People shouldn't have to go looking for a group to play an STF with. There should be healthy queues already.
What part of that is confusing you?
Leechers.
AFKers
Unprepared folks.
Failure.
Not wanting to hit up public queues...because of the public...
...what part of that is confusing to you?
Me? I don't personally care. Yeah, it irks me when you get saddled with 4 folks that are basically guaranteeing a failure...but only about 20-30% of my runs are failures, and usually they're pretty fast failures so not a lot of time is wasted.
Not wanting to hit up public queues...because of the public...
...what part of that is confusing to you?
Me? I don't personally care. Yeah, it irks me when you get saddled with 4 folks that are basically guaranteeing a failure...but only about 20-30% of my runs are failures, and usually they're pretty fast failures so not a lot of time is wasted.
Other folks aren't that tolerant...
I hope you're not trying to blame the players for the empty queues. We used to have all of those issues before DR dropped but the queues were still full.
Player numbers fell over a cliff when they reduced the rewards. It's that simple.
Want healthier queues where folks don't have to hunt down a group or a channel?
Implement the screening process/gating on the queues that those channels are facilitating for those folks that don't want to deal with the leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, and the rest.
Queues would get healthier.
Channels wouldn't go away...because there would still be the trolls. And if the trolling became too much of a problem for folks, then the queues would start to die off again as folks went back to channel pugs.
I hope you're not trying to blame the players for the empty queues. We used to have all of those issues before DR dropped but the queues were still full.
Player numbers fell over a cliff when they reduced the rewards. It's that simple.
Folks are forming pugs for all sorts of things in DPS-10,000 24/7 (outside of maintenance)...it's actually kind of trippy just watching the groups they're forming. Stuff that I can't remember the last time anybody ran it out of a public queue, and there they are running it.
Also in the 10K DPS channel you know that ISA will likely succeed as they have some modicum of DPS.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
Want healthier queues where folks don't have to hunt down a group or a channel?
Implement the screening process/gating on the queues that those channels are facilitating for those folks that don't want to deal with the leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, and the rest.
Queues would get healthier.
Channels wouldn't go away...because there would still be the trolls. And if the trolling became too much of a problem for folks, then the queues would start to die off again as folks went back to channel pugs.
They're just channel pugs where folks don't have to worry about leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, nor trolls...
Folks are forming pugs for all sorts of things in DPS-10,000 24/7 (outside of maintenance)...it's actually kind of trippy just watching the groups they're forming. Stuff that I can't remember the last time anybody ran it out of a public queue, and there they are running it.
None of what you said countered what I posted.
Thanks for posting anyway, it's good to keep the forums looking healthy.
Don't you just hate when things like that happen? :rolleyes:
What pisses me off about Cryptic is they make a big post saying "this is the way it is and we ain't changing it; please feel free to leave feedback" in so many words. What's the point in leaving feedback if they tell us straight up they are making it this way and that's that?
And he said this:
In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
Yeah. Like reducing the rewards in the easier missions isn't going to make players feel like they have no choice but to do the harder/longer missions based on the fact they give better rewards. :rolleyes:
Personally I don't do the easier missions because they give better rewards. I do them because it's such a stupid grind to get the rep marks I need. It's a waste of time doing a pve event that takes 30 minutes+ for the same rewards I can get from something that takes less than 15 minutes. On most of that stuff they decreased the rewards for normal mode and increased the difficulty on advanced and elite without increasing the rewards for the harder modes.
And let's not forget what they did the dil rewards. They royally screwed us over on that. Normal mode use to give 480 dil then with DR launch it was cut in half. Players complained so they increased it, but it's still less than what it was before DR. They did the same exact thing with the dil reward from borg STFs when season 7 launched.
Honestly I'm getting sick and tired of this ****. The rewards are a certain way for months/years then suddenly they decide they're too high? If it was a few weeks after a season launched I could understand. But when we go around 2 years of having the normal mode PvE events rewarding 480 to suddenly less, yeah that doesn't sit well with me. And they wonder why the queues are dead.
