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Dyson Ground Battlezone ruined: Advice
destyrian
Member Posts: 23 Arc User
Excuse the wall of text but this is going to be detailed information. I don't want this zone to go the way of Kerrat just because of a few idiots.
After the changes to the Dyson Ground Battlezone last week to stop people from tagging zones and then running off, I have been playing solidly, as always, several times a day to get all the dilithium for my characters.
The update is stupid, it's as simple as that. It doesn't solve any problems at all and is actually extremely buggy or has some bizarre conditions. I literally just finished Dyson with one of my characters. During this particular event I was capturing a zone by myself. After the bar had traveled half way, a bunch of other people came in and started helping. When complete I got 5 dilithium and it didn't count towards my "capture 2 zones in city" daily either. I didn't leave the zone and I was actively participating throughout. Bugged or some idiotic new rule about having to have bridge officers with mini-skirts or some-such?
This is something that is not an isolated incident but even so, people just don't want to help capturing zones anymore since they won't get quests or alot of dilithium for it, meaning that if you start a zone, you will usually be finishing it alone. I am often seeing people run in, notice that I am already there and then run out again.
This "fix" didn't fix anything at all; it broke it. People coming in and tagging zones was never a huge problem: people tagging the dinosaurs and running off was, but alas that still worked as people just swapped places and the dinosaurs all got killed anyway. The biggest problem is AFKers at the boss zones, always has been. These lazy players wait for everyone else to finish the zone, often, when confronted and if at all, they respond with how many characters they have to do it with. Lets put aside the opinion I have for a second (for the record it's "you want dilithium then ****ing help, we ALL have lots of characters to do it with") and let's get to the main problem. These AFKers have been given a huge advantage now, or should I say an incentive to go AFK. They want to make sure that they are at the boss from the beginning, as early as possible, to ensure that they get the 720 dilithium reward.
My advice:
1. Ditch the new zone tagging nonsense since it doesn't solve any problems at all, merely creates more. At the very least make sure that the programming in it is done properly as I am through doing lots of work to capture a zone only to end up getting 5 dilithium, it's just pathetic.
2. Tagging is your own fault for making 3 bosses... alter the zones a bit to make 1 boss. A bigger, tougher one which needs everyone in the zone to take it down. Running from 1 boss to another is just asinine. Obviously increase the reward that you get for participating in killing it to make up for the fact that it's only one boss.
3. Afkers are a huge problem, far more than taggers have ever been and I can't believe that nothing has been done about them. Talk about fixing stuff that doesn't really need fixing. If you call a plumber and tell him that your taps are leaking and he arrives and starts "fixing" the electric, you wouldn't be happy would you? Advice for this is to put a forcefield around the zone. You may have to do a bit of redesigning (so that people can still navigate around it) but it will be worth it. Or have a single boss area in the middle of the map next to the command center with bridges connecting to it or something which only deploy once the boss has spawned.
While we're at it, slightly unrelated but...
4. Give battlegound commendations to individuals automatically when the complete a zone instead of spraying it all over the ground. People just activate buffs like motion accelerator and steal it all and it just becomes a big snatch and grab. Alternatively divide it up so that all players get their "own" commendations appearing on their screen but not everyone elses.
After the changes to the Dyson Ground Battlezone last week to stop people from tagging zones and then running off, I have been playing solidly, as always, several times a day to get all the dilithium for my characters.
The update is stupid, it's as simple as that. It doesn't solve any problems at all and is actually extremely buggy or has some bizarre conditions. I literally just finished Dyson with one of my characters. During this particular event I was capturing a zone by myself. After the bar had traveled half way, a bunch of other people came in and started helping. When complete I got 5 dilithium and it didn't count towards my "capture 2 zones in city" daily either. I didn't leave the zone and I was actively participating throughout. Bugged or some idiotic new rule about having to have bridge officers with mini-skirts or some-such?
This is something that is not an isolated incident but even so, people just don't want to help capturing zones anymore since they won't get quests or alot of dilithium for it, meaning that if you start a zone, you will usually be finishing it alone. I am often seeing people run in, notice that I am already there and then run out again.
