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Cryptic is slowing down Starbase Development and Reputation Advancement
aelfwin1
Member Posts: 2,896 Arc User
Cryptic is slowing down Starbase Development and Reputation Advancment , and they are telling you that they are doing this for YOU !
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Anniversary Event -- and while I agree that that is important , I am quite saddened to see that real , long term issues (unlike the come & gone Anniversary deal) get so little acknowledgement from the players .
Please observe what we leave behind with Season 8.5 :
THE BONUS MARKS EVENT
This event was something that you got to play 2-3 times within a 24 hour period if you were a hardcore player , or once or twice a week if you were a casual player .
And no matter how you look at it , this gave you extra Fleet Marks and extra Reputation Marks .
By Cryptic's New Plan(tm) , to get any kind of bonus Marks (even bigger bonuses then now) you have to wait for a designated Weekend by Cryptic , that will come around ... in what , every few months ?
And if you miss one of those because gods forbid you have a life , you will not get bonus Marks for .... 3-5 months , maybe more ?
If Cryptic's mission was to achieve slowing down the building of Starbases and Fleet assets -- consider this : Mission Accomplished !
- Now let's go look for a reason for this .
Is Cryptic not happy with the progress large or small Fleets are making on Fleet Projects ?
Possibly .
Is Cryptic not happy with the speed with which you finish a Reputation ?
Not likely , since they just given us a Token system to speed that up .
So what is it ?
It's the 'Lever' . Or that's how I started calling it at least .
Once upon a time , when Cryptic made FE's regularly they "pulled a lever" on Saturdays and the mission would become available and happy players would flock in droves to play the new content for 4 weekends in a row .
Now we're getting a variant of that :
We are suppose to flock in droves for Mark Bonuses .
The small problem was , we already had (smaller) bonuses that we did when we felt like it (with the Hourly Event's Calendar) .
Not good enough for Cryptic .
So they took away those minor bonuses , all the while singing about how this is really for us ... .
Ecxept for this one little slip :
So in short , they took away your Bonus Marks , just so they can give them back to you at a later time (when they need a cash infusion) and you should just deal with it .
What happens with all those Fleet Projects that get less and less FM in the meantime (for months and months) or don't get started at all ?
If you're lucky , you'll be distracted by all the new ships and lockboxes .
If Cryptic's lucky , you won't quit in disgust .
The Grind just got worse for everybody -- and I mean EVERYBODY , even those who will flock to the Bonus Weekends yet to come , and the small fleets that didn't see the end of it .... , well they might as well ask Cryptic for a telescope .
ENJOY .
Cryptic loves you .
There has been a lot of talk lately about the Anniversary Event -- and while I agree that that is important , I am quite saddened to see that real , long term issues (unlike the come & gone Anniversary deal) get so little acknowledgement from the players .
Please observe what we leave behind with Season 8.5 :
THE BONUS MARKS EVENT
This event was something that you got to play 2-3 times within a 24 hour period if you were a hardcore player , or once or twice a week if you were a casual player .
And no matter how you look at it , this gave you extra Fleet Marks and extra Reputation Marks .
By Cryptic's New Plan(tm) , to get any kind of bonus Marks (even bigger bonuses then now) you have to wait for a designated Weekend by Cryptic , that will come around ... in what , every few months ?
And if you miss one of those because gods forbid you have a life , you will not get bonus Marks for .... 3-5 months , maybe more ?
If Cryptic's mission was to achieve slowing down the building of Starbases and Fleet assets -- consider this : Mission Accomplished !
- Now let's go look for a reason for this .
Is Cryptic not happy with the progress large or small Fleets are making on Fleet Projects ?
Possibly .
Is Cryptic not happy with the speed with which you finish a Reputation ?
Not likely , since they just given us a Token system to speed that up .
So what is it ?
It's the 'Lever' . Or that's how I started calling it at least .
Once upon a time , when Cryptic made FE's regularly they "pulled a lever" on Saturdays and the mission would become available and happy players would flock in droves to play the new content for 4 weekends in a row .
Now we're getting a variant of that :
We are suppose to flock in droves for Mark Bonuses .
The small problem was , we already had (smaller) bonuses that we did when we felt like it (with the Hourly Event's Calendar) .
Not good enough for Cryptic .
So they took away those minor bonuses , all the while singing about how this is really for us ... .
Ecxept for this one little slip :
Captain Gecko on Priority 1 , time index 29:50
" The Hourly Event's Calendar , the design with that was the hope to get ppl to stick around for maybe an extra hour , 'cause of that extra event that's coming up that they might want to stick around to , but because it was so common , the amount of awards you could get was so limited , while what happens on a Weekend , it's meant to cause a huge boost for that time period , and that huge boosts turns into a lot of numbers for us , then when those numbers go up , the money goes up as well . "
So in short , they took away your Bonus Marks , just so they can give them back to you at a later time (when they need a cash infusion) and you should just deal with it .
