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Smirk, please consider this
blazeritter
Member Posts: 203 Arc User
I wanted to share some feedback in your survey thread, but it came and went much too fast (I don't watch the forums every day).
One crucial flaw that I believe is frustrating people - definitely frustrates me - is that the way fails are set up even a good player (or two) can't carry the team. One slip-up or misclick from any member of the team basically screws up everyone, and there's nothing anyone else on the team can do to prevent it.
Consider this:
1. In Undine Infiltration Elite, one person selecting the wrong "Quarantine/Clear" screws up the whole team. I've gotten to the point of using the pre-game chat to tell everyone that I can just do all of the questions myself if they're not comfortable, and sadly that has worked a couple of times. My four teammates simply wait/fight Bajorans while I run from suspect to suspect. Of course, even I have once clicked the wrong button, even though I knew which one I was supposed to click. Just got into a routine and misclicked.
2. In Azure Nebula Advanced, a friend and I can clear two camps ourselves before the 3 minute window (even level 5 Falchions), but we still fail because the remaining three players can't get one. We literally don't have time to fly across the map for a third one, and now my friend has given up and doesn't want to play anymore.
3. In Borg Disconnected Advanced, I can consistently use my Scimitar to take an area and get all spawned ships within 10-15 seconds alone (5-10 if I have one decent supporting player). Still, not enough ships spawn in my one area to handle the 15 requirement in any stage, and the map is too large for me to fly from my area to someone elses and back.
In each of these cases, I don't see how to improve my personal gameplay to compensate for this. It feels as if there is literally nothing more I can do, so how am I supposed to overcome these obstacles short of going out and building my own teams - which defeats the entire purpose of having a random queue?
One possible solution would be to change strict number of ship requirements to point score requirements, and scale the points based on the type of ship. The idea that a probe is worth just as much as a cube, or a T'liss as much as a Falchion, seems laughable. In those last two, it would at least give a chance for strong players to carry/help less experienced players
One crucial flaw that I believe is frustrating people - definitely frustrates me - is that the way fails are set up even a good player (or two) can't carry the team. One slip-up or misclick from any member of the team basically screws up everyone, and there's nothing anyone else on the team can do to prevent it.
Consider this:
1. In Undine Infiltration Elite, one person selecting the wrong "Quarantine/Clear" screws up the whole team. I've gotten to the point of using the pre-game chat to tell everyone that I can just do all of the questions myself if they're not comfortable, and sadly that has worked a couple of times. My four teammates simply wait/fight Bajorans while I run from suspect to suspect. Of course, even I have once clicked the wrong button, even though I knew which one I was supposed to click. Just got into a routine and misclicked.
2. In Azure Nebula Advanced, a friend and I can clear two camps ourselves before the 3 minute window (even level 5 Falchions), but we still fail because the remaining three players can't get one. We literally don't have time to fly across the map for a third one, and now my friend has given up and doesn't want to play anymore.
3. In Borg Disconnected Advanced, I can consistently use my Scimitar to take an area and get all spawned ships within 10-15 seconds alone (5-10 if I have one decent supporting player). Still, not enough ships spawn in my one area to handle the 15 requirement in any stage, and the map is too large for me to fly from my area to someone elses and back.
In each of these cases, I don't see how to improve my personal gameplay to compensate for this. It feels as if there is literally nothing more I can do, so how am I supposed to overcome these obstacles short of going out and building my own teams - which defeats the entire purpose of having a random queue?
One possible solution would be to change strict number of ship requirements to point score requirements, and scale the points based on the type of ship. The idea that a probe is worth just as much as a cube, or a T'liss as much as a Falchion, seems laughable. In those last two, it would at least give a chance for strong players to carry/help less experienced players
Post edited by blazeritter on
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And how many PUGs do you think are capable of doing that? So far every time I try PUGing this mission I get all the ships in my Zone and the pugs get almos zero
Borg Disconnected Advanced is among the most frustrating mission to PUG, ever. Failed yet another one.