This "fix" didn't fix anything at all; it broke it. People coming in and tagging zones was never a huge problem: people tagging the dinosaurs and running off was, but alas that still worked as people just swapped places and the dinosaurs all got killed anyway. The biggest problem is AFKers at the boss zones, always has been. These lazy players wait for everyone else to finish the zone, often, when confronted and if at all, they respond with how many characters they have to do it with. Lets put aside the opinion I have for a second (for the record it's "you want dilithium then ****ing help, we ALL have lots of characters to do it with") and let's get to the main problem. These AFKers have been given a huge advantage now, or should I say an incentive to go AFK. They want to make sure that they are at the boss from the beginning, as early as possible, to ensure that they get the 720 dilithium reward.
My advice:
1. Ditch the new zone tagging nonsense since it doesn't solve any problems at all, merely creates more. At the very least make sure that the programming in it is done properly as I am through doing lots of work to capture a zone only to end up getting 5 dilithium, it's just pathetic.
2. Tagging is your own fault for making 3 bosses... alter the zones a bit to make 1 boss. A bigger, tougher one which needs everyone in the zone to take it down. Running from 1 boss to another is just asinine. Obviously increase the reward that you get for participating in killing it to make up for the fact that it's only one boss.
3. Afkers are a huge problem, far more than taggers have ever been and I can't believe that nothing has been done about them. Talk about fixing stuff that doesn't really need fixing. If you call a plumber and tell him that your taps are leaking and he arrives and starts "fixing" the electric, you wouldn't be happy would you? Advice for this is to put a forcefield around the zone. You may have to do a bit of redesigning (so that people can still navigate around it) but it will be worth it. Or have a single boss area in the middle of the map next to the command center with bridges connecting to it or something which only deploy once the boss has spawned.
While we're at it, slightly unrelated but...
4. Give battlegound commendations to individuals automatically when the complete a zone instead of spraying it all over the ground. People just activate buffs like motion accelerator and steal it all and it just becomes a big snatch and grab. Alternatively divide it up so that all players get their "own" commendations appearing on their screen but not everyone elses.
Post edited by destyrian on
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Comments
The reason I ask is because tagging was an issue before the change. I am not talking about the boss tagging. That I didn't really care about. But when they would come in and tag an area you were trying to capture, and the amount of enemies would scale to the amount of players in the zone. Then they would leave, and you had to deal with all of them yourself. And sometimes it would make it so that it wouldn't scale back down to where it was suppose to be for a while after you were alone.
The best fix would have been that the rewards remain the same, but make it so that you had to be a certain distance from the center of one of the zones to get the rewards. And the distance would have put them close enough to get attacked by the NPCs.
If they did that, then there would have never been tagging, since it would have resulted in no rewards at all. But AFKs are not problem for me in the BZ as long as they are not in the area I was trying to capture, increasing the spawn rate of enemies. They are exploiting the game, and player, but not making things harder on the player.
STO doesn't have anything that can really stop AFKs. They can't stop it in the Mirror event, and it is a queued mission where they are hurting the other players. In the BZ, it will be even harder to stop. About the only thing I can think of that might help there is to use the limited distance like I mentioned above. Then, make it where the more areas that you help capture, the larger reward you will get with each of the bosses killed.
I do like your idea of the single boss though. That is pretty cool. like a super T-Rex, or something like that. Though, it will still not cover the AFK problem unless the limit the rewards for not participating.
However, reducing the rewards for capturing an area is not going to solve anything really. lol. All it will do is reduce the amount of Dil in the market. That is all. The AFKs will still be there, and the taggers, unless they actually made it where you can't tag anymore.
But yes they made it so that if you don't stay in the zone the whole time you get 5 dilithium instead of the normal amount, plus it doesnt count towards quests. Same thing for the Dinos, you get 5 dil if you arent there the whole time to kill it or at least for a substantial time. It's broken too, as per my example when I was capping a point, there for the whole time, fighting etc, and it treated me as someone who wasn't there.
Perhaps I got lucky before with the taggers, but they didn't fix anything with that just made it less likely that you'll get help. Makes you less likely to want to help either since you're getting practically nothing for going into an area which is half done.
Yeah, reducing the dil for any reason is not going to help. Like I mentioned before, they need to give the rewards they were before, but limit the distance you need to be from the center of the area being captured before you get any rewards. This will not only encourage help from others, but also encourage them to stay to help.
All the dil nerf is going to do is force you into the situation you found yourself in.
I wonder how they come up with these ideas, and where they get the data to come up with them.
The only problem with your idea of the single boss is that it will still not solve the AFK problem. However, like I mentioned, if they increase the rewards based off how many areas you help capture, and they also limit your distance from each area being captured, it will help with that a little. But the increased rewards need to be worth it.
