Please report here which queues you are not able to queue up for due to lack of other members joining your PUG.
Please include only the queues that are not popping within a reasonable amount of time, please do not include any queues that are functioning normally or only take 1-2 minutes to pop.
Queue Name: (Which PvE event?)
Level Type: (Normal, Advanced, Elite?)
Average Wait Currently: (How long aprox do you wait now?)
Average Wait Previously: (How long aprox did you used to wait?)
We've been told (a few times) that the Forums are not considered as a reliable source of information.
So why all of a sudden, are we being asked a question that any member of the development team could queue up and see for themselves??
Is this an omen that something wicked this way comes???
I feel like Little Red Ridinghood wondering why Grandma has such big smile with a mouthful of fangs...
:eek:
The only reason I can come up with that makes any sense is that their metrics don't distinguish between public and private queues. They just look at X queue is popping Y times without looking at how that queue was formed. If they had the metrics to look specifically at public queues, then this entire thread makes no sense. That's about all I can come up with.
Why are you asking us? You're the ones with game metrics. Every time Geko has gone on P1, he's told us that players are wrong and Cryptic's info tells the whole story.
So now you're asking us, eh. Okay, here's why:
The chances of failure are too high and the rewards are too low.
That's the list in its entirety. But I know that's not enough, and I realize I'm being a bit condescending in tone here (you've made me a very cynical player, Cryptic), so I'll try to expand on the problems a bit.
Failure Conditions:
Any queue that requires cooperation to succeed a mandatory objective will not be playable with a random group. The brutal truth is that the average STO player isn't very good at this game (or probably any game). Some of us do what we can to help players who seek out that assistance, but they're already not average. In addition, there's a tremendous disparity in skill from the top to the bottom, an equally large disparity in gear from the top to the bottom, and plain old language barriers at work.
The public queues can't be helped by the fact that almost all players who are good at the game, who know what to do, have turned exclusively to private matches organized in non-default chat channels. This has increased the ratio of inexperienced or unskilled players in pugs. Where before, a few decent players could carry a couple of bad ones, the decrease in good players combined with mandatory objectives now makes this impossible.
Additionally, several queues still, two months after DR, have showstopper bugs preventing completion. The anomaly in VCA/E still can't be scanned, and it's no longer an optional. That's a 33% chance of that queue failing, immediately. Korfez has a 50% chance of throwing players at the Benthan Deathmarch which even teams of 30k players can't beat. The alarm bugs in BHE can clip into the walls and become untargetable.
Bugs in queues like these should be priority fixes. There's no excuse for bugs that prevent completion of the mission lasting longer than a week. You guys pulled Undine Infiltration over an enemy that wasn't scaling right.
Rewards:
The low dilithium rewards have been complained about ad nauseum and I can't really add to that discussion. You increased the sinks while decreasing the sources, and you knew you were doing it. But dil isn't the only reward in STO.
All queues will reward Skill Points, Dilithium, and Crafting materials based on their difficulty level.
8,000 16,000 Skill Points based on average time in queue.
240, 480, or 960 Dilithium based on difficulty.
No queue will reward gear.
This is, obviously, obsolete info. The dil rewards have already been increased, slightly, to 360, 720, and 1440.
8,000 - 16,000 Skill Points based on average time in queue.
Based on the "rescaling" of SP that happened a few weeks ago, this should now be 24,000 - 48,000 Skill Points per queue. Instead, it isn't even 8k - 16k- that patch note was simply a lie. Players weren't getting that much SP for queues when DR launched, they certainly aren't getting it now, much less the three times that they should be getting.
No queue will reward gear.
Except the ones that do, right? Crystalline, SB24, etc. I'm not really bothered that Borg STFs don't give a random piece of vendor trash, but it *was* a nice surprise to get something good every once in a while. It was also a nice surprise to get bonus marks, or an extra neural processor. Nowadays, you could throw in extra R&D materials from time to time, or upgrade kits.
As of late, the only queue my level 60(actually 61) tactical captain with fleet-grade gear and several reputation pieces can complete reliably is Bug Hunt Advanced, which usually takes a minute or two to pop.
Before delta rising, all the space borg elite queues (now advanced) except for hive (ie Infected Conduit, Khitomer Vortex, and Cure Found) would pop nearly instantly. A run of all three would net the player 2880 dilithium, three processors, three special R&D boxes, and about 280 marks if the first one also got your daily marks bonus. The enemies were more powerful than on normal, but weren't the bloated sacks of HP that the queues were infamous for immediately after DR. My KDF tactical in a b'rel retrofit with mk xi voth antiproton could throw a decent amount of hurt around in a fight pre-DR. I remember trying a conduit run the day DR hit, and basically feeling completely useless as I wailed on a borg sphere with half a million HP to practically no avail. Increasing the difficulty should never mean that the enemies just have over-compensated HP. It reeks of laziness, and just drags things out to the point of tedium.
The 20 man queues could also pop every so often pre-DR. Now, Mine Trap, Starbase Fleet Defense, the Big Dig, and so on, hardly ever pop if at all. I do like that the rewards for the gear/dilithium queues was increased. It's a step in the right direction, and should be applied to the others, I think.
As for non-borg queues, I haven't played any except the gorn minefield, which can take anywhere from near instant to a half-hour or more, depending on the character level.
My recommendations for fixing it are thus-
Increase the dilithium rewards to just above old levels. If advanced was supposed to be the most like the old elite, the rewards should reflect it, with a little extra for the increased difficulty. 500 dil for a normal, 1000 dil for an advanced, and 1500 for an Elite would be reasonable, methinks. Make the rewards reflect the amount of effort that the players have to put in to give them. At the moment, it's more effort for less reward, which in part is why these queues are probably dead, dying, or slow. As for the 720 dil rewarding normals (Big Dig, Breaking the planet, Gorn minefield, Starbase 24, and colony invasion), keep those as is.