Nukara Prime: Self Descruct - increased rewards. Seriously? NOBODY does the Nukara hard mode events in the PvE queue. They died completely a few weeks after they were added to the PvE queue window. The problem was too many idiots not realizing they needed an EV suit. Even after the entire team told them they needed a suit they still ran out and died. They never said a word in the chat. Just ran out and died a few times then left.
Mine Trap - increased rewards. Big deal. I always loved Mine Trap, but what killed it a long long time ago was the fact that almost every time we did it there would be at least 3 or more AFK players who stood there the entire time doing absolutely nothing. Eventually the event died and nobody does it anymore. It's been about a year since I've been able to get into it.
With no explanation at all... No more money for you cryptic! I'm going to play this game just for star trek stories and i'm going to play it as a single player game! TRIBBLE this... i'm going to Narnia!
Well, these new queue changes seem quite ok, I have no problems with these, none at all..............excuse me please, I'm just going to go and do something less painful and more fun..........
* put's his head in the open doorway and continues to slam the door on it *
TBH crash...your right there are things more fun ..alot more
When a game stops being fun....why play it
A game is supposed to be fun clearly STO is no longer fun it feels like punishment so someone please stop this train i want off .....im off to somewhere..anywhere else then here.
Also in the 10K DPS channel you know that ISA will likely succeed as they have some modicum of DPS.
Shouldn't have to know the right places or ask for anyone's permission to play the game no matter how trivial the initiation might be, just on principle. I queue up in SWTOR, group with random people and we all do our jobs (some better than others) with minimal communication, and then go our separate ways again. I don't need anyone's help, I don't need anyone's permission, I just play the game without any outside nonsense or worthless social connections required, and it works just fine there.
Shouldn't have to know the right places or ask for anyone's permission to play the game no matter how trivial the initiation might be, just on principle. I queue up in SWTOR, group with random people and we all do our jobs (some better than others) with minimal communication, and then go our separate ways again. I don't need anyone's help, I don't need anyone's permission, I just play the game without any outside nonsense or worthless social connections required, and it works just fine there.
Which points to there being something special about the average STO player out there that it's an issue here, eh? I've never encountered it at the level it exists here in STO...
Which points to there being something special about the average STO player out there that it's an issue here, eh? I've never encountered it at the level it exists here in STO...
I'm not sure why a suggestion for healthier queues would be something you'd expect to be an attempt at countering something you had said...
...but it makes as much sense as your usual drivel.
This would be another example of the drivel I mentioned. Where was the personal attack? The attack was not on you, but the nonsense you tend to post.
You said nothing I said in that post countered what you said...er...again, why did you think it was meant to counter what you were saying? So your reply was drivel.
Then this post, calling your reply drivel is not calling you drivel. It's not an attack on you, it's an attack on the nonsense you tend to post. So again, more drivel...further reinforcing the opinion that's what you tend to post.
A personal attack would come more in the form of asking if you were incapable of discerning the difference of things, not even subtle things but rather obvious things, and calling into question your intelligence. I'm not going to do that, and no that wasn't doing that with that - it's just an example of what a personal attack might look like.
You don't want to blame the players for AKFing, leeching, showing up unprepared, trolling, and contributing to an increase in the amount of failures - adding in the slight increase in requirements for the queues making that all that much more likely for the folks that don't put the least bit of effort into things before showing up or even those that have stated that they're going to troll the queues as a form of protest over various changes. You want to blame Cryptic for that, because players obviously cannot be held responsible for their behavior and actions...see...drivel, yeah?
The queues are dead...yet folks are running private queues fine...by avoiding those players that were causing an increased amount of problems in the public queues. So more drivel, eh?
Players shouldn't have to organize to be able to run an STF...they shouldn't have to find channels, find other players, or do any of that - they should just be able to hit up the magical teaming tool and go at it. For Normal? For Advanced? For Elite? A difference of opinion...
...but when a suggestion is made for what could be done to bring some folks back to the public queues, by providing some of the same screening process that the channels do; it's a case of stating that it's not a counter argument? Yeah, drivel.
