So... can we have hourly events back?

senselocke · January 2015

It's been over a year since hourly events disappeared, and instead were replaced by "Event Weekends". Not every weekend, of course. And not in any sort of order. And not predictable. And not known long beforehand. Basically you'd know a week ahead of time, and that was it.

The end result is this: Queues are empty. My fleet is all but hollow. I logged on for the first Dilithium Weekend, realized I had no clue how much longer till the next one, and... stopped playing.

I've been gone for almost a year. I hopped back in to STO during Christmas (free ship) only to find that there's no one to play with. People have been upset about the crafting system (it's overpriced, takes too long to level), the new level increase (I don't mind, I like that T5 ships have upgrade options, but I wish my T4s did too). People have complained about the Hybrid seats on ships (Which is valid--it's why I'll likely never buy a ship. Too little variety in true endgame ships--the more ships people can actually use, the more sales you'll get. Should sell "Hybrid Seat Upgrades" for 500 Zen instead).

But that's not really why I don't play much. That's not why my fleet is a ghost town.

It's the events. When we had hourly events, we could see the next few days ahead of time. We could log on to do the things we wanted to do, and ignore what we disliked (shuttle event... ugh). But the point was, it didn't disrupt anyone, and it gave you a clear awareness of what was coming up. Fleetmates would all log on for the Fleetmarks event, then stay on to do PvP or STFs or what have you. The Race... oh my GOD, I miss the race. Hundreds of ships zooming across Sector Space, granting RP or DI when needed, making good money. It was fantastic, it was thrilling... and there is absolutely nothing in-game now that captures that sense of cooperation. You weren't playing the computer, you weren't playing other people, you were competing against just yourself.

It was incentive not to log in "in a week" or "in three weeks", but tomorrow, Friday, Sunday. It was easy to plan around, it was fast, it was rewarding in every way, it added to the sense of community... It was the "Pulse" of Star Trek Online.

Take away events, and there's none of that. Sure, there's a Dilithium weekend coming up. Yay. When was the last one? ...I don't know. When's the next one? *crickets*What's coming up? Well, if the next "weekend" is XP or CXP or Shuttle or anything else I happen to not care about... I have zero incentive to play. Log in, re-queue 20 hour TRIBBLE, log off. And I think other players feel this same malaise.

The weekend events have none of the benefits and a whole lot of drawbacks. What use is another 300k Dilithium if there's NO ONE TO PLAY WITH once I've spent it on gear? How can I tell when the events I like most are happening if they're only posted a few days ahead of time? And how in the world does it increase population to fill STFs and Queues if people are only logging in on weekends, or every six weekends, etc?

Here's my request: It's been a year. I have no issues with weekend events, but that cannot be all we have. If there are only weekend events, our desire to play, our ability to see what's happening soon, our ability to find and maximize the type of gameplay we personally like most is gone. And I believe this is the real reason people are disappearing. I know now this is the reason I've no incentive to play.

Please consider bringing hourly events back during the week. Or maybe all the time, and have Event Weekends be on top of that. I believe it will see a resurgence in player population, more queues filled, and most importantly more happy players and money spent--because there will be something to do with things you buy.

As it is... after the Dilithium Weekend and the Anniversary event, the only thing I know is happening where I will have friends online is the Summer Event. That's not good for STO, and it's not good for players.

Please consider this request. Thank you.

warpangel · January 2015

My 2 cents:

1. STO needs more events. I've played games where there's always some event or another going, even multiple ones at a time. IMO, there can never bee too much special events.
2. Absolutely no hourly events, please. This is the 21st century, people want their entertainment at the time of their own choosing. All events 24 hours minimum, so everyone can take part.
3. The weekend events should go on a regular, automatic schedule. Save the devs work and the players uncertainty.
4. In addition to the weekends, there could be smaller, one or two day events with a more narrow focus. For example: Before the rep system, there were STF bonus days for one STF at a time. Such mini-events could be implemented again, for all the queues. Possibly for some non-queue missions like Tour the Galaxy, too. Again, on a regular, automatic schedule.
5. Medium-length events like the Mirror invasion and Crystalline catastrophe are great. More please. To save on work, it's not necessary to create a new unique reward for every single re-run. I'm sure new players and players with new alts would want to see the old ones return at some point. And if not, they'd play it for the dilithium/marks anyway.

qziqza · January 2015

They are far too focused on making things look pretty and too heavily invested in creating monetized time sinks, to even consider the repeatedly mentioned concerns of the player base. They cant even be bothered to fix broken areas of the game, they just keep removing old content and pushing out new shinyshiny for folks to buy. They are pretty openly, just squeezing us for what they can get, they even herd us like cash cattle to play the game exactly as they want us too.. Delta Rising and the associated XP nerfs etc clearly show us all the truth in that statement. So as much as id love to see the return of the old calander, im really not going to hold out much hope

tehbubbaloo · January 2015

a few of us warned that it was a huge mistake getting rid of the hourlies because we could easily forsee what was going to happen.
the majority bought into the cryptic line though, fully believing they were going to get xp/mark/dil events rotating through every week and would be sooo much better off.

suckers.

nicha0 · January 2015

I completely agree with how negatively the lack of hourly events affected the community and fun of the game, just two weeks after the daily log ins for players went way way down, only weekend pops are high.