Remove the failure conditions for the advanced queues, and put the previously optional objectives that became mandatory back to optionals. In this current state of affairs, it makes the missions far too easy for griefers to completely ruin the mission for everyone and leave them with the 10-mark "prize." I've seen it happen several times in Infected Conduit Advanced, where one player would blast the generators long before the cube above them was dead, followed shortly by the lot of us being given 10 marks and an hour cooldown for our trouble. Removal of the mission fail conditions stemming from mandatory objectives that used to be optional would stop a lot of the griefing, though there would always be someone out there that wants to ruin a mission for everyone else. All these failure conditions did was make it much easier for them to do it.
My final suggestion is to cut down on damage resistances and/or shield hardness of the borg in the advanced STFs. The first and only time I played khitomer space advanced after DR (and after the HP nerfs to advanced and normal enemies, I might add), it was as if the spheres and cubes all had shields more akin to a voth citadel dreadnought, and this is from somebody in an upgraded fleet patrol escort refit with five damage consoles, an AMP core, a plasmonic leech, and mk xii fleet gear. Then we have the matter of the borg birds of prey in the cure space advanced, who take several times longer to kill than the borg negh'vars. You need to cut down their HP and their damage resistance, as it's rather ridiculous when someone that used to vape such ships with insulting ease now may as well just shout obscenities at them.
And finally, increase the xp payouts a bit. If we're fighting legions of ships, the XP we gain should reflect it. I'm not asking for it to take us up a full level or spec point, but I think 5% of the xp needed for a spec point, like a previous poster suggested, would be reasonable.
Anyways, there is my two cents on the matter. You wanted constructive criticism and reports on the queues, and there is my personal experience with them lately. I hope it helps.
The ONLY queue I'm able to get in on anymore is the advanced Crystalline Entity. It can take a couple of minutes to pop sometimes, but it's usually around a minute. Back before DR, (and was "Elite") it would pop almost as soon as I hit the Join button.
Prior to DR I would do an occasional Azure Nebula Rescue, which only had a Normal version. It would usually pop after a minute or two. Since DR, I've never seen a Normal version going. I do see Advanced runs maybe once or twice a week, but I'm not geared well enough to bother with that yet.
Prior to DR I would do an occasional Vault: Ensared, which only had a Normal version. It would take 5 or so minutes to pop, sometimes less. Since DR, I've never seen any version of this running.
Prior to DR I would do an occasional Starbase 24, which only had a Normal version. Since it takes more people to start up, it could sometimes take 5+ minutes to pop, but was usually maybe 2 minutes. Since DR, I've only seen maybe 2 of these running, neither one of them with a full 10 man team.
I think you get the idea by now. There were other queues I would run prior to DR, but on a less frequent basis, like the The Federation Fleet Alert, Federation Starbase Blockade and No Win Scenario. Since DR, no one bothers with these.
Part of the reasons players aren't running queues anymore is due to the rewards being nerfed. Another part is the inane HP increase the NPCs got with DR. (Sure, it's been toned down and is 'acceptable' but it is still more than what it was prior to DR.) Add in the Not-So-Optionals, the lack of good XP in the queues (meaning there are better places to grind) and the huge disconnect between Normal and Advanced as far as gear needed and being able to be obtained...
Players are frustrated. Frustrated players won't play what frustrated them. They will splinter off into groups and either run private queues to "know" they have the proper skill/gear to actually DO the content, by only allowing people they know through being friends or fleets members, or simply give up.
I'm in the latter group, sadly. Even though I was in the beta, I've really only been playing on a regular basis for the last couple of years. I'm NOT one of the top 50% of players, based on skill, knowledge or gear. I am a very casual player.
Prior to DR I was wanting to start getting into the Borg STF's but I KNEW I needed to start out small and run a few Normal runs to get the hang of them before even attempting the old Elite version. Unfortunately, Normals didn't pop all that often back then because seemingly most folks could faceroll the Elites even with a leecher or 2. So no one bothered with Normal, even new players. I have a mindset though that I don't like to leech, I want to hold my own. So I won't go into something when I know I'm not prepared.
I'm in a couple of great fleets (1 Fed, 1 Klingon), but my play times do not mesh well with when the majority of my fleet mates are playing. Meaning I am left to PuG. And now with DR, PuG'ing is dead except for a select few missions.
Where before DR even a newb could wander into an Elite queue and the mish could succeed, post-DR, if you don't have a near perfect team make-up, failure is nearly assured. According to what I see on the forums and in-game, even 1 person under geared will cause failure. I'm not sure how much stock I put in that since I'm of the mind it's more skill than gear that determines such things. But I CAN see it in that the under geared player may not have enough DPS. And since that's all the game seems to have become is a "MOAR DPS!" race, gear up or don't show up.
Problem is, as many folks previously have said, it's a catch-22. Need to do at least Advanced to get the items needed to "gear up", but can't DO Advanced until you are geared up.
Normal absolutely needs to reward VR crafting mats and Rep specific items like Borg Neural Processors. Not many, perhaps one of each or even a choice of one or the other, but new players NEED a way to get these items. Otherwise they are stuck doing normal forever since they can't get anything NEEDED to improve their gear through in game methods. Advanced should reward MORE of these things, at least 2-3 of each, perhaps 2 BNP's and similar items AND (not or) 2 or more VR crafting mats, depending on how well the team did.
If players can't get items needed to upgrade through in game methods and are left with "pay to win" as the only alternative, players will leave. Playing on Normal should allow someone to upgrade, but definitely at a slower pace. Higher risk means higher rewards.
Perhaps I went too far off topic, but this thread opened the door.
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
aside from Crystaline Entity Adv. and maybe azure nebula, and very occasionally Gorn Minefield. I have no use for any other queues myself (for the Dilithium grind for gear upgrade, to do higher level queues, you see the problem here?)
the Dyson Space and Dyson ground are better imo for dilithium grind, but I do some others when I can for the occasional rare rewards for making tech upgrades...but I actually dont count on it.
another problem is how easy the advanced/elites fail, ESPECIALLY with mk12/mk13 gear, which you need mk14 gear at least to do, which means more grinding, again, see the problem?
Well, the post from iamynaught summs it up nicely. I am a casual gamer, but consider myself well known. Still i also wanna to practice in the normal versions of queues before i try the harder ones.