You want to blame Cryptic for everything - you want to deny players have any responsibility - etc, etc, etc...imho, drivel. There's more than enough TRIBBLE to blame Cryptic for that if the regular posters on the forums all took one item, no two items, we'd need more folks to cover all the TRIBBLE. There's little need to make stuff up like so many folks out there like to do. And there's definitely no need, imho, to go about trying to ignore the TRIBBLE that players do and the part they play in things.
Cryptic didn't push folks to the channels and the rest. Players did. There was a huge discussion about it before Delta Rising launched...another one of those gating discussions, and it was pointed out that folks would go private to avoid the queues like the plague. Tada...
So no, the instances aren't dead...but a lot of folks are just tired of their fellows contributing nothing but failure so they went private and are enjoying themselves. And then there are those folks that used to get carried found that when there were five of them in the group it went nowhere. They're on the forums complaining, eh?
Not to mention I still don't believe there was any given reason why No Win Scenario was being removed, or any info on when/if it is coming back.
Thought I read somewhere shortly after the initial announcement that the reason behind this was that power creep(that the devs caused, by the way) was getting too high for this scenario making it pointless if people are blowing through it.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
1) The public queue numbers do not display all players running those queues.
2) Increasing rewards will not decrease the number of AFKers, leechers, unprepared folks, nor trolls - rather that will increase them and give further reason to avoid public queues.
3) Adding rewards to Normal would bring those issues to Normal in the public queues, but it would also provide Normal as an additional option for those in channels or Fleets to pug them until they were ready for Advanced.
4) Cryptic adding even more rewards to solo and mob play will be a way to avoid those players while not having to deal with any channels, friends, fleets, or the rest - but it will not help the public queues.
5) Queues that are too easy and/or are over-rewarding create a path of least resistance that players will take advantage of...balancing the queues so that they reward based on effort/risk/time would create a balanced menu of options for the player.
6) Some form of screening/gating could reduce issues with Advanced and Elite queues, but it could not eliminate those issues.
7) As the player created issues worsened, the number of player created methods to avoid those issues increased.
8) This is a MMO. We're talking about team content.
However the negative with all these private queues is that the metrics are getting heavily skewed in favour of the smaller portion of the player base who know what to do with ship building and piloting.
This has resulted in the CCA for public queues which will after the update be horrendously hard to run in public. In private 10K DPS channel plus will still destroy it in a minute, whereas in public they'll be lucky to get it before the timer causes a failure.
There's a lot of variables that the metrics fail to account for and this is just one of them.
It would also be good if there was an actual ship building tutorial ingame that highlighted the basics, like using one type of damage (phaser, disruptor etc...) and using a single type of weapon (Beam array's, Cannons etc..). Also pointing out that when running a weapon based build it's best to pump all weapon related skills/traits etcetera to max. Just these basics would get most people over 5k and on their way to 10k no problem with just the most basic of Green Mk XI gear.
I always find it a little odd that I can bring out a Faeht Warbird on my Eng Reman Alt, run 7 Mk X Green Polarons and a mickey mouse console setup and still get 4-6K DPS without much hassle. Sure it's likely to get it's TRIBBLE kicked, but it's only running green gear throughout, with the Cryoplasma Singularity from the Winter Event being the single exception.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
1) The public queue numbers do not display all players running those queues.
2) Increasing rewards will not decrease the number of AFKers, leechers, unprepared folks, nor trolls - rather that will increase them and give further reason to avoid public queues.
3) Adding rewards to Normal would bring those issues to Normal in the public queues, but it would also provide Normal as an additional option for those in channels or Fleets to pug them until they were ready for Advanced.
4) Cryptic adding even more rewards to solo and mob play will be a way to avoid those players while not having to deal with any channels, friends, fleets, or the rest - but it will not help the public queues.
5) Queues that are too easy and/or are over-rewarding create a path of least resistance that players will take advantage of...balancing the queues so that they reward based on effort/risk/time would create a balanced menu of options for the player.
6) Some form of screening/gating could reduce issues with Advanced and Elite queues, but it could not eliminate those issues.