Maybe this is by design, that people playing during the week don't pay out much and the weekend warriors are? Who knows, I get home from work, log on, chat, clean, cook, play/chat, after dinner I have my real play time (Which isn't in STO anymore.) During the hourly events I'd make sure I got what I needed done in time, now, who cares? During the weekends I actually play a lot less.

Anyway, STOs endless "events" now adays are mostly just you paying the money for special limited time gambling "deals." Making a new hourly event calandar with relevant content and goals instead of a stuff like irrelevant vault events for rewards that were removed a year before. Its not hard to figure out why the old hourly events started being ignored when most of them didn't even match the game anymore.

tom61sto · January 2015

warpangel wrote: »

My 2 cents:

1. STO needs more events. I've played games where there's always some event or another going, even multiple ones at a time. IMO, there can never bee too much special events.
2. Absolutely no hourly events, please. This is the 21st century, people want their entertainment at the time of their own choosing. All events 24 hours minimum, so everyone can take part.
3. The weekend events should go on a regular, automatic schedule. Save the devs work and the players uncertainty.
4. In addition to the weekends, there could be smaller, one or two day events with a more narrow focus. For example: Before the rep system, there were STF bonus days for one STF at a time. Such mini-events could be implemented again, for all the queues. Possibly for some non-queue missions like Tour the Galaxy, too. Again, on a regular, automatic schedule.
5. Medium-length events like the Mirror invasion and Crystalline catastrophe are great. More please. To save on work, it's not necessary to create a new unique reward for every single re-run. I'm sure new players and players with new alts would want to see the old ones return at some point. And if not, they'd play it for the dilithium/marks anyway.

Much better suggestions than the OP's. Hourly time-scales were always a pain to be on and playing at the time an event I wanted to participate in, usually just leading me to check what was currently active when I logged in and never checking again until the next day. Anything not popular usually didn't draw many to the queues, but highly popular events caused noticeable lag for that hour on busier days. The only thing I really miss is having Mirror Invasion on a daily basis.

Hourly Events going away made no real difference in our then nearly 500 fleet in the numbers of people active at a given time, and there were few getting purged on our monthly in-activity check. Post DR and our fleet is now under 300, with comparatively few people active at any given time. We're slowly gaining numbers back, but a fair bit of that is likely people fleeing now dead fleets. Hourly Events being the reason people have left the game is a bit of an odd assertion, particularly given it's been a year with no real out-crys on the forums save the initial one for this particular topic.

tehbubbaloo · January 2015

its not so much that it made people leave sto. its that it had a detrimental effect on certain activities, such as rallying fleeties for marks runs, finding others in mine trap, incursion, etc, getting defera teams organised, and so on.

e8f7a409 · January 2015

Edit: Nevermind, critical reading comprehension failure.

gerwalk0769 · January 2015

I'll say it again, I'd like to see the return of hourly events. In particular, the 3 hour hourly blocks provided a social opportunity, to work with fleet members or friends to earn extra fleet marks fairly regularly. I never thought the removal was a good idea, and the infrequency of the weekend events helped reinforced my initial doubts.

Perhaps weekend and hourly events can be run.

nicha0 · January 2015

tehbubbaloo wrote: »

its not so much that it made people leave sto. its that it had a detrimental effect on certain activities, such as rallying fleeties for marks runs, finding others in mine trap, incursion, etc, getting defera teams organised, and so on.

That is pretty much it, people want to do things that reward the most. If you stop that during the week, we see what happens now, 50% loss of the playerbase during that time.

Having important events is the key, fleet mark hour, rep mark hours, tour, these brought people together. There was a very noticeable loss of togetherness when this stopped happening.

senselocke · January 2015

warpangel wrote: »

2. Absolutely no hourly events, please. This is the 21st century, people want their entertainment at the time of their own choosing. All events 24 hours minimum, so everyone can take part.
3. The weekend events should go on a regular, automatic schedule. Save the devs work and the players uncertainty.
4. In addition to the weekends, there could be smaller, one or two day events with a more narrow focus. For example: Before the rep system, there were STF bonus days for one STF at a time. Such mini-events could be implemented again, for all the queues. Possibly for some non-queue missions like Tour the Galaxy, too. Again, on a regular, automatic schedule.
5. Medium-length events like the Mirror invasion and Crystalline catastrophe are great. More please. To save on work, it's not necessary to create a new unique reward for every single re-run. I'm sure new players and players with new alts would want to see the old ones return at some point. And if not, they'd play it for the dilithium/marks anyway.