What happens with all those Fleet Projects that get less and less FM in the meantime (for months and months) or don't get started at all ?
If you're lucky , you'll be distracted by all the new ships and lockboxes .
If Cryptic's lucky , you won't quit in disgust .
The Grind just got worse for everybody -- and I mean EVERYBODY , even those who will flock to the Bonus Weekends yet to come , and the small fleets that didn't see the end of it .... , well they might as well ask Cryptic for a telescope .
ENJOY .
Cryptic loves you .
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
(although considering how well the last weekend fleet marks event went...)
If i am mistaken, then i agree with OP this is just stupid, and sure you will get more people at the weekend.
But you are gonna loose a massive quantity of your players during the week.
Too much instant gratification in this busted TRIBBLE game. I say take away the double xp rep tokens first, followed by giving leaver penalties to private groups, followed by tripling the amount of everything a starbase needs and giving a player account a hard cap of 10 character slots
Im sick and tired of 1 man fleets, literal armies of alts, and qq on the forum about it.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
once i hit T5 dyson rep, i'll have enough marks to buy the final peice of the gorund set on this char, then start making rep tokens for my alts.
if weekends are only bonus mark hours.... then you'd see the same bonus happening every 5 weeks.... (Omega, then rom, then dyson, then nukara, then fleet, then omega again for an example.)
not to mention all these bonus fleet mark things, along iwth the tribbles, sure it might slow down a bit, but thats not stopping you from running the content on non bonus times.
You know what that means.
- Scotty, to La Forge
That you won't be taking advantage of easy mode, and thus will earn your marks respectably?
No , it means that he will not be earning any bonus Marks , unless there will be a daily for that , which I highly doubt .
And FYI , there is/was no easy mode .
Nor any of your "playing respectably" nonsense .
So running a Fleet mark weekend every 5th or so weekend will utterly suck balls as those are what I farm during the bonus mark events.
So, there are people out there who are swimming in fleet marks. Heck, I'm one myself - I have nearly 14,000 of them and, because I'm in a healthy fleet with limits on how much one person's allowed to donate, I can't give them away.
A number of people like that, however, don't give them away - they trade them. You will see offers like this being made in ESD chat all the time... deals for someone flush with marks to join a fleet, donate to a project, then collect a reward (and, automatically, a wodge of fleet credits) and go away again.
Most of these deals work out perfectly fine. I know people who do them regularly, to the satisfaction of everyone involved.
So, frankly, I think the change to the bonus marks event isn't significant. There's a plentiful supply of fleet marks out there, the trick is just to find some way of hooking up with a supplier.
If anything, the people who are most likely to be affected are the ones who are trying to get a character up through the rep tiers, and who won't have a regular little pile of bonus Omega/Rom/Nukara marks coming in. The specialist individual marks, now, those are something I've had to worry about - hustling quickly round the Tau Dewa patrol to get the bonus Rom marks so I could fill a project on schedule, ahh yes, I remember it well. But fleet marks? They've never worried me.
its a moot point, the whole rep system has been flawed from day one.
and gonalis is right, if you wanted to, you can easily acquire all the marks you wanted for a week in a few hours. i can spend about 3 hours on dyson ground zone assuming enough people are interested in it and maybe pick up 400-600 marks in one sitting with the none bonus mark event going and probably a lot more on bonus mark event.
rep aside which is easily accomplished and that dont make one iota of difference to the op opinion. the fleet side, i don't know of, but running specific stf's to get fleet marks, thats gonna take time mostly due to the inbuilt time of some of these stf's like azure rescue for ex.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
i wonder if some elitists have been quietly whispering into dev ears to get their wish...
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Speaking of queues, could you imagine a mark reward for PvP? Sounds like a way to get players to PvP and a way to get more than say 50 people to queue. Seems like there may be some groundwork for this here.
As far as fleet projects, just get more members in your fleet. We're hitting tier 3 of our spire in a couple days and most of our members were still unable to make a lot of contributions. Really, all these cries of fleets not being able to complete/do projects quickly is about how not every project input is fleet marks. We have a few fleet members which complain that they can't contribute marks, then we bring up the other inputs, they become quiet. No one wants to contribute dil, but guess what, the entire fleet system is a dil sink.
More people means less individual costs to get something. Sounds kind of like that evil word guv'ment. Posts like this are equivilent of a tiny island like Grenada complaining about not having a space program.
Regardless, marks are incredibly easy to get now, and they're making it easier. What's better is that they're offering "weekends" when you can queue whenever. This is better for people who have a life, as opposed to those who would have to plan their playtime around hourly events.
Solution: Make the marks selectable. I don't mind doing a Nukara raid, but(!) The only marks I need is FLEETMARKS.