7) As the player created issues worsened, the number of player created methods to avoid those issues increased.
8) This is a MMO. We're talking about team content.
First off, thanks for giving the information minus the ad hominem. I seriously want to put you on ignore sometimes because of the frequent attacks in your posts, even when they aren't directed at me. It's not just you and the person you dislike in the debate here, you know. It brings other people down and lowers the average level of debate.
My two cents: The queue system was put together at some expense and time for Cryptic. It's by far the easiest way for players who aren't forum rats or in a fleet to find a team to play with. It should be healthy and people should be able to find a group through there with a reasonable chance of success.
Some queues are far easier than others, which is a big part of the topic here. They are taking some of those and making them harder, yet doing almost nothing to make the hardest and least played ones better. I do believe that the non-optional optionals on advanced should have not have been done. They could have a less than optimal reward for failing an optional, but if it is an auto fail then it's not optional anymore.
I would be in favor of some form of gating for elite or advanced queues. An accolade for unlocking advanced runs and another to unlock elite sounds reasonable.
I used to be Shakkar with thousands of posts. My very identity was stolen from me so now I am originalshakkar, the original.
All of ya'all who're like "lel skilled players should be rewarded for being good xD", I reply: Girlfriend please. You are playing a terrible game where skill is considered to be blowing 50 bucks on carnival coins so you can buy your lockboxes and rare doffs and x3 omni-beams and PvP isn't even a real thing.
I, for one, am happy that BNPs and stuff are getting distributed into single-player content. I just want to be a trekkie, and I want to do it in a l33t ubercruiser dreadnaught with MKXIV Mako Omega turbotoys. Pro gaming is for pro games, not this.
Want healthier queues where folks don't have to hunt down a group or a channel?
Implement the screening process/gating on the queues that those channels are facilitating for those folks that don't want to deal with the leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, and the rest.
Queues would get healthier.
Channels wouldn't go away...because there would still be the trolls. And if the trolling became too much of a problem for folks, then the queues would start to die off again as folks went back to channel pugs.
They're just channel pugs where folks don't have to worry about leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, nor trolls...
Folks are forming pugs for all sorts of things in DPS-10,000 24/7 (outside of maintenance)...it's actually kind of trippy just watching the groups they're forming. Stuff that I can't remember the last time anybody ran it out of a public queue, and there they are running it.
As a general thing I'm a fairly antisocial player. I was raised on single player games, I love single player games, I prefer them. I play this MMO because it's Star Trek. That said I've found it quite enjoyable.
My first three months in this game, I did not open the chat box at all. I did my research via the STOwiki and I made a cursory trip through the forums. The fleet I was invited to died the month after I joined as apparently the Starbase grind was too much for them, so I was alone again.
After I was taken through the STFs by friends of a friend I started PUGing. I actually met more friends via the randomness of the PUGs, which was actually a bonus. It made me more social.
So reflexively I don't like anything that makes general random PUGing a weaker experience/process. I'm also opposed to them continuing to make us work harder for less, though I'm glad they increased the XP gain at least.
But you have raised some solid points on the player failings that have weakened PUGs. Do you think a general player rating system would help? The system tracking idle time in queued content, people who abandon the mission, or even how many times you get killed (obviously with more leniency based on normal and less for an Elite). If your rating is too low, then you can't join Advanced or Elite and you have to rebuild your rating by running normal.
Although honestly putting the difficulty or rather the HP of the enemies at something more normal for casual players and dropping failure rewards altogether (failure rewards which seem to be completely counterproductive and weird, I mean a reward for failing?) would probably do the trick.
For difficulty increases I'd rather see more enemies that behave like Vaadwaur ground troops. Those A$$*oles are absolutely brilliant. They're much more engaging than a simple HP damage sponge. I still don't get why I have 75K HP and a ship of comparable size that I can destroy, needs 300-600K HP.
With no explanation at all... No more money for you cryptic! I'm going to play this game just for star trek stories and i'm going to play it as a single player game! TRIBBLE this... i'm going to Narnia!