You did mention that tagging was not a problem before. However, it was a big one. It is just that they didn't help with their "fix" to it. They hurt the BZ experience.
I believe that if they were to take both of our ideas, and put them together, it will make the experience much better.
1-Don't nerf the base rewards. Just limit the distance you can be from each of the areas that need to be captured. For example, the hold the point area. If you are not in, or within a certain range of the circle, then you will not get any dil or rewards for it. The area with the sled you need to get moving, they can make it within the area the enemy spawn in. And for the ones where you activate the devices, the range can be near each of the devices, and after the mini bosses spawn, in the venter where they fall.
By doing that, they will force the players to be in the zone to actually get any reward. If you leave the area, a message will pop up to let you know. Not a message window that will stop you from moving, but a notice.
2-They can wither use one boss, or make you all work on one boss at a time by locking out the other three. Make it the same ones that are locked out all the time, and this will encourage more team work. or make it where as each area is captured completely, the boss spawns for that area. After all have been killed, then the timer will reset. But there will need to be a time limit before the entire map will reset.
This will not only encourage teamwork, but will also encourage players to play becase it will be less likely they will miss out on some of the rewards for beating some of the bosses when they were there the whole time, but others were jumping instances to get in one that had more work done on it.
3-By increasing the rewards based off of participation in the other areas, it will make more of the AFKs put forth more of an effort in each area, or they will get less dil for the effort.
I think that by using these three things, they can make it harder to AFK, and will help eliminate the tagging problem by a lot, without ruining the experience for those playing it like they should be, (like you did). But to put another system in that nerfs rewards, on top of the nerfs we have been getting will not make anyone want to help capture any zones. Therefore, it is pointless to do, and takes away from the gaming experience.
STO still has so much potential. The only thing is that some of the decisions being made are not done in a way to tap into that potential, and is hurting the gaming experience. I hope that a developer will look at you thread if they have not already, or if a developer in another department sees it will let one of the ones that work on this issue know about it. Taking more away is not the way to go here.
So of course it needed to be "wrecked" for the crime of being FUN ... and being Pick Up Friendly.
This ... sadly ... is Standard Operating Procedure for Cryptic Studios.
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One paragraph suggesting that a boss should be put in that will need everyone to take down. And then the next para. you talk about AFKers and how they are a huge problem. Because of the problem with AFKers, Leechers and people who just arent any good at their class for whatever reason i think your suggestion for #2 is a bad idea. Your idea of a force field might not make a difference because then AFKers will just wait at the boundary of that force field instead of in the actual V-Rex fight area. Also they would have to use an existing area...unless you are thinking about a new area that isnt in either of the 3 sub-zones. And that would require a rework of the zone and they arent going to do that.
I wonder if it is possible to have a loot box drop once each V-Rex has died that people would have to manually loot. Inside that box would be your dilithium and mark rewards. The box would have say a 30second timer, if you dont loot it then it disappears along with your reward. The timer is there so that people cant tag all 3 then go back and collect all 3 boxes. With a 30second timer they have to stick around until the boss is dead. Then they loot it and then they all run to the next boss.
Another thing that i had suggested in a different thread is to have everyone kill each V-Rex in order. Once you get 100% in a zone then the final stage starts. One V-Rex will spawn randomly in either park, city or outskirts. Everybody heads over to it to fight it and once it is dead then everyone gets the rewards autolooted to them like the way it is doing now. Once that first V-Rex is dead then the next one will spawn at one of the other two leftover locations. Everyone heads there kills it and then the last V-Rex spawns and everyone heads over to it and kills it. It forces everyone to move as a group...legit players, afkers and leechers alike if they want rewards. But unlike the way it is being done now everyone has the opportunity to get max rewards.
They changed the participation metric at capture points, it seems to address the 'tagging' of points, but created a bug where you'd occasionally get no credit for completion on a capture point regardless of what you do. There's a partial fix going in for the bug tomorrow, apparently.
I thought it would be a good idea to help with the last area ... it wasn't. The way from the capture point in the middle of City to the boss isn't long, all the more with frosted boots and I decided to get my 20 command credits for the mission fast. Everyone must have been in City ... I just got 3 hits on the boss and he was down after less than 1 minute and I ... got 5 dilithium ... (just 1 of my experiences in there today)
I loved this zone even though there have been afklers and taggers and co., but I won't go there anymore.
How can someone think that ppl will help to finish the last area/s more than before when they maybe don't get the reward they are doing it for, because the way is too long or whatever?