Let me put it in terms you can understand, Mr. Rivera: no Ancient Power Cells -> No me spending Dilithium on Rep gear -> No extra money for you.
The game should do more to steer people toward Normal when they fail on a higher level. As it is, it quietly gives you 10 marks, exactly the same way as it would give you the reward for winning. There should be a proper result screen that says "YOU LOSE" in big red letters and a suggestion to try an easier difficulty level if you're having problems (and of course a nice result screen for winning). Not giving a cooldown for Normal when you fail Advanced/Elite could also help.
Then of course, there's the old standby of forcing players to complete the mission on Normal with optionals to unlock the next level. But I still maintain that that wouldn't work, because Normal is too easy. The last thing we need to do is tell every newbie they're ready for Advanced when they've done one Normal run.
Undine Infiltration might need confirmation prompts for the questions if its too easy to accidentally misclick.
Speaking of Undine Infiltration, is there a list of correct answers somewhere? Asking players to wait while you do it for them means they'll never learn, and expecting them to learn by trial and error, even on Normal, seems like a sucky proposition at best.
how long does a q need to pop (for you)
and not:
why don't you q anymore?
.. and i think for a very good reason (for cryptic). They don't want to hear any feedback that does not fit to their "best expansion eva" mantra.
Problem is there are things you can only get from advanced and elite ques. Ancient power cells and very rare crafting mats essential for gear upgrades for instance. because of this players are tempted to try there luck even if they know they arnt good enough in the hopes an uber player will carry them
Fix everything I currently avoid and the game will start getting cooler.
Seriously you need to hire someone cool so they can Gibb's slap nerds before they put uncool TRIBBLE in this game.
I have the exact same experience. Sometiimes if doing with a team we can free 15 covering all 3 zones with seconds to spare in the 3rd round
If you cover only 2 zones I note only 1 second to spare in the 2nd round. Fail in the 3rd round.
To the Op I have the same experience with azure and BDA. I can free 10 - 12 in the first round yet still often fail the mission. 2nd and 3rd round with pug just forget it.
I can free only 1 by myself in azure and help finish a second. However this results in 95% failure with pug.
As far as Rhitrololol station. and Undine infiltration. The first, the timer is a straight up troll from the devs for pugs. The second is just a troll opportunity for griefers and those who just don't care.
Upgrading will not help these. So it brings up the question of what is the incentive to upgrade?
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Thing is, your lovely grandstanding notwithstanding, there's no individual failing: these are team missions for a reason. If others fail it for you, you're hosed, regardless of your own effort.
Premades, you say?! Nope. This is a casual game; no matter how much you may *want* people to get organized, they won't. People simply log on, pew-pew and doff a bit, and then are done for the day. Unless you put 5 players in a room, and won't let them out until they learnt how to play BDA, they simply won't. Casual players, by definition, lack the commitment required to invest in strong social networks in STO, within their timezone, no less, that they can consistently team with during the day.
You're falling for the same fallacy as Geko: thinking that requiring a lot of coordination will eventually teach those slackers to bond! Wrong! And for the simple reason that puggers don't know each other. Never have, never will. Best a pugger can do, is look up some videos on youtube, and hope someone outlines the required tactic. So far only totally crappy BDA videos exist, explaining nothing. So, instead of posting how superior you are, why not do something useful and make such a vid?! Or write a guide. That is how people learned the old ST'F's too.
I understand that theory, and on paper it's not necessarily bad to encourage people to be more social and make connections - I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of their "metrics" they're looking for. It seems like a lot of people say the main reason they play any game is because "my friends play it," so the social aspect does help retain & recruit people I'm sure.
In reality, though, I think this just doesn't fit. For one, if premade teams are the only (real) way to win, why even bother having a random group queue? (Cryptic/PWE, if anyone is reading, that does not mean remove them, just illustration of the Catch 22 in the current system.)
