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Repetition, and how it affects fleets...
koppenflak
Member Posts: 191 Arc User
Hello all,
I tend not to post much. And when I do, it's generally because I want to give feedback or report a problem; so consider this thread to be both. I'm going to try to be as constructive as I can.
For the last six to twelve months (we can probably go back well before Season 8, but it has been - arguably - most pronounced since A Step Between Stars was released) STO has seen an increasingly large number of systems and missions that reward players who play them repeatedly. I'm not going to use the word starting with "G", but you all know what it is.
I'm not blind to the fact this is an MMO. Repetition is part of the game if you want to get the good kit and gear, but the pattern we have right now is that repetition is simply not challenging; it's neither difficult nor variable, and in many cases amounts to abusing the W,S,A and D keys and periodically mashing "F".
...And like a medication (and who likes medication, really?) we are effectively required to do it once per day, for a pre-defined period of time, if we want to get the reward at the end. What if we miss a few days? What if we burn out and need a break? Well... then we miss the reward. This is the case with the Mirror Hakeev DOFF, the preceding anniversary event's Dyson destroyers and their exclusive secondary deflector, and the preceding Winter Event.
Note that there has been, effectively, no break between any of these 'events'. We have been led to the assumption that if we do not get those items now then we may never get them again.
Can I put it out there that I do not mind playing a mission 14, 20 or even 30 times to get something of value. The issue is that we are told that we have only a limited amount of time to do it. Would I be writing this if the Mirror Event was being added as a permanent feature to STO that I could enjoy over the course of a year, as opposed to 20-odd days? No. In all probability, I wouldn't be, because I would be able to spend my time doing the things I want to do, rather than the things the game is telling me to do.
Heading off the inevitable response of: "But you don't need it. You simply want it. You could simply not play it..."
Sure, that's true. I have a heck of a lot of characters, and as much as I would like to do the mirror event on all of them - it's simply not possible. It would take me several hours of my day to go through this event on every character I have - hours I just don't have as a person who works for a living an earns a pay check.
Cryptic - I think you did the right thing with the Dyson reputation. There was no 'daily demand' to run a mission to get commendations - there is very real provision for the weekend players who get to play several hours at a stretch, and not much during the week. I seriously appreciated that, and I've enjoyed the Dyson reputation more because of it.
...Now how does any of this affect fleets?
I do not know what 'metrics' are telling you, Cryptic, but large and active fleets have metrics of their own. In many cases we have hundreds of players in our rosters, all of whom have expectations of their officers and leaders on what they need, want, and expect. We can tell a lot about player attitudes to the game by the attitudes we are seeing towards our own, smaller fleet communities, and what I am seeing is troubling me.
People are getting burnt out by the repetitive, unchallenging 'event-driven' content. People are walking away from the game, and fleet chat channels are silent and pretty uncooperative because everyone just wants to get "it" out of the way so they can log off and go and do something productive, or at least more enjoyable, with their time.
I have had multiple people in my fleet complain that no one is willing to run missions with them - a quick check of the roster tells me why: they're all playing mirror. No one has time to do anything else.
STO has a truly massive bias towards players in fleets. Beyond the social aspects, fleets reward their members with gear and ships you cannot get elsewhere. It's seldom an arbitrary association - the fleet they join matters to them, and the people they meet in fleets often become friendships that extend well beyond STO. That's a fantastic thing, so I'll put it bluntly -
You're killing that.
My fleet is fortunate in that it is quite large. The vast majority of fleets are not that large.
Please, Cryptic - when you design your next mission or event, give some thought to the above. I hate making these posts, but what I hate more is the idea that the people I enjoy playing with no longer enjoy playing your game. Frankly, if they go - I might go with them to whatever far away land they are having fun in.
I tend not to post much. And when I do, it's generally because I want to give feedback or report a problem; so consider this thread to be both. I'm going to try to be as constructive as I can.
For the last six to twelve months (we can probably go back well before Season 8, but it has been - arguably - most pronounced since A Step Between Stars was released) STO has seen an increasingly large number of systems and missions that reward players who play them repeatedly. I'm not going to use the word starting with "G", but you all know what it is.
I'm not blind to the fact this is an MMO. Repetition is part of the game if you want to get the good kit and gear, but the pattern we have right now is that repetition is simply not challenging; it's neither difficult nor variable, and in many cases amounts to abusing the W,S,A and D keys and periodically mashing "F".
...And like a medication (and who likes medication, really?) we are effectively required to do it once per day, for a pre-defined period of time, if we want to get the reward at the end. What if we miss a few days? What if we burn out and need a break? Well... then we miss the reward. This is the case with the Mirror Hakeev DOFF, the preceding anniversary event's Dyson destroyers and their exclusive secondary deflector, and the preceding Winter Event.
