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*Sigh* More Grinds, Fewer Grind Rewards
plb1982
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I hate this direction that Cryptic is taking. They are adding more and more grinds to the game, while reducing the rewards from grinding. The thank you Anniversary Ship is still frustrating to me; instead of thank you, heres a ship for supporting us for 4 years, its Hey, heres a ship that you can get for grinding away for 15 days. Oh, and its not complete without paying for the C-Store version. Grind, grind, but you dont get the full reward unless you pay too.
The mirror event. Better finish it 14 times in 3 weeks, (on a 20h c/d) cause if you just do it 13 times you get almost nothing. Grind, grind, grind.
And now the rep system. Grind, grind, grind oh, but were not going to let you have all the rewards. Now you have to pick and choose.
I dont care for the addition of grinds to falsely extend the game or keep players online. But for Gods sake at least let the players fully enjoy the fruits of their labors.
The mirror event. Better finish it 14 times in 3 weeks, (on a 20h c/d) cause if you just do it 13 times you get almost nothing. Grind, grind, grind.
And now the rep system. Grind, grind, grind oh, but were not going to let you have all the rewards. Now you have to pick and choose.
I dont care for the addition of grinds to falsely extend the game or keep players online. But for Gods sake at least let the players fully enjoy the fruits of their labors.
Post edited by plb1982 on
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You would also have earned at least 6k dil from it.
You would also have 13/14 of the project so when it comes back in 4 months or whenever you can complete it later for your 50k reward.
I am ALL FOR making the duration longer, but your claims that the standard reward from doing it = almost nothing is way off base.
Well to be fair, outside of Romulan, you could get that same amount of marks/dil faster running other PVEs or just hanging out in the Dyson battlezone. That's my beef with Mirror Invasion: It simply takes too long. If I weren't already at 12/14 I'd just quit. The Romulan mark option is also very nice for players who need them.
Fair point, the rewards for 13 runs add up somewhat... But they are almost nothing relative to if you complete it 14 times.
Not sure how you're saying 700 is average, that's 53 per run. 35 is probably an average.
SO, 13 times vs 14 times:
455 marks vs 1240 (37% not awful)
6240 dilithium vs 56,720 (11% pretty bad)
0 DOffs vs 1 (0%)
So depending on how important the DOff is to you and how you weight marks vs dilithium, you're looking at 15 - 20% of the reward... less if you primarily only care about dilithium.
Or, compare 13 runs to 13 ISEs... ISE takes half the time, but gives almost 5x the amount of dilithium.
Honestly, I only hated that it was a time gated event.
Beside the "basic" ships (the usual ships you get when leveling, since after all, we need a ship), I think no ship should come for free.
I mean its a spaceship, that costs multiple billion... well since there is no currency... ?resources?.
This is, we should have to work for ships (a ship rep project or something like that), I just hate being forced to do that in a short period of time.
Again: Grind isn't a bad thing per se. It ESSENTIALLY only means having a goal and having to work for it.
It just gets the negative meaning by implementing it poorly.
Time gated = poorly.
Limited to a fraction of content = poorly
Thats the problem. Not the grind itself.
If you run elite 53 -60 per run is about average. Sometimes you get 45, sometimes 60 or 70 and I've even gotten 83 a few times.
Yes I think that's what I'm starting to realize, its not so much being forced into doing a grind its the time-gating that's bugging me.
EDIT: Forced is the wrong word there as no one puts a gun to your head to do them :P
Odd how that happens isn't it? :P
Personally, I just don't like how the Elite version is a total mess.
This is true. I checked my whole house twice just to make sure.
It was about replacing them with a system that despite giving great bonuses for a weekend, actually amounted to fewer marks/rewards over the long haul once averaged out over the course of a month. That is the end game. Grind more, get rewarded less. Or in this case, spend more $ or make do with less. It is an effective idea from a business point of view, provided they don't push it so far as to alienate their consumers.
They are on the point already of being dangerously close to this issue.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Stopping a single notch from crossing that threshold is what I think businesses perceive to be "The sweet spot" of profitability. The risk is always in where that line is drawn.
But as someone who considers this game his main hobby I want my characters to be equipped as best as possible.
And if I want to do so I have to run that with... Well certainly not all of them but with the "mains".
From my view it's that or I can't stop playing at all, since I don't do things half, neither in real life nor in a game.