I have played STO for about 2 years for now and still not seen all borg STFs from the inside... If there were decent walk-troughs ar at least some mission recap i could think of strategys before entering, but so i need to find out the mission while doing it.
In Elachi alert i needed three runs until i saw the option to work on the gate.... and so on.
I pesonally want to get some fleet memebrs together for training runs, but then i have the same problem: i´m not the same time zone as most of them.
Got no idea about a solution, only a wish: if you rebuild queue systems, please don´t delete content
[´cause i wanna do all of them someday to get the accolades and to have played ALL of the game]
I'm sorry but lol at this thread trying to pass empty queues off as a "bug"or "issue" other than "no one wants to play them due to reduced rewards and other 'tweaks.'" It's no secret that the game is hemorrhaging players so just fess up and admit it rather than pretend differently.
THIS.
It's not a queue problem. It's a game problem.
Also, didn't Gecko say they wanted to reduce the queues so the list wasn't so long? This is probably just a way of farming data to see what they can cut and what they can't. Has nothing to do with actually FIXING the problem.
Repeat: The problem isn't the queues. It's the lack of PLAYERS.
Also, didn't Gecko say they wanted to reduce the queues so the list wasn't so long? This is probably just a way of farming data to see what they can cut and what they can't. Has nothing to do with actually FIXING the problem.
Repeat: The problem isn't the queues. It's the lack of PLAYERS.
This is another method to find content to remove. Agreed.
I'm sorry but lol at this thread trying to pass empty queues off as a "bug"or "issue" other than "no one wants to play them due to reduced rewards and other 'tweaks.'" It's no secret that the game is hemorrhaging players so just fess up and admit it rather than pretend differently.
Agreed. rofl... I gave up on playing STO about two to three weeks ago.
I took out a three months subscription with Cryptic's rival.
As long as they keep nerfing rewards and gear, I am going to see these 'technical' issues as excuses.
"...but, but, but, it is a technical issue" - Cryptic
...and, so is my closed wallet and uninstalled version of STO.
A run down of stfs and likely reasons why they don't pop:
Atmosphere Assault: Requires a shuttle, some folks don't want to embarrass themselves by bringing their freebie shuttle. It's also not worth the marks for the time spent.
Azure Nebula: The common problem with pugging this, is that some will happily ignore the ships worth more points and try to free the t'liss instead. Or just fly around the map mindlessly pew pewing without helping to free a single ship.
Battle of Korfez: Most players don't know what they're doing and those who do, don't want to carry undergeared people.
Borg Disconnected: Most players still don't know what to do for this and will again mindlessly pew pew without freeing the 'good' co-operative borg. Players who have figured out how to do this stf don't want to risk flying with those who don't.
Bug Hunt: Fun in a group who knows what they're doing, not fun when you're pugging and you're the only one geared for it.
Crystalline Catastrophe: I don't have any problems with this popping, it just takes longer than it used to thanks to the lazy decision to make everything into bags of hit points.
Defend Rhilolol station: I can't be bothered to spell this one's name properly. Apart from that, people don't want to risk the hard fail.
Hive Onslaught: Lots of players couldn't do this one before Delta Rising, so they certainly aren't going to queue for it now.
Infected (ground): Only worth doing in a pre-formed group, taking a chance on a pug isn't worth it.
Infected (Space): This has no problems with popping, as it's the easiest of the borg stfs.
Into the Hive: Nobody is going to bother with this when they can just do Defera or infected space for their omega marks.
Khitomer in Stasis: See above. There is one small incentive - the borg boff you can get even if you fail the optional.
Khitomer Vortex: The one to do when Infected space is in cooldown. No problems with getting this to pop.
Mine Trap: Boring, tedious ground stf which takes ages to pop because it needs 20 bored people who are desperate enough for marks to do it.
I won't even bother with the Nukara ones. The average player will do Crystalline once per day to get the nukara marks and bonus box and their first visit to Nukara will be to claim that t5 rep reward.
Storming the Spire: Wasn't worth doing pre-Delta Rising, certainly isn't worth doing now. Boring stf with little marks rewarded for time spent.
The Breach: Used to be my favourite stf. Now suffers because of the tedious task of slowly grinding down those bags of hit points.
The Cure Applied: The usual why do this when you can do Defera and Infected.
The Cure Found: The one to do when Infected and Khitomer are in cooldown (but the risk of a bad pug group remains). No problems with getting this to pop because of that.
The Vault Ensnared: Can take ages for an extremely low amount of marks for time spent. Not worth doing pugged or queued with a pre-made.
Undine Assault: See above.
Undine Infiltration: Not worth the risk of a pug on elite because there's always that one player who will let an undine go free or jail a bijoran.
Vault Shuttle Event: The usual not worth marks rewarded for time spent, also irritating, not fun at all.
Viscous Cycle: Can be pugged IF you don't get that scan anomaly 'optional'. Since that anomaly cannot be scanned in time, even if you take the precaution of parking your science ship right on top of it in case that appears as the 'optional'. The word is in quotation marks simply because the stf will fail if that is the random optional to complete. If only Cryptic actually played their own content!
There's some I've missed out, like fleet alert. I don't do those because I don't need fleet marks these days.
A run down of stfs and likely reasons why they don't pop:
Atmosphere Assault: Requires a shuttle, some folks don't want to embarrass themselves by bringing their freebie shuttle. It's also not worth the marks for the time spent.
Azure Nebula: The common problem with pugging this, is that some will happily ignore the ships worth more points and try to free the t'liss instead. Or just fly around the map mindlessly pew pewing without helping to free a single ship.
Battle of Korfez: Most players don't know what they're doing and those who do, don't want to carry undergeared people.
Borg Disconnected: Most players still don't know what to do for this and will again mindlessly pew pew without freeing the 'good' co-operative borg. Players who have figured out how to do this stf don't want to risk flying with those who don't.
Bug Hunt: Fun in a group who knows what they're doing, not fun when you're pugging and you're the only one geared for it.
