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'Bonus Marks' weekend becomes 'Some bonus marks, maybe' weekend
forcemajeure
Member Posts: 212 Arc User
Just want to start off by saying I enjoy STO, support it with my $$, and would like to see it succeed.
That being said, we all know that there is a really, really significant element of 'grind' in the game, for Dilithium, for Rep marks, for crafting, etc.
I don't mind a tolerable amount of grind - high end rewards should take a fair bit of effort, and not every shiny is needed to play.
However, when a game starts to consistently take the direction of 'we need grind and more grind, and we need to close off every possible avenue of escape from the grind, so that players become so incredibly frustrated with the grind that they throw money at us to make it go away"; well, then I start to look for a game that has a little more respect for my time and money.
Case in point: Daily marks boxes. In the past, I use Bonus Dil and Bonus Marks weekends to get a bit ahead on the grind game. I play hard on those weekends, devote too much time to them really, and get enough ahead on Dil or Marks that for the next month or so I can just play the game and not worry about the points grind.
Unfortunately, the *majority* of the marks I can earn on a Bonus weekend come from the Daily boxes - ESPECIALLY now that they have made anything but Normal STF runs generally unworkable (for PUGs at least).
If I ran an Azura and got 24 marks for completion, and 55 for the daily, I would bonus up to 119 marks for the run - a 'bonus' of 40 marks. Now that same run nets me 12 bonus for the same time spent, except that many of the STF queues have become slower - so barely 25% of the bonus for more time spent.
Same for my Romulan ground missions, I would do a ground, get 20 + the daily box, for a 'bonus' of 38... now I get a bonus of 10 total.
Of course, having saved up some 'any marks' boxes from Risa specifically to help me get over the Delta marks hump for Delta rep... I get no bonus marks at all.
I understand that they have a 'only benefit during the event' trend going, and that is fine. Except the majority of marks I am earning DURING THE EVENT aren't getting any bonus at all.
Basically they have taken one of their key player reward events and turned it into "do a lot of little things repetitively for a lot of little rewards"... in other words, back to the grind with you!
Yes, a very small percentage of players may have saved up a number of boxes for the event. I scarcely think that warrants penalizing every single player in the game of a primary source of event-timed rewards.
Keep in mind the perspective here: it is not a shower of marks falling from the sky. It is a 50% bonus, nice to have, but basically "get the rewards for 3 STFs in the time it takes to run 2". This is hardly game-economy-breaking stuff here.
Personally, I think the goodwill and respect of your players and CLIENTS is worth quite a bit more than a few extra bonus marks handed out over a weekend event. Especially an event which is intended to EARN you goodwill, not lose it.
That being said, we all know that there is a really, really significant element of 'grind' in the game, for Dilithium, for Rep marks, for crafting, etc.
I don't mind a tolerable amount of grind - high end rewards should take a fair bit of effort, and not every shiny is needed to play.
However, when a game starts to consistently take the direction of 'we need grind and more grind, and we need to close off every possible avenue of escape from the grind, so that players become so incredibly frustrated with the grind that they throw money at us to make it go away"; well, then I start to look for a game that has a little more respect for my time and money.
Case in point: Daily marks boxes. In the past, I use Bonus Dil and Bonus Marks weekends to get a bit ahead on the grind game. I play hard on those weekends, devote too much time to them really, and get enough ahead on Dil or Marks that for the next month or so I can just play the game and not worry about the points grind.
Unfortunately, the *majority* of the marks I can earn on a Bonus weekend come from the Daily boxes - ESPECIALLY now that they have made anything but Normal STF runs generally unworkable (for PUGs at least).
If I ran an Azura and got 24 marks for completion, and 55 for the daily, I would bonus up to 119 marks for the run - a 'bonus' of 40 marks. Now that same run nets me 12 bonus for the same time spent, except that many of the STF queues have become slower - so barely 25% of the bonus for more time spent.
Same for my Romulan ground missions, I would do a ground, get 20 + the daily box, for a 'bonus' of 38... now I get a bonus of 10 total.
Of course, having saved up some 'any marks' boxes from Risa specifically to help me get over the Delta marks hump for Delta rep... I get no bonus marks at all.
I understand that they have a 'only benefit during the event' trend going, and that is fine. Except the majority of marks I am earning DURING THE EVENT aren't getting any bonus at all.
Basically they have taken one of their key player reward events and turned it into "do a lot of little things repetitively for a lot of little rewards"... in other words, back to the grind with you!
Yes, a very small percentage of players may have saved up a number of boxes for the event. I scarcely think that warrants penalizing every single player in the game of a primary source of event-timed rewards.
Keep in mind the perspective here: it is not a shower of marks falling from the sky. It is a 50% bonus, nice to have, but basically "get the rewards for 3 STFs in the time it takes to run 2". This is hardly game-economy-breaking stuff here.
Personally, I think the goodwill and respect of your players and CLIENTS is worth quite a bit more than a few extra bonus marks handed out over a weekend event. Especially an event which is intended to EARN you goodwill, not lose it.
Post edited by forcemajeure on
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Comments
I'm glad that I don't need the marks so badly anymore myself, but for anybody who does need them it's these kinda weekends where you want to make it count.
The Delta marks sound like a bug to me though, you might wanna submit a bug report for those.
I also think that I'm just going to take a break from the game for a while, at least until next patch. The level grind is getting to me and there have to be more fun ways to spend my time.