Note that there has been, effectively, no break between any of these 'events'. We have been led to the assumption that if we do not get those items now then we may never get them again.
Can I put it out there that I do not mind playing a mission 14, 20 or even 30 times to get something of value. The issue is that we are told that we have only a limited amount of time to do it. Would I be writing this if the Mirror Event was being added as a permanent feature to STO that I could enjoy over the course of a year, as opposed to 20-odd days? No. In all probability, I wouldn't be, because I would be able to spend my time doing the things I want to do, rather than the things the game is telling me to do.
Heading off the inevitable response of: "But you don't need it. You simply want it. You could simply not play it..."
Sure, that's true. I have a heck of a lot of characters, and as much as I would like to do the mirror event on all of them - it's simply not possible. It would take me several hours of my day to go through this event on every character I have - hours I just don't have as a person who works for a living an earns a pay check.
Cryptic - I think you did the right thing with the Dyson reputation. There was no 'daily demand' to run a mission to get commendations - there is very real provision for the weekend players who get to play several hours at a stretch, and not much during the week. I seriously appreciated that, and I've enjoyed the Dyson reputation more because of it.
...Now how does any of this affect fleets?
I do not know what 'metrics' are telling you, Cryptic, but large and active fleets have metrics of their own. In many cases we have hundreds of players in our rosters, all of whom have expectations of their officers and leaders on what they need, want, and expect. We can tell a lot about player attitudes to the game by the attitudes we are seeing towards our own, smaller fleet communities, and what I am seeing is troubling me.
People are getting burnt out by the repetitive, unchallenging 'event-driven' content. People are walking away from the game, and fleet chat channels are silent and pretty uncooperative because everyone just wants to get "it" out of the way so they can log off and go and do something productive, or at least more enjoyable, with their time.
I have had multiple people in my fleet complain that no one is willing to run missions with them - a quick check of the roster tells me why: they're all playing mirror. No one has time to do anything else.
STO has a truly massive bias towards players in fleets. Beyond the social aspects, fleets reward their members with gear and ships you cannot get elsewhere. It's seldom an arbitrary association - the fleet they join matters to them, and the people they meet in fleets often become friendships that extend well beyond STO. That's a fantastic thing, so I'll put it bluntly -
You're killing that.
My fleet is fortunate in that it is quite large. The vast majority of fleets are not that large.
Please, Cryptic - when you design your next mission or event, give some thought to the above. I hate making these posts, but what I hate more is the idea that the people I enjoy playing with no longer enjoy playing your game. Frankly, if they go - I might go with them to whatever far away land they are having fun in.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by koppenflak on
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In season 9 they're revamping the reputation grind. They are turning all the other reps into something far closer to the Dyson rep. Though they're getting rid of commendations. And making it just be marks again. But each "daily" you do will give you enough marks to cover what the commendation did, and then a bunch more (enough for a daily, an hourly, and 10 extras to bank for later).
So the thing you like about the Dyson rep in terms of doing it, will be getting applied to all the other reps.
Thing is, they're also changing a few other things about the reputations, too.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
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We do not randomly recruit - and that's really the point. The vast majority of people in my fleet have been playing for two or three years in the same fleet, and we all have a pretty high tolerance to this kind of thing.
Even the most patient and long-serving members of our fleets (yes, I said fleets, as we have allies...) are sick of this. My post is nothing but constructive feedback - I see no reason to defend Cryptic's design decisions where improvement is clearly warranted.
I started playing STO not long after its release. In those days it was all about the story missions and the comradeship of your fleet mates whilst doing PvP etc.
In my opinion, the relentless grind that the game has become has changed all of that. The game is more like a "chore" now.
I agree that is nice to have events and rewards attached to those events, However, when you add in a Starbase build, Spire build, Dilitium mine build, Embassy build and character reps, it all gets to be a bit monotonous and saps the fun out of the game.
I would pay real cash for a big red button that said "Press this button and all of your fleet builds will be complete".
The mirror event is the 1st time I have limited myself on how many of my toons would participate.
I am the leader of a fleet that could still be considered relatively small.
See you in the game...........
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I see this as a good thing. There's enough pointless currencies as it is without the need to add a pointless, time-gated currency on top of a time-gated reputation system. Given that commendations and marks ultimately enjoy an equivalency anyway, it makes sense to reduce it.
The catch is that since entropy must always increase, the other shoe must always drop. It remains to be seen how the next season will make it worse.