Crystalline Catastrophe: I don't have any problems with this popping, it just takes longer than it used to thanks to the lazy decision to make everything into bags of hit points.
Defend Rhilolol station: I can't be bothered to spell this one's name properly. Apart from that, people don't want to risk the hard fail.
Hive Onslaught: Lots of players couldn't do this one before Delta Rising, so they certainly aren't going to queue for it now.
Infected (ground): Only worth doing in a pre-formed group, taking a chance on a pug isn't worth it.
Infected (Space): This has no problems with popping, as it's the easiest of the borg stfs.
Into the Hive: Nobody is going to bother with this when they can just do Defera or infected space for their omega marks.
Khitomer in Stasis: See above. There is one small incentive - the borg boff you can get even if you fail the optional.
Khitomer Vortex: The one to do when Infected space is in cooldown. No problems with getting this to pop.
Mine Trap: Boring, tedious ground stf which takes ages to pop because it needs 20 bored people who are desperate enough for marks to do it.
I won't even bother with the Nukara ones. The average player will do Crystalline once per day to get the nukara marks and bonus box and their first visit to Nukara will be to claim that t5 rep reward.
Storming the Spire: Wasn't worth doing pre-Delta Rising, certainly isn't worth doing now. Boring stf with little marks rewarded for time spent.
The Breach: Used to be my favourite stf. Now suffers because of the tedious task of slowly grinding down those bags of hit points.
The Cure Applied: The usual why do this when you can do Defera and Infected.
The Cure Found: The one to do when Infected and Khitomer are in cooldown (but the risk of a bad pug group remains). No problems with getting this to pop because of that.
The Vault Ensnared: Can take ages for an extremely low amount of marks for time spent. Not worth doing pugged or queued with a pre-made.
Undine Assault: See above.
Undine Infiltration: Not worth the risk of a pug on elite because there's always that one player who will let an undine go free or jail a bijoran.
Vault Shuttle Event: The usual not worth marks rewarded for time spent, also irritating, not fun at all.
Viscous Cycle: Can be pugged IF you don't get that scan anomaly 'optional'. Since that anomaly cannot be scanned in time, even if you take the precaution of parking your science ship right on top of it in case that appears as the 'optional'. The word is in quotation marks simply because the stf will fail if that is the random optional to complete. If only Cryptic actually played their own content!
There's some I've missed out, like fleet alert. I don't do those because I don't need fleet marks these days.
I quote this entire thing because this is my report almost word for word.
Fleet alert have been fine for me as Fed.
If there is one and only one that you will relent on and fix it should be Borg Disconnected. Why? It's new and should have been a showpiece. Instead it's been a disaster. If unwilling to remove the fail conditions, how about at least looking into the spawn rates in the 2nd and 3rd waves. No groups of 3 small borg are spawning - only the cubes. This is almost certainly a bug.
I would love to be able to pug Rhiho ho ho. But the timer there is absurd (yes I know you can solo it in 5 seconds. I can barely sprint around the station in 3 minutes.).
There might be some hope for Viscous if the scanning bug is fixed.
Azure is a miserable torment to PUG.
Undine infiltration was my favorite ground mission. I don't run it anymore because of the stupid 10/10 troll.
Those are my top 5 that could and should be saved.
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."
The list of queues which are running are shorter then the list of queues not running.
Running queues:
Crystalline advanced
infected space
khitomer space
cure space
and sometimes fleet alert
Crystalline is a no-brainer. People like the pew pew.
Infected space, even in its current borked condition still gets players, though I still have yet to complete it successfully in a PUG after the DR changes. (Advanced)
I almost NEVER See Khittomer or Cure (Space.Advanced) pop. When are YOU playing?!?!?
Fed/KDF Fleet Alert (the 5-man, not to be confused with "Fleet Defenset" pops regularly...I'm not sure what YOU'RE seeing...
With all others i have problems
Nukara missions didn't run anymore - False. On Elite Transdimensionsal Tactics pops regularly
Starbase 24 not running - Also False. It pops regularly, although not as often as in the past.
Rihoo station not running or you have to wait for a long time - In general, True, until you get to Elite. Then it pops with decent frequency.
Fleet defense not running - True. Sadly I wish this weren't the case.
The vault is not running -True. Thank god: It pays for **** and there are too many factors that can lead to failure.
Starbace incursion is not running or you have to wait for a long time - True. Sadly, it is a fun mission.
and there are a lot of other missions i want to play for variety but there are not running anymore. - We can ALL agree with this.
.
I know you don't want to hear this but all of them are long in the waiting to play in pug compared to before DR. The instant fail for OPTIONS is stupid to me. The levels for mission is not right also normal (50) should be 45. The level for advance is 60 should be 50 (seeing it is level 50 content not 60). The main problem to me is you did not figure a average dps in mission for the time to complete it. I'm sorry but High hull point npc is not fun to me.The first time I did cure after DR and saw a BOP with 300k hull I laughed to myself. I have a cruiser with 82k hull that has to fight 2 bops with 300k hull how stupid is that. I can do it but it is to long and is boring to consider it fun.
You want hard content for players fine but put in more Elite (60) and leave the rest alone.
I was going to give input into this thread but because I feel its not asking the correct question and since I have stopped playing q's and gave up waiting awhile back I can't really answer it.
remove the optional fails in advanced then the q's will become busy again. I dont find your present system fun so i am not partaking of it any longer.
Please report here which queues you are not able to queue up for due to lack of other members joining your PUG.
Please include only the queues that are not popping within a reasonable amount of time, please do not include any queues that are functioning normally or only take 1-2 minutes to pop.
Queue Name: (Which PvE event?)
Level Type: (Normal, Advanced, Elite?)
Average Wait Currently: (How long aprox do you wait now?)
Average Wait Previously: (How long aprox did you used to wait?)
Thanks everyone! ~CaptainSmirk
Why do I have to do your job for you! LOGIN AND TRY TO PUG!!!!!!
There are only half a dozen queues that pop like 90% OF THEM USED TO!!!
For f@#$ sake has no one from cryptic BOTHERED TO EVEN LOG IN!!!!!!!!!
