing a weekend event when fleet marks are gated by long cooldowns (ie. Defera 20 hours) will not likely be a substitute for the loss of the hourly events.
Perhaps this can be solved if the award of fleet marks (only) were increased to the hourly event bonus amount at all times enabling small fleets to continue to grind fleet marks at rates similar to one implemented a year and a half ago to assist small fleets.
So the answer to some event not being played much is not to increase diversity but to rather cut diversity and funnel everyone into the same event. You guys have totally lost me now, there are literally hundreds of ideas on these forums that players actually want to play in game and current systems that are not up to par. Instead, we remove content from a content starved heavily grindy game. Make sense when put that way?
Academy Event - it is fine once in a while but gets really old and really stale fast.
Anomaly Scan - perhaps this would be used more if we ACTUALLY had a decent crafting system.
Dilithium Mining Event - this is a staple for a game with so many cooldowns, needs, and gates on dilithium.
Bonus Marks Event - If you guys are dead set against helping out smaller fleets get marks, then why not just make it that you need 20 people to form a fleet rather than a few?
I see now why DStahl is on another project with these half-backed ideas he sent coming down the pipe. I just hope we get clear of them soon and we can see what Mr. D'Angelo has in mind.
Perhaps adding Expertise to the Account Bank would be a good solution for you. :hmm
That would be the most awesome thing ever if they did that lol. I'd actually be more inclined to make even more alts If I had that option rofl. I have some alts right now that have done nothing but doffing for 2 years now but have millions of expertise and kind of only reason I started getting winter epohhs for marks to get them rolling to make room for the new lockbox ships for this year to collect on them lol.
I really don't see the point of taking away the hourly events. As stated, some players still enjoy them. Keep running those as well as the weekend events. Also, lets have some different events like the occasional pvp assault/defense of ESD and Qo'nos...yes, of course, toss up the option of a pvp zone and the regular instances for those that don't wish to participate. There were a lot of people having fun with a particular exploit about a year or so ago when the opposite faction could literally invade our home worlds...so, just a thought.
Comments
Or they could add Fleet Marks to the other rep grinds. Why should Defera be the only thing outside the queue that gives Fleet Marks? But I agree, Fleet Marks are the real concern with this change.
Speaking of Defera... Why does Defera award large amounts of fleet marks for individual play while other missions like on Nukara give none? I think they need to set a standard on the marks and follow it so it makes sense. Long ago it was said that fleet marks were going to be given for teamed missions but yet STFs don't have them and Defera does... and this was the reason they were taken from Nukara and the foundry.
/rant
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Yeah pretty much this. I'm still trying to figure out how nerfing the hourly events is a good thing. With this new system, well, now we have no reason at all to log in during the week. And even better, we have to cram a weeks worth of grinding into two days. Yeah, sounds like a great system, way to go. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only reason Cryptic is doing this is the same reason they nerfed the tour and the foundry and the Dyson sphere; players were making too many marks/ec/dil for their liking. So they swing the nerf hammer and feed us this abortion of a system. Oh, and don't forget wasting the time and resources "revamping" the same busted, tired episodes that no-one does anyway instead of coming up with new content. Between this, the above stated nerfs, making the game way too easy and ARC, STO is starting to get well past the point of being TRIBBLE. Makes me wonder what other completely TRIBBLE things (oh, I'm sorry, I meant "improvements") Cryptic/PWE will think up to keep TRIBBLE up this once great game. But hey, it was fun while it lasted.
Knowing them we will only see one weekend a month. I think they look for ways to take stuff away all the time while selling it as a feature.
You want an actual good idea? Put marks as rewards from pvp.
Are crafters going to just get shafted? - having to pay the extra dilithium all the time and deal with Particle Traces becoming even harder to come across? The latter WILL bleed over into the powered alien artifact(and, by proxy, console) market as well. It will undoubtedly hit fleets still developing their starbase science branch too.
But what is the ship in the background in the blog's pic right above the Intrepid class saucer?
(There's also a part of the Daeinos warbird down left in the pic.)
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Looks to me like the 1000-day Veteran Fed equivalent to the Daeinos (can't remember the name) with maybe a Jem-Set on for purple trails and nacelles? The orange on the front of the ship looks like the phaser lotus visuals.
As if it hasn't already been decided and all we get to do is rearrange two, maybe, three chairs on the Titanic.
What has ARC got to do with hourly events. You would be better off posting this under the Arc threads currently active.
That's an excellent point, Fleet Marks should be earned in any team queued event...I think they said that when we started with the Fleet Mark and Starbase system. It simply makes sense. I even appreciate the five fleets marks I get out of the CE even if I go with Nukara marks. Now I think it could be upped a little, sure, but if you queue up for three hours straight and have a small amount of fleet marks for each mission you can get a nice supplemental fleet mark bonus there.
I too am hoping that the mark hourly events will be retained. The rewards on the weekend event would have to be fairly astronomical in order to cover the gap. Not that I oppose that, especially in the smaller fleets the fleet action rewards can seem rather pitiful as time goes on.