As I recall the Devs said that with the introduction of Tier 6 ships, No Win had become too winnable.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
As a general thing I'm a fairly antisocial player. I was raised on single player games, I love single player games, I prefer them. I play this MMO because it's Star Trek. That said I've found it quite enjoyable.
I tend mostly to this style myself. I socialize on the stf channels, that's about it. I'm personally pleased at how friendly STO is to players like me.
Do you think a general player rating system would help? The system tracking idle time in queued content, people who abandon the mission, or even how many times you get killed (obviously with more leniency based on normal and less for an Elite). If your rating is too low, then you can't join Advanced or Elite and you have to rebuild your rating by running normal.
It not easy to come up with a model that can't be used by troll, and even trying to infer a player's behavior from logs because a very expensive CS effort. I'm not defending the lack, just acknowledging it is hard to do.
I'd be happy if I were not auto-teamed with people I currently have on ignore. I tend to clean out my ignore list regularly. Because I tend to fill it regularly.
But you have raised some solid points on the player failings that have weakened PUGs. Do you think a general player rating system would help? The system tracking idle time in queued content, people who abandon the mission, or even how many times you get killed (obviously with more leniency based on normal and less for an Elite). If your rating is too low, then you can't join Advanced or Elite and you have to rebuild your rating by running normal.
I'm generally not a fan of systems like that - things without the human interaction element. They can end up being punitive, unable to read any nuances of what happened - Hell, they're even subject to trolling.
It's one of those things where I can see an issue there, but I've honestly got no suggestions on how it could be addressed.
Offer rewards for Normal...well, Advanced would still offer better rewards regardless of what Normal offered. Offer rewards from single-player missions...well, queues would still offer better rewards.
There are all sorts of things where it could reduce the matter...cause a bunch of folks would be happy out there getting stuff at a slower pace as long as they could get it. But there are other folks that would just...well...yeah.
Can't remember which thread I mentioned that I see somewhere between a 20-30% fail rate on ISA from doing public pugs, but I should have mentioned that the vast majority of those were not from any sort of a lack of DPS or the like. Most were sabotages or folks chasing butterflies either on purpose or because they were running some goofy bot.
I'm generally not a fan of systems like that - things without the human interaction element. They can end up being punitive, unable to read any nuances of what happened - Hell, they're even subject to trolling.
It's one of those things where I can see an issue there, but I've honestly got no suggestions on how it could be addressed.
Offer rewards for Normal...well, Advanced would still offer better rewards regardless of what Normal offered. Offer rewards from single-player missions...well, queues would still offer better rewards.
There are all sorts of things where it could reduce the matter...cause a bunch of folks would be happy out there getting stuff at a slower pace as long as they could get it. But there are other folks that would just...well...yeah.
Can't remember which thread I mentioned that I see somewhere between a 20-30% fail rate on ISA from doing public pugs, but I should have mentioned that the vast majority of those were not from any sort of a lack of DPS or the like. Most were sabotages or folks chasing butterflies either on purpose or because they were running some goofy bot.
There's just that group of bad apples...meh.
It would certainly cut down on the troll factor, because weak assistance and fails caused by their hands, hurts their ability as well to PUG higher than normal.
Not completely without its merits but, not 100% foolproof either.
I tend mostly to this style myself. I socialize on the stf channels, that's about it. I'm personally pleased at how friendly STO is to players like me.
It not easy to come up with a model that can't be used by troll, and even trying to infer a player's behavior from logs because a very expensive CS effort. I'm not defending the lack, just acknowledging it is hard to do.
You know what, I'll back that up.
The trolls and false elitists (and by that I specifically mean the guys who are first to call you noob for not doing enough DPS, or not fitting into their plan, while not offering any instruction or direction before, during, or after while they were TRIBBLE up the mission) are plenty vicious and annoying, and there's no need to mention ESD chat, but by and large I've found the folks in this game to be all around swell.
I'd be happy if I were not auto-teamed with people I currently have on ignore. I tend to clean out my ignore list regularly. Because I tend to fill it regularly.