The possibly of failure and walking away with nothing while being locked out is too high.
Were more people running them before the change with DR? then it's quite simple, put them back they way they were! Admit you made a mistake and own it.
Basically any queue besides Bug Hunt and Borg Disconnected.
Ok, here's the list I want to be able to queue for and simply cannot because there's nobody ever in them:
Infected: Manus (Normal)
The Cure Applied (Normal)
Khitomer in Stasis (Normal)
Into the Hive (Normal)
There's plenty more that never pop but these are the ones I want to play the most. Btw, my play time is usually in the evenings, PDT (I live just up the freeway from Cryptic )
As an aside, I would GLADLY play the Advanced versions of all of these if there weren't "Optionals" that were actually unoptional and failed the mission.
the worst failing optionals are those timer ones that force you to speedrun through the mission.
you can't take time, use any strategies or do anything else but dps like crazy and pray you can outdps your enemies in time.
as others said, auto failure conditions should at most be in elite. have advanced work more like old elite. without auto failure conditions even dps sink missions are worth doing, because they will eventually end up with a reward rather than a lot of wasted time, no reward and a long cooldown so you can't try again until you succeed.
Now clowns, that's another story. They scare the crap out of me.
We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens.
We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
I'll bet 500 Quatloos the purpose of the thread is to save face by allowing them to fix the problems under the guise of "there was a bug with the queues."
The only problem with that is if They change ANYTHING within ANY of the STF's to alleviate the problem, we'll know They were fibbin'.
the worst failing optionals are those timer ones that force you to speedrun through the mission.
you can't take time, use any strategies or do anything else but dps like crazy and pray you can outdps your enemies in time.
as others said, auto failure conditions should at most be in elite. have advanced work more like old elite. without auto failure conditions even dps sink missions are worth doing, because they will eventually end up with a reward rather than a lot of wasted time, no reward and a long cooldown so you can't try again until you succeed.
I'm beginning to think They don't know how to turn the "Auto-Fail Optionals" Off.
They turned it on for the new Elites and it also fudged up the (Old Elites)/New Advanced ones.
:rolleyes:
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
the worst failing optionals are those timer ones that force you to speedrun through the mission.
you can't take time, use any strategies or do anything else but dps like crazy and pray you can outdps your enemies in time.
as others said, auto failure conditions should at most be in elite. have advanced work more like old elite. without auto failure conditions even dps sink missions are worth doing, because they will eventually end up with a reward rather than a lot of wasted time, no reward and a long cooldown so you can't try again until you succeed.
I mostly agree with this. Although I like the idea of fail conditions as a general rule, some of the fail conditions are so easily triggered it's silly. Oh and the probes in vortex with 100k hp on advanced? lolwut???
The only change I really noticed when doing space advanced... anything... is the fact that everything has around 3x the HP of normal.... ground isn't like this, ground advanced seems reasonably balanced to me.
Also, didn't Gecko say they wanted to reduce the queues so the list wasn't so long? This is probably just a way of farming data to see what they can cut and what they can't. Has nothing to do with actually FIXING the problem.
Repeat: The problem isn't the queues. It's the lack of PLAYERS.
Agreed, they're just finding excuses to bottleneck the player base into a narrower subset of queues to make their end of the metrics look better. I am not going to be party to that, especially as usually they prefer to listen to the supposedly almighty metrics over us players.
This 'survey' is just another attempt to defer away from the real issue in this game, and that is all the greed that came with DR; the severe upgrade costs, the excessive spec point system, the build variety unfriendly space content, the advanced queues that were supposed to be the old elite which would have been fair to the average player but now aren't.....
The list goes on, and it isn't going to go away either.
I mostly agree with this. Although I like the idea of fail conditions as a general rule, some of the fail conditions are so easily triggered it's silly. Oh and the probes in vortex with 100k hp on advanced? lolwut???
The only change I really noticed when doing space advanced... anything... is the fact that everything has around 3x the HP of normal.... ground isn't like this, ground advanced seems reasonably balanced to me.
That really depends on how competent the team is, but the Elite Tactical Drones have a bug with the knockback power that just hits everything repeatedly, friend or foe it doesn't matter and it can go off multiple times, which can really mess things up for less well geared players.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
This thread feels like a giant set up, queues gonna be nerfed hard.
If cryptic really wanted to know or gave a TRIBBLE, they'd get the data from the game itself, or they could log on to the game (which I get may take a while since they probably haven't in years) and actually check themselves.
Comments
It's all the darn queues. Since the rewards are literally TRIBBLE.
Advance 5 to 10 minutes other then Crystalline and Borg ones on advance.
Then the others 20 to 25 mins.
Aura
Now they are on a mad dash to recover before the Holiday week!
Bad meaning on a EPIC and Everything is Awesome scale.
Agreed. By "the game" we mean Holodeck. Not Tribble with its double XP payouts.
Free Tibet!
The only reason I can come up with that makes any sense is that their metrics don't distinguish between public and private queues. They just look at X queue is popping Y times without looking at how that queue was formed. If they had the metrics to look specifically at public queues, then this entire thread makes no sense. That's about all I can come up with.
Mine Trap Supporter
So now you're asking us, eh. Okay, here's why:
That's the list in its entirety. But I know that's not enough, and I realize I'm being a bit condescending in tone here (you've made me a very cynical player, Cryptic), so I'll try to expand on the problems a bit.
Failure Conditions:
Any queue that requires cooperation to succeed a mandatory objective will not be playable with a random group. The brutal truth is that the average STO player isn't very good at this game (or probably any game). Some of us do what we can to help players who seek out that assistance, but they're already not average. In addition, there's a tremendous disparity in skill from the top to the bottom, an equally large disparity in gear from the top to the bottom, and plain old language barriers at work.
The public queues can't be helped by the fact that almost all players who are good at the game, who know what to do, have turned exclusively to private matches organized in non-default chat channels. This has increased the ratio of inexperienced or unskilled players in pugs. Where before, a few decent players could carry a couple of bad ones, the decrease in good players combined with mandatory objectives now makes this impossible.