I've done sooo many runs from the first area to the last boss with my 8 toons and I never had such a problem in that zone with any type of player that I would have been crying in the forums for a change ... ye I didn't get at least 1 command credit sometimes ... where is the problem? no problem! just try again ... ye sometimes a boss failed ... **** happens!... while other's were crying and didn't stop it, we cleared a whole instance and got rewarded while the first ones got closer to a heart attack ...
This zone will end up like Nukara and it's the same type of ppl to blame for it in the first place and no I don't mean Cryptic or PWE!
The changes are a bit weird i'll admit and going on player reports there look to be some bugs and inconsistencies, but I've not had any major problems with them thus far.
I've always maintained that to get credit for a zone being captured you need to be within say 30-50m of it, and you need to have actively participated (meaning shot the NPCs there, activated consoles or whatever). That solves the tagging problems right away as nobody will be able to just run about tagging as they need to stay in range to get credit, and when they are in range the chances are they will get drawn into a firefight with the NPCs.
Tagging the bosses was never a problem as far as I could see. You have 15 players per instance so there's possible 5 in each of the 3 sectors. So when the bosses come out those 5 in each sector go kill the boss. If people are tagging it and running for the next one then it's highly likely there as people doing it in each sector so all that happens is a few players swap sectors for a few minutes until everyone is in their "final" sector and the bosses get killed.
The only issue I ever had with this sort of tactic was on the odd occasion where all the taggers were in one sector and left it unguarded and the medics got all the omega particles. This happens very rarely.
For truly dealing with AFK players just put a timer on that means they have to be active whilst out in the field (i.e. they need to be moving or shooting or activating consoles). Then link the final reward to actual participation in the zones - you capture no zones then you get the boss payout (a minimum amount) but no bonus for any other assistance.
That means those guys who sit at the rex site for 30 mins doing nothing whilst they wait for the boss to drop in wold get a reduced reward despite helping to kill the final boss.
good luck getting people to do that.
I've only run this with fairly weak science and tac characters and failed to get credit for shooting rex for about a minute.
I will try sometime with engineer and stronger characters. It probably takes 3 Rex off the table - which is the main intent. Also in the 2 runs I made it was not possible to capture 5 zones as both battlezones went very quickly and you must solo them. This also is probably the intent.
Overall the nerf for me looks like around 20% - which I can live with.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
You could do that but its hard for several reasons.
#1 pugs will be pugs...trying to get a pug to do anything is a headache. You might get lucky and get people who are willing to listen and follow orders. But then you might get some people who are lazy, trolls, afkers, leechers, or who just plain will not listen.
#2 BZ chat isnt setup very well. Zone chat is shared across all instances, i think local chat might just be in the BZ instance you are in. Either way having all the chats displayed by default at the same time could be confusing. A person in BZ #4 could say something like "go to city we are losing those points" but the people in BZ #5 could just be starting and are at 1% and they will go "huh" and the people in BZ #8 could just have gotten done capping all city points (and it would take a while before Voth try to recap them). Zones will be at different stages of progression but you dont know who is talking to who on the chat channel. When the Dyson/Undine space BZs first came out i think a few of us tried to coordinate in zone chat a bit. We would say that BZ #4 needed people at a point, or BZ #5 needs assistance. Though it isnt needed anymore it never really caught on when we first started doing it.
Anyways pugs cant be trusted enough to know what they are supposed to do so i think it would just be better if the BZ is designed so that it forces them to do certain things in a certain order.
I understand that people will afk outside a forcefield or bridge but obviously they would need to put the forcefield up to the boundry of other zones... i.e if they go afk they get shot with swarmers and voth; after all voth always target players over anything else even if the player isn´t aggressive towards them.
I suppose that I was lucky with tagging, but it seems that alot of other people here had the issue.
1 big boss over several is one way to make this zone better, your idea about having to take them down in order could work but only if there is a timer so that people say in city could have time to get to outskirts or park before the boss spawns. Alternatively have the ¨rally¨ option like in the voth space STFs
Also for the record, I didn't say anything about players not using their class properly. I'm refering to people who abuse the mechanics out of laziness or greed.
Unfortunately, Cryptic don't make these kind of changes to benefit the player experience. They make these changes to prevent a minority from profiteering through poorly thought out mechanics, or small unforseen loopholes (same thing really). As always it is a bad few, spoiling the fun for the many.