If there weren't so many dilithium sinks, I would not have run it. I imagine there are more than a couple of my fleetmates who would agree with me.
Even though I don't believe any of this will change, I thank you for putting into words what I was thinking in regards to fleets and events.
But, without the commendations, a "weekender" can't earn a bunch of marks and then convert to commendations. The daily bonus is just that, daily. You can't do 5 dailies in a day. With commendations, you could.
The effort spent on fleet holdings and reputations and stuff will not hold the player base for that long any more. More story progression will.
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This is pretty much what happened to my mid-sized fleet. While a grind has always been part of the game, Everyone went into SUPER GRIND OVERDRIVE MODE! during winter event and once by the time the mirror event showed up (after winter event, grindaversary, etc) most of them were burned out... hardly log in at all anymore. I keep playing because i'm still having fun (completely skipped the winter event and only grindaversary'd on one character) but i'm feeling the burnout too.
And like you said, its a shame, because people miss rewards. And when you miss rewards, (as crazy as it is) people tend to feel they can no longer 'catch up.' which could very well lead to them not logging in for a long, long time.
I'm not going to defend Cryptic's decisions, but i will say that they could well be going for a 'seasonal' approach now, and are focused on 'seasonal' players. So everything I said above may be exactly what they want. Who knows.
It has been 2 years since the last featured series. While featured episodes like Sphere of Influence and A Step Between Stars are nice they do not allow group play and I miss going through a mission for the first time with friends.
I stupidly decided to do the mirror event on 14 of my toons. I needed the fleet marks AND the dilithium. So many sink holes, it's like Florida!
I finally finished them all last night around 2am. It makes it worse when Cryptic won't put in a little countdown timer for daily events so I know which toons are ready and which aren't. Please devs, for the love of all things Trek, please put in a daily timer!
And as the OP mentioned, I had no time for anything else. It was taking 3-4 hours just doing the mirror event and then there was no time for anything else. I don't mind repetitive so much when the goal is there but I need something more. I need some heart, some story! Give me some featured episodes or similar.
Absolutely burnt out.
I agree with Koppenflak. At this point we've had multiple limited-time "rewards" back to back each of which required a repetitive daily action for a period of time. This last one is brutal - 15 minutes per toon, lots of problems, and can be incredibly frustrating. I am the leader of a small fleet, one of two head diplomats for a multi-fleet alliance (Koppenflak is the other), and due to my diplomatic duties, am also a member of ten fleets of all sizes from the very small to the very large. I have seen fleet chat in *every single one* of those fleets die from this event. None of these fleets are "random recruiters" and some of them, including my own, are incredibly close. This grind has affected each and every one of these fleets in a negative way and it pains me to see it.
People are tired, they are frustrated. Repetitive action does not replace creative content. Repetitive requirements take away time we could spend enjoying the hard work that went into things like the Battlezone and the newer queued events such as Storming the Spire or Breach. Instead of enjoying the wonderful, fun, creative things we are having to rush through them to have time to do these mindless button-mashers. No one has time to do fun things with their fleetmates anymore and tempers are flaring from the boredom and repetition.
Let us enjoy the good things in this game, of which there are many. Stop giving us limited-time rewards that with power-creep are basically non-optional in order to stay competitive. It is bad enough forcing players to choose between their fleets and themselves for dilithium, adding in having to choose between mindlessly plowing through the latest event or spending time with our fleetmates is just too much.
tl;dr less grind, more meaningful content
Harden up Princess
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Another point to consider is that the dev team really frustrated players with the Anniversary Event this year. I think a lot of the fatigue and frustration over the mirror event was compounded by the fact that we haven't forgotten how the Anniversary ship was not "free" this year and that the C-store version of said ship was so expensive to fully unlock that many players I know have decided to skip it. (You can call it nine ships, or three 3-packs, and compare it to the flagship bundles, but those ships were wildly different from faction to faction.)
Former/Cryptic Name: Captain_Hans_Langsdorff
Founding member, Special Service Squadron
"Fear God and Dread Nought." First Sea Lord, Adm. Jacky Fisher
I (like Koppen) usually don't post on here much unless its something REALLY important.
I, like most people, am OVER the near continuous grind we have had since S8. In order to explain this better, I'll go though it one event at a time.
First it was Sphere of Influence (technically pre-S8, but close enough to it). Fun mission, but the fleet level ship and the last console was locked behind a Lobi paywall. Good thing I didn't want said ship.
Secondly was the Winter event, with the 1000 Q photos returning. This wasn't too bad (most of us were expecting it), but what was bad was those stupid NPC's that wouldn't SHUT UP, even after most players asked them to. Winter Invasion was broken for weeks (considering its a re-skin of Colony Invasion, that's pretty bad).