The Question is which one is the bug ... they probably just forgot to nerf the other Marks within some Boxes (cause the newer Marks Boxes, like from the MU don't reward any Bonus Marks) ... doubt anyone is gonna respond / fix it during Thanksgiving WE anyway ...
Decided to turn in some Mark Boxes for Delta, which I really need, and turn in the other ones for Bonus Marks (still works for Dyson, Romulan etc) = at least some Dilithium, before they nerf it, too ... let's just hope they're not gonna crucify me as an Exploiter after the Weekend ... -> just my 2 Bonus Marks :P ...
I do agree they should still give the bonus for the daily marks earned during the event.
When the content you play to actually earn the Marks is actually enjoyable, the complaints about grinding them mostly disappear...
I mean really how many people were complaining during the Dyson Sphere expansion, outside of the bugs; honestly it was the first expansion in ages that actually got me to seriously look forward to logging in each day to do daily runs in the Ground and Space Zones.
They weren't perfect by any means, but they were actually what you would call "Fun" ... or at least what passes for it in STO nowadays and that really is the key here. If what you're doing if actually enjoyable you don't really end up caring that you have to grind away at it.
if they just awarded the marks in one go instead of giving the bonus marks boxed there would be no boxes to save and when you got a marks weekend you would get the extra on your total award.
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.
I love the game but with each update things seem to feel like you have to grind more and more, working your way through the reputation system these days feels like the mud just keeps getting thicker!
How many times can you repeat these PvEs a day before your bored senseless! I'm just glad I started before some of these restrictions came into effect.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=20191171&postcount=9
Just another example of a fail-development decision to prevent people from working around the grind.
It's a shame that the "People spend more if they spend longer playing the game" theory falls apart when people aren't having fun, isn't it?
Free Tibet!
As for playing the game longer and spending more money. I don't know what they are thinking they have kill the game play. Yeah I have spent a good amount of money on this game but that's drying up quickly and I see less and less reason to spend at all. Any thing we buy gets nurfed in the first few days any way so why bother its just wiser to deal with what we have ya know.
Make no mistake, this was a last minute, holy sh*t change. It was not on the Triibble Patch Notes for the 24th at all but added onto the Holodeck ones put out late in the day that same day for implementation on the 25th.
The Blog is worded the same as the one from September that you get the bonus for ALL content awarding Marks - ALL; and it did then. The most this would have meant would have been 27 extra Marks for around 43 potential Daily Bonus Boxes or 1161 Delta Marks per character where the player stored them up. I also understand that the Bonus is now also not given for the award you get for reaching T5 in a Reputation (thus saving another 375 Marks for each rep except for those cheapskate Omega guys who only pay out 500, so 250 there).
As to the earlier post about this being similar decision to the one made for dilitium. None of this holds up, if it was the Delta Content Boxes would also have not doubled that were saved. If they had properly implemented the Delta rewards we wouldn't be in this situation as Daily Bonus Marks that were awarded during the Event would have doubled on auto-open.
This is a sledge-hammer measure instituted at the last minute because the corrective work that needed to be done by the Developers was not done.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
This is the problem with the game right here. And when something is new it tends to be fun.. but STO content gets stale very fast due to power creep/ease as well as static mission design.
When something is fun, challenging and makes you think, you don't often think of it as a grind.. when you just need to show up and auto fire.. well you count the seconds until its over, when there is a timer already doing that for you.... you quit the game.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
EDIT : 2nd Try 45 Marks again ... Ninja Fix ... Ninja Bug ... I dunno ...
What's funny is in his sig it says "play smart":P Too bad STO Players are very likely to be punished for playing smart:rolleyes:
Haha so true that, didn't even notice that yet
This ^ This really made me unhappy. Why can't we at least get the bonus on delta marks for the recent 250 box from mirror?? I thought this was a bug at first, of course not.
I've been here since beta
Marks can be turned into Dilithium. Unrefined, of course, but the developers of this game have some sort of irrational paranoid phobia about players having too much dilithium that borders on the insane.
Free Tibet!
That's where I'm at. The only marks I need right now are Delta, and possibly fleet for projects. For some reason I keep hitting Dyson on the list of marks...but I'll eventually convert those to DIL so it isn't all a waste.
The most I do when I log in now is send out my DOffs, reset my rep, do one or two queues (god forbid anyone is actually IN them) and that's it. When I'm feeling adventurous I'll be cruising around looking for DOff Sci missions for Mats. The whole process takes, at most, half an hour.
Helluva game we got, ain't it?
I choose my grinds , and this is not worth it ... -- it would not even be worth it if the queues were full and playable .
The only advantage of running the hourly's is that you get sellable gear out of it and a little bit of Dil. For the effort input to get them, it's probably more advantageous to get Dil elsewhere and save the marks for gear from the DR Rep. I've almost completed the DR Rep on my 4 main toons solely from the MU event. Haven't bothered grinding DR Rep marks otherwise.
TBH the only thing this weekend is useful for is gaining extra Marks from STF's for Fleet or Rep gear. You need a high mark event for it to be worth it, currently most of them aren't worth it for the time expended.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
PS : Now, I know why they got rid of Mark Tribbles ... they were too effective :P
You can actually do it in 36 days using only dailies, if you set things up right.
I don't think it's the devs plural in this case I think it's only one person who seems to have a phobia about it and that's D'Angelo, this company could do so much better with the right person at the wheel but unfortunately we have the Cryptic equivalent of Blizzards Ghost Crawler in charge.
Felt like nitpicking, you forgot the cost of the tier upgrades. :P