Fwiw, imo, this would be a start.
There you go.
And if I may add (and I thought that was pretty obvious honestly...), us players that cannot regularly participate in bonus weekends events will have 2 choices:
- Play the game... "respectably" LOL
- Buy those cooldown reset tokens
This aims casual players.
- Scotty, to La Forge
I'm just more annoyed at the removal of Mirror Invasion, Reputation projects at Mk 12 eat XP and regaining that is too slow via STF's and what not. Even with a 1 hour/8 hour bonus item its still hard to get it with the MU.
Lol. Sarcastic or not, it's the sad truth.
Best is:
"Thing X takes as long as 5 minutes to do. FIVE!!! How will I ever do that on my six alts per race across all three factions!!??? Cryptic sucks, hates alts, I pay good money, etc, blablalbla, ad nauseum...."
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
My character Tsin'xing
This exactly. It's only one/few player fleets that are crying. There is a simple solution, get more people or join a bigger fleet. Private fleets are responsible for 99% of the complaints about fleets on the forums.
And if one can't log in for the better part of a week that was the recent Dyson "weekend" (which is the model for future mark weekends), you have nothing to complain about. But blaming the devs for not consulting you about your schedule is easier though.
I ask because we have no issue filling everything but marks on KDF side.
We are struggling along to pay the thousands of marks to get the dilithium mine to level 1
And similar for each of the level 1 upgrades.
All other catagories fill swiftly enough and I have most of my fleet credits for donated dilithium. So you all sound like you have reverse problems than our fleets.
Oh and P.S.: This won't affect me as I am rarely on for bonus marks anyway and I try and put as many of them into the fleet as well.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
If you are motivated, its not a problem.
1. Don't deliberately waste more and more of your players' time. Our time is valuable too.
2. Don't boldly reach deeper and deeper into customer pockets. You have a good scam going as it is. Don't be greedy.
3. Don't reduce player choice. Forcing players to grind for their goals via fewer and fewer possible methods makes players disappear. A wide variety of content is worthless if players can only experience it in ever-narrowing ways.
When even Brent Justice has had enough of your crass attempts to shoehorn players into your farmville-like grind and conspicuously large money and resource sinks, insidiously weaving the Lobi lotto scam into a decidedly un-giftlike anniversary reward while also undermining the Z-store ship, I must agree. I've had it too. I refuse to jump through this many hoops for anything in any game. Don't you see how insulting it is to tell your paying customers that their time is as worthless as their patronage and their preferred way of digesting the game's content?
Cryptic used to give us reason to celebrate. Now you put us to work like farm animals. And your uncharacteristic and fleeting freebies in the Z-store are an obvious attempt to soften the blow of what promises to be the most grind-tastic piece of content you've yet produced, to ease us into the new new normal.
This is pretty spot on with my disagreements of what they're doing. Gone are the days of playing what you want to play, for the sheer joy of the game. Yes it is game, meant to be enjoyed. Enjoyment can be full of effort (like the old STF's were). What is the point of Events anyway? To make us repeat content so often in a short period of time that we are utterly sick of it and the game in general? It really is beyond me why they design the game system this way. Its myopic. They wonder why some of the old missions aren't getting played, but they don't give them these fat high dollar/'time saving' rewards. People are flocking toward activities that are ultimately not that fun by merit of the rewards they give. Lets face it, doing the ice race was fun the first year maybe. It was old the second year. Having to repeat it again on all characters you want the new ship on was downright lazy on their part, and excessively droll on the player's part. The irony is, they're trying to funnel us toward Grinding the most boring, uninspired elements of the game they can. The elements of the game that were exciting they yank out (DS9 Fleet Action, Proper Old Stf's, Terradome, etc). I really don't know what they're thinking. They also are continually releasing these lockbox ships which of themselves don't necessarily break the mood and theme, but by making them so much better than the average ship people don't even want to fly the normal ships anymore.
There's something of a disconnect here. The whole point of what the OP is complaining about makes me want to pull my hair. You actually LIKE events? Seriously? I wish this game never had another Event again. How about just make the game fun, for all people. Let me farm something on my terms, not some narrow window of time to artificially drive up the value of a stupid console, ship skin, or whatever. A video game is about the adventure, not all this petty TRIBBLE we're supposed to grasp for. And oh by the way, why don't they give us an inventory/doff storage of significant size so we actually would want to buy their stuff, or collect what they have to offer. I fill up to the max even with max account banks and inventory slots. Do I delete old collectibles? Spare Hypos? Spare gear? My issue is that the focus should be fun. Everything else will work out, including them getting their money. To be honest I liked the game better when it was about the challenge of the effort, not about grinding for the latest bs.
Oh and Terradome exciting? no not really...
My character Tsin'xing