You didn't listen to Geko's last interview in that PO200 podcast, did you?
Wanting is more pleasurable than having...so leaving you wanting to have fun rather you actually having fun is the best thing they can do for the player - right? That podcast explained so many things about the game...
I understand this ideology but it only works IF the gate you need to travel through a gazillion times is going to be fun EVERY time you go through it. Fun enough so that you want to do it after you've got the gear.
Alternatively you could make it a touch harder so it can be failed and reduce the number of times it needs to be done to 3. Things that can be failed, challenging things, are more engaging than mindless crouching and pressing a key on my keyboard a squintillion times. Make it so that it's hard enough that people would need to do it around 5 or 6 times (including their failed runs) and give it meaningful rewards so people come back even after they've got the new shinys.
While the Winter event had many cool new things, the new grind-hurdle for the item store is certainly not!
I like the re-design of the Breen Carrier and the Wonderland itself, as well as the new event, but with a x10 requirement for the warp core and 5x for half of the new items it turned a fresh, solid and fun event into another stale (up to) 2.5 hour grind (per character!).
^This. IMHO, the winter event was less fun than the summer event to begin with. It could have started catching up with the redesign this year, BUT this single requirement makes it far less fun. Having to schedule when I play around the once an hour Tides of Ice event is so painful as to make me not want to do it...you know, especially when you have a real life you want to live.
And couple this with the fact that Tides of Ice isn't properly rewarding completion credit (Yes, I was there and participating the whole time. Only got credit once.), and just ouch...
When it comes to Tides of Ice we should get awarded for each time you take out Borg Snowmen and bonus award if you take out the Borg Queen. But it's not working like that. Take out 10 Snowmen you get 1 random item that you need to collect.
Might as well just do the Winter Invasion Event PVE. That you really need a snow gun or stock pile enough snow balls so you don't have to collect them while you play. Timer on that event is short.
Attack 10/10 Snowmen
Attack Yeti
Attack the Boss Snowman
While you do all above you still need to get candy, boxes and help the gingerbread town folks out.
Those earn you extra bonus points.
Award us fairly I say otherwise not so fun to stick around playing.
OMG this lot haven't got a clue have they, ROFLMAO at Craptic, no matter what we say, no matter how many leave, no matter how many people stop buying they still keep putting the same Asian grind fest BS into this game, even the freaking winter event, jeeze, I am so pleased I don't want a single thing from this event, I can just go there and admire Taco's art, that's enough for me, but I feel for you guys if you want other stuff.
Clueless, lol absolutely clueless!!!!
That's putting it mildly.
I intended to get the raider and carrier and I have leftover pics from last year, but now after this my will to participate has totally diminished. I don't feel like logging in and I certainly don't want to "pad numbers" and support such asinine attitude and game design.
A "winter wonderland" event is suposed to be for fun, on the side of the actual game - not substitute the actual game. But they couldn't just let people have unrestricted fun even for a month or so and let them do what they want when they want. As displayed in the 4-th STO "Grindaversary" - everything must be a form of boring repetitive grind now.
Wellcome to the D'Angelo era!
I was highly critical of this when I first heard of it. My exact words on this forum were "To hell with that!"
I tried it on one char last night (exploring the new Winter Wonderland, seeing what's different, etc...) and it wasn't really THAT bad. It does give you a smattering of rewards for every wave. My main beef is that the entire winter mechanic is buggy at times and laggy at others. Quite a few times I couldn't even fire my snow weapon (and yes, they are required IMO -- you cannot get by with just throwing snowballs), and couldn't target enemies. Perhaps they were locked into a "death" animation, or perhaps it was lag and the local animations not synching up, but for many seconds at a time I couldn't do anything but stand there with my "fire" option greyed out.
I will downgrade my ire from "To hell with this!" to simply "meh, it's not really worth it." The Tides mission takes too long, has too many waves, and the final boss is a total joke. Why was this added? It's a cheap clone of the snowman boss fight on the lake. Why not just make the player need 10 of those instead? Or 10 races?
I have my theories why, and some evidence to back them up, but they shall wait for another time to discuss.
I will simply say the total disgust for the Tides being required 10x isn't justified as I originally expected. It's not GREAT, and doesn't even need to exist, and takes too long, and rewards too little, but it isn't a deal-breaker. I most likely will not do it for all my chars. I might not even do it for my favorite one.
I am of two minds on this one. And as fair disclosure, I am down to 2 viable toons, only one of whom has use for the warp core.
On one hand it rankles a bit to see even small items put behind "Tides," but...I had a far, far bigger problem the year that the epohh tags were put behind that stupid frakking race that I despise all the way to Dante's Ninth Frozen Circle of Hell. Along with the Breen cruiser whose trait I will not get because of that damn race.
I have had one "Tides" I played in fail...but a 4/5 record is something I could only have dreamed of with that STUPID RACE.