Additionally, several queues still, two months after DR, have showstopper bugs preventing completion. The anomaly in VCA/E still can't be scanned, and it's no longer an optional. That's a 33% chance of that queue failing, immediately. Korfez has a 50% chance of throwing players at the Benthan Deathmarch which even teams of 30k players can't beat. The alarm bugs in BHE can clip into the walls and become untargetable.
Bugs in queues like these should be priority fixes. There's no excuse for bugs that prevent completion of the mission lasting longer than a week. You guys pulled Undine Infiltration over an enemy that wasn't scaling right.
Rewards:
The low dilithium rewards have been complained about ad nauseum and I can't really add to that discussion. You increased the sinks while decreasing the sources, and you knew you were doing it. But dil isn't the only reward in STO.
Let's go back in time to September 30th's Tribble patch notes. I'll quote the relevant section:
This is, obviously, obsolete info. The dil rewards have already been increased, slightly, to 360, 720, and 1440.
Based on the "rescaling" of SP that happened a few weeks ago, this should now be 24,000 - 48,000 Skill Points per queue. Instead, it isn't even 8k - 16k- that patch note was simply a lie. Players weren't getting that much SP for queues when DR launched, they certainly aren't getting it now, much less the three times that they should be getting.
Except the ones that do, right? Crystalline, SB24, etc. I'm not really bothered that Borg STFs don't give a random piece of vendor trash, but it *was* a nice surprise to get something good every once in a while. It was also a nice surprise to get bonus marks, or an extra neural processor. Nowadays, you could throw in extra R&D materials from time to time, or upgrade kits.
Before delta rising, all the space borg elite queues (now advanced) except for hive (ie Infected Conduit, Khitomer Vortex, and Cure Found) would pop nearly instantly. A run of all three would net the player 2880 dilithium, three processors, three special R&D boxes, and about 280 marks if the first one also got your daily marks bonus. The enemies were more powerful than on normal, but weren't the bloated sacks of HP that the queues were infamous for immediately after DR. My KDF tactical in a b'rel retrofit with mk xi voth antiproton could throw a decent amount of hurt around in a fight pre-DR. I remember trying a conduit run the day DR hit, and basically feeling completely useless as I wailed on a borg sphere with half a million HP to practically no avail. Increasing the difficulty should never mean that the enemies just have over-compensated HP. It reeks of laziness, and just drags things out to the point of tedium.
The 20 man queues could also pop every so often pre-DR. Now, Mine Trap, Starbase Fleet Defense, the Big Dig, and so on, hardly ever pop if at all. I do like that the rewards for the gear/dilithium queues was increased. It's a step in the right direction, and should be applied to the others, I think.
As for non-borg queues, I haven't played any except the gorn minefield, which can take anywhere from near instant to a half-hour or more, depending on the character level.
My recommendations for fixing it are thus-
Increase the dilithium rewards to just above old levels. If advanced was supposed to be the most like the old elite, the rewards should reflect it, with a little extra for the increased difficulty. 500 dil for a normal, 1000 dil for an advanced, and 1500 for an Elite would be reasonable, methinks. Make the rewards reflect the amount of effort that the players have to put in to give them. At the moment, it's more effort for less reward, which in part is why these queues are probably dead, dying, or slow. As for the 720 dil rewarding normals (Big Dig, Breaking the planet, Gorn minefield, Starbase 24, and colony invasion), keep those as is.
Remove the failure conditions for the advanced queues, and put the previously optional objectives that became mandatory back to optionals. In this current state of affairs, it makes the missions far too easy for griefers to completely ruin the mission for everyone and leave them with the 10-mark "prize." I've seen it happen several times in Infected Conduit Advanced, where one player would blast the generators long before the cube above them was dead, followed shortly by the lot of us being given 10 marks and an hour cooldown for our trouble. Removal of the mission fail conditions stemming from mandatory objectives that used to be optional would stop a lot of the griefing, though there would always be someone out there that wants to ruin a mission for everyone else. All these failure conditions did was make it much easier for them to do it.
My final suggestion is to cut down on damage resistances and/or shield hardness of the borg in the advanced STFs. The first and only time I played khitomer space advanced after DR (and after the HP nerfs to advanced and normal enemies, I might add), it was as if the spheres and cubes all had shields more akin to a voth citadel dreadnought, and this is from somebody in an upgraded fleet patrol escort refit with five damage consoles, an AMP core, a plasmonic leech, and mk xii fleet gear. Then we have the matter of the borg birds of prey in the cure space advanced, who take several times longer to kill than the borg negh'vars. You need to cut down their HP and their damage resistance, as it's rather ridiculous when someone that used to vape such ships with insulting ease now may as well just shout obscenities at them.
And finally, increase the xp payouts a bit. If we're fighting legions of ships, the XP we gain should reflect it. I'm not asking for it to take us up a full level or spec point, but I think 5% of the xp needed for a spec point, like a previous poster suggested, would be reasonable.
Anyways, there is my two cents on the matter. You wanted constructive criticism and reports on the queues, and there is my personal experience with them lately. I hope it helps.
Prior to DR I would do an occasional Azure Nebula Rescue, which only had a Normal version. It would usually pop after a minute or two. Since DR, I've never seen a Normal version going. I do see Advanced runs maybe once or twice a week, but I'm not geared well enough to bother with that yet.
Prior to DR I would do an occasional Vault: Ensared, which only had a Normal version. It would take 5 or so minutes to pop, sometimes less. Since DR, I've never seen any version of this running.
Prior to DR I would do an occasional Starbase 24, which only had a Normal version. Since it takes more people to start up, it could sometimes take 5+ minutes to pop, but was usually maybe 2 minutes. Since DR, I've only seen maybe 2 of these running, neither one of them with a full 10 man team.
I think you get the idea by now. There were other queues I would run prior to DR, but on a less frequent basis, like the The Federation Fleet Alert, Federation Starbase Blockade and No Win Scenario. Since DR, no one bothers with these.