There are some great ideas in this thread, I really hope that they are picked up on and looked at. I especially like the ideas of -
Having to be within the perimeter of any given capture point, at the point of capture, to receive a reward. I dont care if a player only turns up in the last 2mins, it hasnt made my job any harder. As long as that player stays till capture, helping with additional mobs, Im happy. I can understand the need to implement a payout penaly dependant on how long a player has been at the point, but dont drop it to the point of being worthless, If they are actively playing within that perimiter for at least a 1/3rd of the timer.. give them full credit, encourage folks to stay and play a point.
A 30sec drop box beside each downed Dino Boss with the players reward inside. Use a multiplier on that reward based on how many points/zones the player has captured, and then add some sort of final reward multilier on each of remaining Boss Dino's captured. Or have a reward popup, much like in queued events, that only appears to players inside that Dino Boss perimeter, that requires an active player confirmation, to recieve the reward.
But, this is STO, where the minority spoil the game for the silent majority at all times.
The minority being the AFK'ers, and the whingers.
Thanks for your joint continous attemtps at ruining the game.
As you can now see, you have succeeded at spoiling pretty much the last refuge for decent dill rewards for all.
Because cryptic will now continue taking it to bits. NICE WORK.
By whingers are you talking about us on this thread or the people that reported tagging, making cryptic make these changes?
Anyone with half a brain can see that these changes are, all in all, for the worse. That's Cryptic's fault and no one else's. Are you suggesting that people should just keep quiet about people who abuse the mechanics? As I said, Cryptic made BAD changes, but they could just have easily made good ones. Note that this post was made after the changes not before... the afking and tagging was tolerable (barely) for me; I got my dilithium then left the zone before those jerks drove me mad.
But yes, can't trust them to do anything. People complain about AFKing in Kerrat and Cryptic pretty much destroy the zone as a result. They just need to be making good changes not half assed ones.
Agreed. I suggested that strategy some time ago but it seems too difficult to institute.
My problem now is that the tagging is completely broken. I can sit in a zone that's half
done till the end, and still only get 5 dilithium for it. It also seems you have to be present at the
boss' death to recieve the 720d reward, which makes running three bosses almost impossible.
At best I'll get two, but in a more than a couple runs everyone just sat at the boss they
started with, in fear of losing that dilithium, so they're all killed fairly quickly which leaves you
with little more than 1k as the end reward.
You can't blame anyone for Cryptic's poor decision making save Cryptic, especially people
who would hope other players to be fair and participate equally. I don't care
about how many characters you have to complete Dyson with, as the main argument goes,
because I grind with someone on a daily basis who has something akin to eight characters,
and goes through each run with as much vigor. The afking was almost bearable,
as was the boss tagging, but you can't guilt the people who spoke out against the tiresome
lot for the inadequate solutions of Cryptic. There were many other ways of fixing Dyson and
preventing those afkers from sitting at the boss.
I think that one, much harder boss would
be sufficient and that the area shouldn't be available at all until the zone is captured.
Perhaps a certain amount of participation should be required to keep people from simply
sitting in the command center until said single boss appears. I don't know, but ultimately
Cryptic is the blame for current Dyson set up, not players who complained.
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50k per hour? Bit of an exaggeration there don't you think? 25k per hour perhaps, though that's a stretch also... unless you are running multiple accounts simultaneously, in which case that doesn't count.
And these moaning ppl are the huge problem ... they're the excuse for cryptic to nerf things under the pretext of improvement.
Besides some little "features" the Zone was fine before.
Yes... you guys are right, the game is absolutely perfect.
Let's not rock the boat, everyone; daring to suggest improvements is just dumb.
For the record, in this specific case, you guys are absolutely right (because, Cryptic)... and yet absolutely wrong (because it's not our fault that those guys have no idea how their own game works)
Define a number of control points needed for full zone reward.
Once allied forces control the zone and silos become active, pop up a transport message for players that have met the minimum capture requirement to proceed to the next phase in a separate instance containing the silos and dinos.
For players falling below the minimum at this point, they will receive a pop up message or countdown to be transported back to the command center and receive bare minimum rewards.
This will stop the afkers from camping the silos while everyone else does all the work to open them and allow the productive players to reap extra rewards in the boss instance.
My character Tsin'xing
That crossed my mind :P
Increase dilithium consumption!
Good idea or bad idea?
Borg STFs are harder to get BNPs. Now this with dyson harder to get VCI?
Doesn't this make it harder for new players?
Good idea or bad idea?
Less dilithium for all! And to all an empty wallet!
It is a good day for STO to die.