I am probably the only one here, but even if it had not had stuff gated behind it, Tides would have been one of my events of choice. If they had locked the store items behind one of those DAMN RACES, I would have sat out the Winter Event just as I always have the Summer.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I'd like to know who thought this would be a good idea.
I mean, this event is only done once an hour, so to do it five times, you need to be there for effectively 5 hours. I can't do that for ONE character, much less all nine of mine.
If it's going to be five times, then it needs to be going ALL THE TIME.
If it's on the clock, no more than one or two times.
First off, the ship is now hyper-alt friendly. Complete race on "main" toon the 25 required times of the 45 days the event is on, and you get the "unlock". Then it's one race win per alt for the 40 pics necessary to cash in.
Yes, you can get 21 characters a breen carrier by just winning one race a day, if you win each and every one of the 45 days the event is on. I'd say this is hyper-alt-friendly, as if you have more than 21 alts, you probably can stick around for more than one race a day... :P
Now, the store access is quite the pain-in-the-seating-area-portion-of-the-anatomy if you're an alt-a-holic. 10 successful Tides of Ice runs at (best) twice an hour = 5 hours minimum per alt, more likely you can unlock it on an alt only on a full day off with 8 hours logged into said alt (or switching to alt for the :45 and :00 points then switching back to main for the remainder of the hour).
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
I noticed you can't farm snowballs any longer for ornaments or beads, and without a snow weapon ToI awards almost NOTHING. Another FU to the playerbase.
Oh, and the fast and flurrious race is STILL DQ'ing racers of they step on the edge of the cliff on the first turn- you'de think if you went OVER the cliff you'de be DQ'd but getting too close to falling over DQ's you too. SS/DD as 2 years ago, no surprise it's STILL broken.
I noticed you can't farm snowballs any longer for ornaments or beads, and without a snow weapon ToI awards almost NOTHING.
That particular bamboo shoot was shoved under the players' fingernails last year. Tide is definitely a weapon-mission. However, you can get rewards from DOFF missions, from the snowman boss fights, from gingerbread colony invasion, and the exchange. Just a few thoughts that may help, but will not lessen the pain.
Gotta say, gating the new holiday items behind running the new event, I thought was a cheap shot at forcing the players to play the new event. Gating some of them to unlock only after running it 5 and 10 times is seriously lame.
How desperate are they to get players to do the event?
Maybe if they make events and content fun and less of a chore, then players will actually play it of there own free will. Locking stuff behind grinding something five, ten, whatever times more or less admits that the event or content is lacking. Read that for the new winter event and most of the Delta & Omega rep gear, with their requirements for power cells and neural procs, only obtained through running STFs. (ok, so remote chance of drop from T4 equip rec)
That particular bamboo shoot was shoved under the players' fingernails last year. Tide is definitely a weapon-mission. However, you can get rewards from DOFF missions, from the snowman boss fights, from gingerbread colony invasion, and the exchange. Just a few thoughts that may help, but will not lessen the pain.
Ya, well that just about kills my interest in it then. I just hope the warp core isn't bound.
It took me ages to figure out why I couldn't buy anything in the store despite having the currency. Then when I found out, I played the mission once, and well... that was enough for me.
I think this will probably turn players away, rather than boost your metrics.
Ya, well that just about kills my interest in it then. I just hope the warp core isn't bound.
How can you in any way, shape, or form, hope that the core is NOT bound? Of course it is. Why would it ever be UNbound? It's a set piece hidden behind a grinder. No set piece is ever going to be UNbound.
How can you in any way, shape, or form, hope that the core is NOT bound? Of course it is. Why would it ever be UNbound? It's a set piece hidden behind a grinder. No set piece is ever going to be UNbound.
I thought it would be like most every other gift 'box', unbound till you open it.
AEGIS breaks the rules, since you paid a ton of resources to craft it. It also was a prototype as one of the first sets in the game. It's grandfathered in, so to speak.
Every set pieces since has been bound on pickup. It's part of the "you need to earn it to use it" mentality of MMOs. That way you can't load out character alts with uber gear instantly. They have to go through the motions, too.
In real time this is very similar to the super Risean explorer accolade required to buy the doffs.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
In real time this is very similar to the super Risean explorer accolade required to buy the doffs.
Sort of. With the Risian explorer accolade you could do it whenever you wanted (during the event). While the event was running there were dozens of instances of Risa, and they all had different day/night cycles, so if you had to do something at night, switch instances until you found a night map, then back to day again to continue.
The Risian accolade took a while, but you could do it faster than the 2 hours minimum it takes to get enough Tides for store access. You also have to make sure to be around at the top of the hour for the tide.
All that said, it's not that difficult and most players shouldn't have much trouble getting it done on multiple characters in the next month.