I actually like that idea better than a "return" to hourlies. Just have events last X number of hours, with overlaps. It still wouldn't bring back the Race, though--that would need to be an hourly to bring back the awesomesauce.

YES to regularly scheduled!
YES to forseeable weeks in advance!
YES to overlaps and longer-than-one-hour!
YES to mid-week specials!

But yes, an overlapping event schedule, like Fleet Marks from 4-8pm, Bonus Dil from 5-9pm, and the like, would work even better. That's just a good idea you've got there! I dunno about 24 hours each, but clearly the "one (and only one) special thingie every two weeks" is not working.

tehbubbaloo wrote: »

a few of us warned that it was a huge mistake getting rid of the hourlies because we could easily forsee what was going to happen.
the majority bought into the cryptic line though, fully believing they were going to get xp/mark/dil events rotating through every week and would be sooo much better off.

suckers.

LOL yup, I was one of the ones warning that! Specifically because I loved loved LOVED The Race, but I was also worried about the "pulse" of meeting up with Fleetmates for STFs and Fleet Marks during Bonus Marks events. I didn't think it would lead to this level of inactivity, but it's the only thing that really fits.

joshmaaaaaaans · January 2015

Kinda wish the mirror invasion was back on a roation every so often, why'd they remove all of that anyway? Seems ****ing stupid.

Used to always check to see what time mirror invasion was running for the hour and log in for that hour at the least, now just logging in to do r&d for 5 mins and waiting until patch for the last month.

senselocke · January 2015

Hourlies used to run on a roughly 20 hour cycle--so if an event was 4pm one day, it's noon the next, 8am the following day, 4am, midnight, then 8pm and repeat. Certain high-reward ones were more frequent, and it changed up during weekends, but usually it was about 20 hour rotation--so if you played 3 hours a night, you'd get an assortment of things to do each day.

It was also very, very easy to look forward for the next four days or so and see what was coming up, so if I had a day off, I'd log on, see what was happening, do the nifty stuff if the nifty stuff was immediate (then stay on to do other things), or do other things waiting for the nifty stuff. Either way, I was on and either content or looking forward to doing stuff.

As it is, if I don't like the weekend event, there's no reason to stay on that day. Or that week. And I can only see one weekend ahead (since they're irrationally not every weekend, but every other).

I don't think Events are THE reason I can't find friends/fleeties anymore. But I realized just before posting this that lack of fast-rotating events is MY reason for not being online much (and I hadn't realized just why until then). And in chatting with the one or two people online I know at a time, they all made the connection and agreed. So I'm not trying to speak for everyone, or say it's the ONLY thing, but it's certainly a thing that was much more important than I or my friends realized.

Like I said, Hourly events to me felt like a "pulse". It gave anticipation, forewarning, and a variety, as well as the knowledge that there was SOMETHING coming up soon. Now, the things I look forward too might be a month off, or unknown entirely because devs don't post early. And the "events" tab in-game is just empty.

It seems very silly--the system worked, and weekends could have added to it, but as it is the working system is just disabled, and outside particular weekends it feels empty.

stupidconversion · February 2015

What was wrong with them in the first place?

If there were to be 24-hour events (or 20-hour), it would be nice to have 2-3 running at a time (maybe with daily limits). I miss the old Tour the Galaxy a lot, and, yes, the schedule looks awfully empty these days.

I don't think you could properly limit marks or dilithium dailies, maybe maximum bonus?

I wouldn't mind hourlies back, maybe they could run in 6-hour blocks, repeating 4 times a day, so that most people could catch one of the repeating events, and the content of those blocks could change daily or weekly or something.

But first, scores or hundreds of bugs need to be fixed.

pulserazor · February 2015

Hourly events even if they are 3-4 hours long are far gbetter then this weekend event thing, with the month long spaces in between where there are no events.

Correct me if I am wrong, but does not Neverwinter have hourly events? Im pretty sure that 24/ 7there is always some kind of event going on in Neverwinter.

pennylong · February 2015

I think they gave the game structure and gave you something to do. It promoted the need to get involved in a wide range of activities rather than just one long dull weekend of repetition.

defcon1776 · February 2015

Scheduled hourly events as they once were would certainly be a step in the right direction for pacifying disgruntled players. I really miss them. Good fleet, good times. Oorah 44!

captz1pp · February 2015

They should have 1 or 2 hourly's based bottle episode style missions, crew wedding, funeral, or some profession related tasks.

So... can we have hourly events back?

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