Then came the real killer, the 4th year anniversary (or as most people call it, the Grindiversary). This is where everything started to go wrong. We should have just been able to run "Step Between Stars" ONCE and get the free ship, just like we had with the Odyssey and the Ambassador. BUT NO. We had to do Q's STUPID MISSION and chase down little Q's for 15 days to get the ship. This took me usually about an hour on the 4 toons (out of 12) I ran it on. Some of the Q's said "Now you know how I feel about Q's stupid party! I felt like saying that to the Devs every time I saw that pop up.
Then, just after the Grindiversary, came the Mirror Event. Despite the Dev Blogs saying Sci ships would be best at closing rifts, the truth is that high DPS ships are needed (or a very high amount of teamwork) to destroy the Terran ships and close the rifts. If you Pugged it, it would usually end up going horribly. In a fleet run, you steam-rolled it. So Cryptic decided to make it even harder. Now, a team that used to steam-roll it now struggles to keep the starbase alive, with all the Terran ship spam going on, making High DPS ships completely necessary.
And then just after this finishes, we get the Undine Rep Grind. Then soon after that, the Summer Event and its Grind. This would mean almost 9 months of almost continuous grinding. I'm over grinding, other people are over it. Out of the 5 founding members of our fleet, only one logs in anymore. People in the fleet that used to always be on have disappeared. People want to play something FUN. And at the moment, STO isnt fun.
The Grindiversary, wasn't fun. The Mirror event isn't fun. Even the winter event was bordering on not being fun.
And before anybody says "well don't do them", If we don't do them, we fall so far behind the power creep that we almost become irrelevant to the game.
And this brings me to what I think is the other half of the problem, "Power Creep", but thats another post for another thread.
I wouldn't even go as far as calling it falling behind on power creep, the problem is even more basic than that.
The overwhelming majority of new content or events are pretty much nothing but grind. You couldn't even get what little story elements there were out of the Dyson stuff without grinding the rep.
So if you aren't grinding the new content in STO, there really isn't a whole lot to do, other than old content that lots of us have already done to death.
Personally I took a month long break from STO as soon as the grindiversary started, because I was so disappointed in what they turned the event into that I didn't even bother with it. I most likely will again as soon as the mirror event winds down.
In this case.
28 transporter thingies required for the dil, marks and hakeev reward.
Each run up to 04/07 rewards 2 transporter thingies. After 04/07 each run rewards 1.
Simple. As. That.
Nothing is gated. Nothing becomes unobtainable if you are unable to grind when 'they' say you have to. Its all there if you put in the effort on your own time, but the effort required is significantly reduced if you do it on their time.
Want a Risian corvette - go to risa and do the races. yes you can do it now (not when the event is up) but you will have to do a lot more to get what you want - but on your own time.
...#LLAP...
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^THIS! Definitely THIS.
1 hour of play enjoying yourself make you want to play again. 2 hours of play, 1 enjoying yourself and 1 grinding, makes you think twice about logging on again. And 2 hours of grind, well that explains why so may fleets are failing and the game looses so many players shortly after each season start.
It's simple, reduce the grind and it will be more fun, more fun = more players, more players = more profit! (people may play less actual hours, but will be back again and again and much more likely to buy new stuff).
I personally after doing the Tuvoq episode in 3 of my characters after the early grinding of end of the year I am scarred for life, everytime I log in and I think about I need to do this and grind that I just shut down the game and go and play something else.
^ ^^ 100 times this, we need a game like STO to be about exploring space, finding new planets, contacting new civilizations, building new outposts, create a race like ferenghi for those who love mercantile style of play game, make a universe that is vast with resources to gather etc etc, right now STO looks more like GTO GRINDING TREK ONLINE
I'm basically in that one group mentioned - these days I just run MU and log out because after it I feel so numb and saturated with STO that I'm not really interested or motivated to do anything else with the game.
If you ask me, Cryptic is going the completely wrong way about this and it will cost them dearly sooner or later. Making a strategy that revolves around them telling players how to play, what to play and as seen in 2014 extremely often - when to play does not a good game make.
I've been around the block a few times. I know the game, and I know the patterns. I'm just trying to raise what I see as an issue - but thank you, for bumping my thread.
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.
This means that yes I'm not on to interact with my fleet. Also not on enough to say how many people like me are in it.
Understandable, I feel the same way. However this activity is killing the social aspect of STO, which is one of the main reasons I still log in. Cryptic is just encouraging this.
Harden up Princess
Looking for an Oceanic fleet? Check out our website:
www.ausmonauts.com