Part of the reasons players aren't running queues anymore is due to the rewards being nerfed. Another part is the inane HP increase the NPCs got with DR. (Sure, it's been toned down and is 'acceptable' but it is still more than what it was prior to DR.) Add in the Not-So-Optionals, the lack of good XP in the queues (meaning there are better places to grind) and the huge disconnect between Normal and Advanced as far as gear needed and being able to be obtained...
Players are frustrated. Frustrated players won't play what frustrated them. They will splinter off into groups and either run private queues to "know" they have the proper skill/gear to actually DO the content, by only allowing people they know through being friends or fleets members, or simply give up.
I'm in the latter group, sadly. Even though I was in the beta, I've really only been playing on a regular basis for the last couple of years. I'm NOT one of the top 50% of players, based on skill, knowledge or gear. I am a very casual player.
Prior to DR I was wanting to start getting into the Borg STF's but I KNEW I needed to start out small and run a few Normal runs to get the hang of them before even attempting the old Elite version. Unfortunately, Normals didn't pop all that often back then because seemingly most folks could faceroll the Elites even with a leecher or 2. So no one bothered with Normal, even new players. I have a mindset though that I don't like to leech, I want to hold my own. So I won't go into something when I know I'm not prepared.
I'm in a couple of great fleets (1 Fed, 1 Klingon), but my play times do not mesh well with when the majority of my fleet mates are playing. Meaning I am left to PuG. And now with DR, PuG'ing is dead except for a select few missions.
Where before DR even a newb could wander into an Elite queue and the mish could succeed, post-DR, if you don't have a near perfect team make-up, failure is nearly assured. According to what I see on the forums and in-game, even 1 person under geared will cause failure. I'm not sure how much stock I put in that since I'm of the mind it's more skill than gear that determines such things. But I CAN see it in that the under geared player may not have enough DPS. And since that's all the game seems to have become is a "MOAR DPS!" race, gear up or don't show up.
Problem is, as many folks previously have said, it's a catch-22. Need to do at least Advanced to get the items needed to "gear up", but can't DO Advanced until you are geared up.
Normal absolutely needs to reward VR crafting mats and Rep specific items like Borg Neural Processors. Not many, perhaps one of each or even a choice of one or the other, but new players NEED a way to get these items. Otherwise they are stuck doing normal forever since they can't get anything NEEDED to improve their gear through in game methods. Advanced should reward MORE of these things, at least 2-3 of each, perhaps 2 BNP's and similar items AND (not or) 2 or more VR crafting mats, depending on how well the team did.
If players can't get items needed to upgrade through in game methods and are left with "pay to win" as the only alternative, players will leave. Playing on Normal should allow someone to upgrade, but definitely at a slower pace. Higher risk means higher rewards.
Perhaps I went too far off topic, but this thread opened the door.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
the Dyson Space and Dyson ground are better imo for dilithium grind, but I do some others when I can for the occasional rare rewards for making tech upgrades...but I actually dont count on it.
another problem is how easy the advanced/elites fail, ESPECIALLY with mk12/mk13 gear, which you need mk14 gear at least to do, which means more grinding, again, see the problem?
I have played STO for about 2 years for now and still not seen all borg STFs from the inside... If there were decent walk-troughs ar at least some mission recap i could think of strategys before entering, but so i need to find out the mission while doing it.
In Elachi alert i needed three runs until i saw the option to work on the gate.... and so on.
I pesonally want to get some fleet memebrs together for training runs, but then i have the same problem: i´m not the same time zone as most of them.
Got no idea about a solution, only a wish: if you rebuild queue systems, please don´t delete content
[´cause i wanna do all of them someday to get the accolades and to have played ALL of the game]
Yeah. This sums it up nicely.
THIS.
It's not a queue problem. It's a game problem.
Also, didn't Gecko say they wanted to reduce the queues so the list wasn't so long? This is probably just a way of farming data to see what they can cut and what they can't. Has nothing to do with actually FIXING the problem.
Repeat: The problem isn't the queues. It's the lack of PLAYERS.
This is another method to find content to remove. Agreed.
"I swear its a technical issue. Its not a population issue!!!" - Cryptic
Agreed. rofl... I gave up on playing STO about two to three weeks ago.
I took out a three months subscription with Cryptic's rival.
As long as they keep nerfing rewards and gear, I am going to see these 'technical' issues as excuses.
"...but, but, but, it is a technical issue" - Cryptic
...and, so is my closed wallet and uninstalled version of STO.
Its a technical issue.
Atmosphere Assault: Requires a shuttle, some folks don't want to embarrass themselves by bringing their freebie shuttle. It's also not worth the marks for the time spent.
Azure Nebula: The common problem with pugging this, is that some will happily ignore the ships worth more points and try to free the t'liss instead. Or just fly around the map mindlessly pew pewing without helping to free a single ship.
Battle of Korfez: Most players don't know what they're doing and those who do, don't want to carry undergeared people.
Borg Disconnected: Most players still don't know what to do for this and will again mindlessly pew pew without freeing the 'good' co-operative borg. Players who have figured out how to do this stf don't want to risk flying with those who don't.
Bug Hunt: Fun in a group who knows what they're doing, not fun when you're pugging and you're the only one geared for it.
Crystalline Catastrophe: I don't have any problems with this popping, it just takes longer than it used to thanks to the lazy decision to make everything into bags of hit points.
Defend Rhilolol station: I can't be bothered to spell this one's name properly. Apart from that, people don't want to risk the hard fail.
Hive Onslaught: Lots of players couldn't do this one before Delta Rising, so they certainly aren't going to queue for it now.
Infected (ground): Only worth doing in a pre-formed group, taking a chance on a pug isn't worth it.
Infected (Space): This has no problems with popping, as it's the easiest of the borg stfs.
Into the Hive: Nobody is going to bother with this when they can just do Defera or infected space for their omega marks.
Khitomer in Stasis: See above. There is one small incentive - the borg boff you can get even if you fail the optional.
Khitomer Vortex: The one to do when Infected space is in cooldown. No problems with getting this to pop.
Mine Trap: Boring, tedious ground stf which takes ages to pop because it needs 20 bored people who are desperate enough for marks to do it.