So, I personally would really like to focus on one character at a time and do what is needed for him/her when I feel it's time for it.
But time gated event means, to get the char supported sufficiently I have to play him at times when I actually do not really want to.
Well I know there are people handling/seeing that differently, but there are a lot that handle/ see that similar. And for those it's "forcing" to some degree. And this is why time gated events are a major problem for everyone with multiple characters and everyone who doesn't have time to play constantly.
The lowest I have gotten was 29 for a normal run and that was a very, very, very bad go.
The highest I can recall was in the 80s, for elite.
At a guess 3/4 of the teams I have been on scored 50 regardless of the difficulty; we either pwned it on normal for 50 or did meh on elite and got 50.
So my number was kind of an across the board average for both normal and elite. For normal only, 30 is about the worst you can do and 60 about the best (which includes closing over 30 rifts, 10/10 base, 5/5 defense and quick boss kill) but over 50 is rare. The "real" range is 30-50, but if your team does *anything at all* you should get 35-40 easily. So the normal mode average is probably 40, the average pug elite is probably about 50-55.
If you are averaging 35, you are having terrible luck with your teams though.
Funnily enuff, tour nerf hit the begginer players who needed that little amount of ec the hardest. Upper ec market (where ppl didn't bothered with mirror/lootomatic type of stuff) was sent back to stone age by embassy and then spire consoles.
My guess doff system is next. Seeing that last doff chain we saw was kitty chain somewhere in end of 2012, last loottables updates for doffexchanges was around the time TT connection doffs came out (may - june 2012), and pretty much nothing since then. Since then all new doffs are only coming from lock boxes.
Romulan doff change mission doesn't counе as it requires token coming only from lock box.
you think this is bad I was playing a game a while back where the special event that month was to earn such a large amount of marks to get the reward that most of the players would never be able to complete the task, and the reward was not that great to be honest.
at least when sto does a special like this most players should have the ability to get the rewards on at least some of their characters.
your all so well off here and you don't even see it.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
A happy customer will do much more good for a business than one grudging sale. The 'sweet spot' you describe is Old School thinking; though it seems to be what they are doing here, it will not pay off in the long run. That's thinking of your customers as adversaries. They risk destroying all the good will generated by the recent free inventory slots and other recent improvements.
Well, I guess it's their business. Hopefully they won't be thinking of us as their enemies...
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
If we compared this game to other games, that would get silly real fast. We're comparing the game we HAVE with the game we are GETTING in exchange (from what we can ascertain). That is a more valid and relevant comparison.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
there are plenty of comments in the forum of comparing this game to others, i am just pointing out that though there is a certain amont of what some players consider grind and that they might not be happy with what is offered as a reward, at least they will have an opportunity to get the prize and that the overall grind is not a virtually impossible one to complete as was represented in my comparison, even if the reward is not to their liking.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
These are not grinds. The anniversary ship took 5mins a day for 15 days. I am not sure how much less time could be invested in getting a ship. You just want everything handed to you? Maybe cryptic could have someone play the game for you since it is too much work. The mu event is a 15 min faceroll for dilithium. Too hard for you? Don't do it. Nobody is making you do it. Imagine having to play 3hrs 3 nights a week for 2-3 months for a reward that will be useless a few weeks later when next tier is released. That's a grind.
Unfortunately, welcome to most MMOs - as since the early days of EQ, that's been the paradigm for successful MMOs as they age and attempt to combat mudflation. Also, let's b honest here in that while yes, the Rep Powers were one aspect of why players grind through to T5; it's not the ONLY reason as you do get a fair amount of Marks (that can also be converted to Dil Ore if you don't want Rep gear) and Dil Ore for completing T5 as well, and that's also a big reason to complete the grind to T5.
Just saying.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Crafting was AWESOME!!.... back in season 5. Then Mk12 gear got added to the game..... etc.... and now crafting is underwhelming at best. I think the devs are kinda in a catch-22 here. They need to give people a reason to craft, but can't add a "killer app" without obsoleting something else.
Anyways, I know from experience that some of the hourly events really weren't worth paying attention to. Most of them I didn't care enough about to even look at the calendar.
And as for whether the game is "too grindy", allow me to reintroduce you to Mr. Zod rune. Making one of those via crafting in Diablo 2 was possibly the hardest grind any MMO has ever seen.
My character Tsin'xing