*edit* I guess it would be 2 hours min, if you happened to catch 2 tides as soon as you logged on
The decision is purely to pad the games metrics for the analysts. Offer a 'way-cool-must-have', then gate it behind ten hours of daily game play. Per toon.
Well played Gecko. Well played.
However, if you balance that out with now it takes me 3 races to get three ships per alt, I can't be too judgemental. PLus nothing screams the holidays more than snowborg.
Each race rewards 40 signed 8x10 glossy photos signed by Q. If you have each ship unlocked on another char, the price for your alternate chars is only 40 signed 8x10. Thus, one race per ship.
It doesn't count the initial first char, of course.
From the account discount. Once you unlock the ship once on a character, you get an account wide discount so that you only have to run the race once on an alt to pick up the ship on that character. So after you unlock all 3 ships, it takes 3 races to pick all of them up on that character.
Sort of. With the Risian explorer accolade you could do it whenever you wanted (during the event). While the event was running there were dozens of instances of Risa, and they all had different day/night cycles, so if you had to do something at night, switch instances until you found a night map, then back to day again to continue.
The Risian accolade took a while, but you could do it faster than the 2 hours minimum it takes to get enough Tides for store access. You also have to make sure to be around at the top of the hour for the tide.
All that said, it's not that difficult and most players shouldn't have much trouble getting it done on multiple characters in the next month.
*edit* I guess it would be 2 hours min, if you happened to catch 2 tides as soon as you logged on
It's 10 minutes for Tides, but yeah with getting there and messing about I would say 2 hours per character is a fair estimate for 10 runs. That seems fine to me.
I suspect they will lower it to 5 or perhaps make the accolade account unlocked (if that's possible).
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Comments
I understand this ideology but it only works IF the gate you need to travel through a gazillion times is going to be fun EVERY time you go through it. Fun enough so that you want to do it after you've got the gear.
Alternatively you could make it a touch harder so it can be failed and reduce the number of times it needs to be done to 3. Things that can be failed, challenging things, are more engaging than mindless crouching and pressing a key on my keyboard a squintillion times. Make it so that it's hard enough that people would need to do it around 5 or 6 times (including their failed runs) and give it meaningful rewards so people come back even after they've got the new shinys.
^This. IMHO, the winter event was less fun than the summer event to begin with. It could have started catching up with the redesign this year, BUT this single requirement makes it far less fun. Having to schedule when I play around the once an hour Tides of Ice event is so painful as to make me not want to do it...you know, especially when you have a real life you want to live.
And couple this with the fact that Tides of Ice isn't properly rewarding completion credit (Yes, I was there and participating the whole time. Only got credit once.), and just ouch...
Might as well just do the Winter Invasion Event PVE. That you really need a snow gun or stock pile enough snow balls so you don't have to collect them while you play. Timer on that event is short.
Attack 10/10 Snowmen
Attack Yeti
Attack the Boss Snowman
While you do all above you still need to get candy, boxes and help the gingerbread town folks out.
Those earn you extra bonus points.
Award us fairly I say otherwise not so fun to stick around playing.
Time will only tell!
Ofcoruse not! This is D'Angelo's STO, fun is an exploit!
That's putting it mildly.
I intended to get the raider and carrier and I have leftover pics from last year, but now after this my will to participate has totally diminished. I don't feel like logging in and I certainly don't want to "pad numbers" and support such asinine attitude and game design.
A "winter wonderland" event is suposed to be for fun, on the side of the actual game - not substitute the actual game. But they couldn't just let people have unrestricted fun even for a month or so and let them do what they want when they want. As displayed in the 4-th STO "Grindaversary" - everything must be a form of boring repetitive grind now.
Wellcome to the D'Angelo era!
I tried it on one char last night (exploring the new Winter Wonderland, seeing what's different, etc...) and it wasn't really THAT bad. It does give you a smattering of rewards for every wave. My main beef is that the entire winter mechanic is buggy at times and laggy at others. Quite a few times I couldn't even fire my snow weapon (and yes, they are required IMO -- you cannot get by with just throwing snowballs), and couldn't target enemies. Perhaps they were locked into a "death" animation, or perhaps it was lag and the local animations not synching up, but for many seconds at a time I couldn't do anything but stand there with my "fire" option greyed out.
I will downgrade my ire from "To hell with this!" to simply "meh, it's not really worth it." The Tides mission takes too long, has too many waves, and the final boss is a total joke. Why was this added? It's a cheap clone of the snowman boss fight on the lake. Why not just make the player need 10 of those instead? Or 10 races?
I have my theories why, and some evidence to back them up, but they shall wait for another time to discuss.
I will simply say the total disgust for the Tides being required 10x isn't justified as I originally expected. It's not GREAT, and doesn't even need to exist, and takes too long, and rewards too little, but it isn't a deal-breaker. I most likely will not do it for all my chars. I might not even do it for my favorite one.