Second, even having a group of people you can team with doesn't always work. My fleet is fairly active, and when we get a group together we pretty much always win. The problems with this are: 1) everyone has a life, and there are usually only certain days and times of days when you can actually create a group, 2) the fleet doesn't always need what I need, so if everyone else needs Argonite and I need Plekton someone has to give, and 3) the fleet mainly does activity on the Federation side, but I have at least one Klingon character I really want to play on (even the cross-faction queues won't let us create a team, but sometimes we get teamed by default because no one else is playing).
Not that I'm aware of, but it wouldn't be too hard to create since each NPC only seems to have two sets of dialogue. The 10 suspects switch between instances of which ones are infiltrators and which are just innocent Bajorans (except for the one militia guy who always seems to be "Clear"), so you couldn't create a "quarantine these 5 people every time" guide.
Sometimes I do wonder if it's a language barrier thing, since I've seen people in chat who obviously don't have English as a native language. I think the game text might be translated for them (despite chat almost always being English), but that doesn't mean that it was translated well.
It's one crucial flaw with the the Pre DR game...you could pretty much solo the *elites* and carry four bads...
Pre DR was a joke...trouble is things got more challenging and the bads haven't stepped up much...only thing I've seen change is there are more FAW spamming escorts now.
A lot of the bads are still expecting to be carried and are to lazy to learn how to play better...just about every BD I've done people will go to two lanes and leave one open...and I will cover the empty lane in my Torp Pathfinder and I'll be doing fine and often I'll have someone abandon the lane they're soloing poorly in their escort to join my lane.
A huge problem with this game is so many people are extremely stubborn to change in the least...
The players who know what they're doing want their easysauce game back and the bads who don't want their faceroll *elites* back so they can be carried.
If I wanted frustration, misunderstandings, and lack of rewards, I'd talk to people in meatspace.
Yes the queues were easy for some pre-DR but that doesn't mean it was easy for all players. The idea it was easy for all is the problem we are having here in the queues. They set the bar to high for the average player of game.
Yeah there are players who don't care what they do but there is not a lot of them. Most want to do mission but the way they are designed now is a big wall for some. Look at BDN the first 3 stages are easy if the borg ships show up to save them. The last stage is the fail in pug half of the time you don't have the dps to take out dreadnoughts in the time given for bonus. That missions is a normal and didn't figure in a average dps of players. Having the mission harder is not the problem but the time for a average dps to complete mission is the problem.
So now you have people out there yelling if you can't do advance or elite do normal. That is fine if you can get the items you need in normal but you don't. If you learn to do mission in normal fine but the only thing you learn now is how to fail so is that helpful? Normal queues should not require a high amout of dps to complete to me. I'm not a high dpser I do around 12k dps which does fine to me. But a lot of times 2 ships doing 10k dps can fail mission in normal so there is a design problem to me lol.
Another thing that would help UI since I have seen trolls deliberately fail a team before would be to ONLY hit the *individual* who misclicks with a penalty. Unlike most other errors you can make in an STF, that is one that can be attributed to one person alone and has nothing to do with "team play" whatsoever.
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OP This is what they wanted in that thread, you mentioned.
Name of q
How long you waited pre DR
How long you wait post DR
Several other people gave feedback similar to yours, and you you know what smirk did? He posted that this is not the information we seek we only want,
Name of q
How long you waited pre DR
How long you wait post DR
nothing else.
So it is good you posted this here. as if you had posted it there it would have fallen on completely deaf ears. At least here its partially deaf.
Fleet leader Nova Elite
Fleet Leader House of Nova elite
@ren_larreck
The funny thing is they don't need that information from players. All they need to do is play the game for a few minutes and will know what they need. But they need to do it without the players knowing about it. The moment the players know which one they are going to que up for pug it will be busy and not a true test of que.:)
Thank you for the feedback, but the only info I requested from that thread was on the reports that certain queues were "never popping" for players so our PM and Dev team reps could have a look at that particular issue.
Feedback on player activity and/or the difficulty of the PvE queues was not what they needed from that survey.
But this feedback is still very well thought out and is great to pass on so they can see what player perception is of the actual queue content itself. I jsut don't want you to think you missed your chance to contribute as that was never the intention of that particular survey.
Thanks!
~CaptainSmirk