I won't even bother with the Nukara ones. The average player will do Crystalline once per day to get the nukara marks and bonus box and their first visit to Nukara will be to claim that t5 rep reward.
Storming the Spire: Wasn't worth doing pre-Delta Rising, certainly isn't worth doing now. Boring stf with little marks rewarded for time spent.
The Breach: Used to be my favourite stf. Now suffers because of the tedious task of slowly grinding down those bags of hit points.
The Cure Applied: The usual why do this when you can do Defera and Infected.
The Cure Found: The one to do when Infected and Khitomer are in cooldown (but the risk of a bad pug group remains). No problems with getting this to pop because of that.
The Vault Ensnared: Can take ages for an extremely low amount of marks for time spent. Not worth doing pugged or queued with a pre-made.
Undine Assault: See above.
Undine Infiltration: Not worth the risk of a pug on elite because there's always that one player who will let an undine go free or jail a bijoran.
Vault Shuttle Event: The usual not worth marks rewarded for time spent, also irritating, not fun at all.
Viscous Cycle: Can be pugged IF you don't get that scan anomaly 'optional'. Since that anomaly cannot be scanned in time, even if you take the precaution of parking your science ship right on top of it in case that appears as the 'optional'. The word is in quotation marks simply because the stf will fail if that is the random optional to complete. If only Cryptic actually played their own content!
There's some I've missed out, like fleet alert. I don't do those because I don't need fleet marks these days.
You mean to tell me, that a friking Dev cannot start the game, look at the queues and see how things are ( or not ) popping?
Its a technical issue.
I quote this entire thing because this is my report almost word for word.
Fleet alert have been fine for me as Fed.
If there is one and only one that you will relent on and fix it should be Borg Disconnected. Why? It's new and should have been a showpiece. Instead it's been a disaster. If unwilling to remove the fail conditions, how about at least looking into the spawn rates in the 2nd and 3rd waves. No groups of 3 small borg are spawning - only the cubes. This is almost certainly a bug.
I would love to be able to pug Rhiho ho ho. But the timer there is absurd (yes I know you can solo it in 5 seconds. I can barely sprint around the station in 3 minutes.).
There might be some hope for Viscous if the scanning bug is fixed.
Azure is a miserable torment to PUG.
Undine infiltration was my favorite ground mission. I don't run it anymore because of the stupid 10/10 troll.
Those are my top 5 that could and should be saved.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Crystalline is a no-brainer. People like the pew pew.
Infected space, even in its current borked condition still gets players, though I still have yet to complete it successfully in a PUG after the DR changes. (Advanced)
I almost NEVER See Khittomer or Cure (Space.Advanced) pop. When are YOU playing?!?!?
Fed/KDF Fleet Alert (the 5-man, not to be confused with "Fleet Defenset" pops regularly...I'm not sure what YOU'RE seeing...
You want hard content for players fine but put in more Elite (60) and leave the rest alone.
remove the optional fails in advanced then the q's will become busy again. I dont find your present system fun so i am not partaking of it any longer.
Why do I have to do your job for you! LOGIN AND TRY TO PUG!!!!!!
There are only half a dozen queues that pop like 90% OF THEM USED TO!!!
For f@#$ sake has no one from cryptic BOTHERED TO EVEN LOG IN!!!!!!!!!
I have not seen an Undine queue with anyone in it, apart from the Infiltration mission, in many weeks.
Last time I tried the Vault, the PUG I was in got hammered early, and failed the primary & optional goals; haven't tried one since.
Granted, while the Winter event is running, I'm not even looking as much for PvE...
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The possibly of failure and walking away with nothing while being locked out is too high.
Were more people running them before the change with DR? then it's quite simple, put them back they way they were! Admit you made a mistake and own it.
Ok, here's the list I want to be able to queue for and simply cannot because there's nobody ever in them:
Infected: Manus (Normal)
The Cure Applied (Normal)
Khitomer in Stasis (Normal)
Into the Hive (Normal)
There's plenty more that never pop but these are the ones I want to play the most. Btw, my play time is usually in the evenings, PDT (I live just up the freeway from Cryptic
As an aside, I would GLADLY play the Advanced versions of all of these if there weren't "Optionals" that were actually unoptional and failed the mission.
you can't take time, use any strategies or do anything else but dps like crazy and pray you can outdps your enemies in time.
as others said, auto failure conditions should at most be in elite. have advanced work more like old elite. without auto failure conditions even dps sink missions are worth doing, because they will eventually end up with a reward rather than a lot of wasted time, no reward and a long cooldown so you can't try again until you succeed.
We fight them too. Entire armies spilling out of Volkswagens.
We do our best to fight them off, but they keep sending them in.
The only problem with that is if They change ANYTHING within ANY of the STF's to alleviate the problem, we'll know They were fibbin'.
I'm beginning to think They don't know how to turn the "Auto-Fail Optionals" Off.
They turned it on for the new Elites and it also fudged up the (Old Elites)/New Advanced ones.
:rolleyes:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
The only change I really noticed when doing space advanced... anything... is the fact that everything has around 3x the HP of normal.... ground isn't like this, ground advanced seems reasonably balanced to me.
My character Tsin'xing
Agreed, they're just finding excuses to bottleneck the player base into a narrower subset of queues to make their end of the metrics look better. I am not going to be party to that, especially as usually they prefer to listen to the supposedly almighty metrics over us players.
This 'survey' is just another attempt to defer away from the real issue in this game, and that is all the greed that came with DR; the severe upgrade costs, the excessive spec point system, the build variety unfriendly space content, the advanced queues that were supposed to be the old elite which would have been fair to the average player but now aren't.....
The list goes on, and it isn't going to go away either.
That really depends on how competent the team is, but the Elite Tactical Drones have a bug with the knockback power that just hits everything repeatedly, friend or foe it doesn't matter and it can go off multiple times, which can really mess things up for less well geared players.
If cryptic really wanted to know or gave a TRIBBLE, they'd get the data from the game itself, or they could log on to the game (which I get may take a while since they probably haven't in years) and actually check themselves.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
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