I am of two minds on this one. And as fair disclosure, I am down to 2 viable toons, only one of whom has use for the warp core.
On one hand it rankles a bit to see even small items put behind "Tides," but...I had a far, far bigger problem the year that the epohh tags were put behind that stupid frakking race that I despise all the way to Dante's Ninth Frozen Circle of Hell. Along with the Breen cruiser whose trait I will not get because of that damn race.
I have had one "Tides" I played in fail...but a 4/5 record is something I could only have dreamed of with that STUPID RACE.
I am probably the only one here, but even if it had not had stuff gated behind it, Tides would have been one of my events of choice. If they had locked the store items behind one of those DAMN RACES, I would have sat out the Winter Event just as I always have the Summer.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I mean, this event is only done once an hour, so to do it five times, you need to be there for effectively 5 hours. I can't do that for ONE character, much less all nine of mine.
If it's going to be five times, then it needs to be going ALL THE TIME.
If it's on the clock, no more than one or two times.
Anything else is just insane.
Yes, you can get 21 characters a breen carrier by just winning one race a day, if you win each and every one of the 45 days the event is on. I'd say this is hyper-alt-friendly, as if you have more than 21 alts, you probably can stick around for more than one race a day... :P
Now, the store access is quite the pain-in-the-seating-area-portion-of-the-anatomy if you're an alt-a-holic. 10 successful Tides of Ice runs at (best) twice an hour = 5 hours minimum per alt, more likely you can unlock it on an alt only on a full day off with 8 hours logged into said alt (or switching to alt for the :45 and :00 points then switching back to main for the remainder of the hour).
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Fact #2. We have over a month to do it, and if you have a snowblower, you're good :P
Fact #3. You have to admit, killing snowmen is just damn fun, if you focus on having fun 5 Tides of Ice will be gone before you know it.
Fact #4. People complain about anything.
Real join date September 2012
Oh, and the fast and flurrious race is STILL DQ'ing racers of they step on the edge of the cliff on the first turn- you'de think if you went OVER the cliff you'de be DQ'd but getting too close to falling over DQ's you too. SS/DD as 2 years ago, no surprise it's STILL broken.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
That particular bamboo shoot was shoved under the players' fingernails last year. Tide is definitely a weapon-mission. However, you can get rewards from DOFF missions, from the snowman boss fights, from gingerbread colony invasion, and the exchange. Just a few thoughts that may help, but will not lessen the pain.
How desperate are they to get players to do the event?
Maybe if they make events and content fun and less of a chore, then players will actually play it of there own free will. Locking stuff behind grinding something five, ten, whatever times more or less admits that the event or content is lacking. Read that for the new winter event and most of the Delta & Omega rep gear, with their requirements for power cells and neural procs, only obtained through running STFs. (ok, so remote chance of drop from T4 equip rec)
Quote of the week, right there.
Ya, well that just about kills my interest in it then. I just hope the warp core isn't bound.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
I think this will probably turn players away, rather than boost your metrics.
But time will tell... I guess.
How can you in any way, shape, or form, hope that the core is NOT bound? Of course it is. Why would it ever be UNbound? It's a set piece hidden behind a grinder. No set piece is ever going to be UNbound.
Aegis set?
I thought it would be like most every other gift 'box', unbound till you open it.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Every set pieces since has been bound on pickup. It's part of the "you need to earn it to use it" mentality of MMOs. That way you can't load out character alts with uber gear instantly. They have to go through the motions, too.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Time will only tell!
Sort of. With the Risian explorer accolade you could do it whenever you wanted (during the event). While the event was running there were dozens of instances of Risa, and they all had different day/night cycles, so if you had to do something at night, switch instances until you found a night map, then back to day again to continue.
The Risian accolade took a while, but you could do it faster than the 2 hours minimum it takes to get enough Tides for store access. You also have to make sure to be around at the top of the hour for the tide.
All that said, it's not that difficult and most players shouldn't have much trouble getting it done on multiple characters in the next month.
*edit* I guess it would be 2 hours min, if you happened to catch 2 tides as soon as you logged on
Wait wait wait, WHAT?
How do you get three ships in three races?
Run 25 races for 1000 pics on your main to unlock the alt discount, then spend 40 for the same ship on your alt.
It doesn't count the initial first char, of course.
From the account discount. Once you unlock the ship once on a character, you get an account wide discount so that you only have to run the race once on an alt to pick up the ship on that character. So after you unlock all 3 ships, it takes 3 races to pick all of them up on that character.
Mine Trap Supporter
It's 10 minutes for Tides, but yeah with getting there and messing about I would say 2 hours per character is a fair estimate for 10 runs. That seems fine to me.
I suspect they will lower it to 5 or perhaps make the accolade account unlocked (if that's possible).
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."