A smaller fleet mark reward added to story missions and episodes isn't a bad idea either.
The hourly system provides a highly flexible window for participating in a specific desired event. The bonus mark weekend was nice, but I ultimately was online for fewer total hours over the course of the weekend than I spent during the week itself.
An interesting comparison that can perhaps be made is looking at World of War craft's original battleground weekends. For a long time, a specific pvp battleground was chosen (and rotated with the others) and playing games in that battlefield during that weekend resulted in bonus currency. After quite some time, it was deemed too restrictive to the playerbase, as it basically penalized you if you didn't log in during the window, or logged in infrequently. It was later changed so the bonus 'holiday' would last all week, to much acclaim by the playerbase.
These same arguments apply to several of the other events in the current hourly rotation. Crafting, trace gathering, Mirror Universe...these are all things that people look forward to with anticipation, albeit some more than others. It seems the argument for the change basically boils down to "there are events that people don't do, so lets change that." Perhaps we should be looking at why specific events are less popular and make changes to them individually instead of trying to revamp an entire system.
I think the best solution is to keep the hourly rotation and add special mark-specific weekends like we just had.
yup, the Chimera
Keep dreaming guys .... keep on dreaming .
If you think that ppl will wait for weeks for a Fleet Mark bonus event ... .
You've just managed to achieve the exact opposite you claim to want .
Thanks for trying to herd us and put us on your schedule , but no thanks . :mad:
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I am forced to wait weeks for it to return... that is a totally great and wonderful Idea that of course won't fire back!
And no, I will not play each and every event just because they are here, this update will only lead to me playing less and only when "my" event is online but maybe that is the plan, ease the serverload to specific times so you can cut a few servers and "save" some money.
Member since December 2009
Ah thanks, yes, now I see the saucer and the secondary hull. Still, it's all twisted, I guess it's the discharge it's flying through...
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
You're absolutely right !
It is a great and wonderful idea ... but what's wonderful about it is how players don't see what's coming ... .
And that is truly great .... for Cryptic ... . :cool:
I agree. Yes some events can be nixed such as the Vault Shuttle Event, etc, but removing everything currently in the hourly events in favor of just weekends only is not a good idea in my opinion.
Tweak the existing hourly events if need be a bit and add these weekend bonuses on top of them, yes. Don't remove all of the events in favor for a weekend only system.
well then all I gotta say is you/they are not looking hard enough when it was right in plane sight the whole time, its not hard to hit "J" and see the hourly event right there and then que up for said event, no need to go and find where to go when it would take you there when enough players are qued to the same event.
out of everything 8.5 was bringing this was the one I thought was the mistake, for one yes people do the events even not during the bonus hour but was that not the whole idea of the que system to do it whenever the so player choosed and by chance if it was during the bonus hour time great they got bonus marks. I have ALOT of characters and depending on who or what I was in the mood for I would check the hourly event calendar all the time to see what was running especially if I was leveling a character like now and know that Mirror invasion will be later tonight for me great that will push me to 50 or very close to it atleast I also use that event to get the expertise that I use for the rep system anyways as always I may not agree with this but will deal with it I do not entirely say that this will be a bad thing just think getting rid of the hour events is going to hurt more than do good not everyone will be able to do a weekend event as you plan to do here, would almost like to see something like you did in the past when the STF's would have a bonus once a week but would rotate which mission got the bonus. I guess as long as the calendar itself is kept up so players will see whats coming in the month that this might work well. I guess we shall see.
Enh... it's true. :P I can't even remember the last time I did an hourly event.
My character Tsin'xing
Same. I LOVE Mirror Invasion for all the same reasons, plus the Dilithium. Most of my characters reached lvl 50 quickly because of that event.
The demand for fleet marks is daily. Slowing down options for earning fleet marks will again impact small fleet progression. This is not the same issue as reputation marks, which are not as extremely large a demand as holding progression.
Playing a weekend event when fleet marks are gated by long cooldowns (ie. Defera 20 hours) will not likely be a substitute for the loss of the hourly events.
Perhaps this can be solved if the award of fleet marks (only) were increased to the hourly event bonus amount at all times enabling small fleets to continue to grind fleet marks at rates similar to one implemented a year and a half ago to assist small fleets.
Academy Event - it is fine once in a while but gets really old and really stale fast.
Anomaly Scan - perhaps this would be used more if we ACTUALLY had a decent crafting system.
Dilithium Mining Event - this is a staple for a game with so many cooldowns, needs, and gates on dilithium.
Bonus Marks Event - If you guys are dead set against helping out smaller fleets get marks, then why not just make it that you need 20 people to form a fleet rather than a few?
I see now why DStahl is on another project with these half-backed ideas he sent coming down the pipe. I just hope we get clear of them soon and we can see what Mr. D'Angelo has in mind.
That would be the most awesome thing ever if they did that lol. I'd actually be more inclined to make even more alts If I had that option rofl. I have some alts right now that have done nothing but doffing for 2 years now but have millions of expertise and kind of only reason I started getting winter epohhs for marks to get them rolling to make room for the new lockbox ships for this year to collect on them lol.