I'm generally not a fan of systems like that - things without the human interaction element. They can end up being punitive, unable to read any nuances of what happened - Hell, they're even subject to trolling.
It's one of those things where I can see an issue there, but I've honestly got no suggestions on how it could be addressed.
Well understood sir, it's a mirror reflection of the disconnect between us and the people making decisions. Their metrics and our experiences aren't matching up.
Also you can't make it entirely a player moderated system either, because there could easily be a group of trolls who could swarm neg a player's rating making it unable for them to play even if they're innocent. It would open up a variety of cyber bulling of its own. And nobody wants that.
Offer rewards for Normal...well, Advanced would still offer better rewards regardless of what Normal offered. Offer rewards from single-player missions...well, queues would still offer better rewards.
There are all sorts of things where it could reduce the matter...cause a bunch of folks would be happy out there getting stuff at a slower pace as long as they could get it. But there are other folks that would just...well...yeah.
Can't remember which thread I mentioned that I see somewhere between a 20-30% fail rate on ISA from doing public pugs, but I should have mentioned that the vast majority of those were not from any sort of a lack of DPS or the like. Most were sabotages or folks chasing butterflies either on purpose or because they were running some goofy bot.
There's just that group of bad apples...meh.
Maybe a rare chance for one of the Very Rare Material or Elite Mark to drop, for the top scoring player on normal. Then one guaranteed for everyone on Advanced and so on.
I don't like the idea of them dropping from a normal single player mission. Perhaps get three maybe five as the big reward for the first playthrough of a final mission in a story arc, but only on the first playthrough. But not something that is earnable on replay.
It would certainly cut down on the troll factor, because weak assistance and fails caused by their hands, hurts their ability as well to PUG higher than normal.
Not completely without its merits but, not 100% foolproof either.
Certainly not.
I think the only high quality method would be for the system to rate general performance and then to have the an official, say a Dev actually shadow the player during a queue mission and then confirm poor or troll performance and sabotage. But that would require a WHOLE lot of manpower that's not really practical.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Comments
Leechers.
AFKers
Unprepared folks.
Failure.
Not wanting to hit up public queues...because of the public...
...what part of that is confusing to you?
Me? I don't personally care. Yeah, it irks me when you get saddled with 4 folks that are basically guaranteeing a failure...but only about 20-30% of my runs are failures, and usually they're pretty fast failures so not a lot of time is wasted.
Other folks aren't that tolerant...
I hope you're not trying to blame the players for the empty queues. We used to have all of those issues before DR dropped but the queues were still full.
Player numbers fell over a cliff when they reduced the rewards. It's that simple.
Free Tibet!
Implement the screening process/gating on the queues that those channels are facilitating for those folks that don't want to deal with the leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, and the rest.
Queues would get healthier.
Channels wouldn't go away...because there would still be the trolls. And if the trolling became too much of a problem for folks, then the queues would start to die off again as folks went back to channel pugs.
It's not some huge organizational thing.
JoeRandom: LF4M isa - cake
Thomas: cake
Richard: cake
Harold: cake
MarySue: cake
They're just channel pugs where folks don't have to worry about leechers, afkers, unprepared folks, nor trolls...
Folks are forming pugs for all sorts of things in DPS-10,000 24/7 (outside of maintenance)...it's actually kind of trippy just watching the groups they're forming. Stuff that I can't remember the last time anybody ran it out of a public queue, and there they are running it.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
None of what you said countered what I posted.
Thanks for posting anyway, it's good to keep the forums looking healthy.
Free Tibet!
What pisses me off about Cryptic is they make a big post saying "this is the way it is and we ain't changing it; please feel free to leave feedback" in so many words. What's the point in leaving feedback if they tell us straight up they are making it this way and that's that?
And he said this:
Yeah. Like reducing the rewards in the easier missions isn't going to make players feel like they have no choice but to do the harder/longer missions based on the fact they give better rewards. :rolleyes:
Personally I don't do the easier missions because they give better rewards. I do them because it's such a stupid grind to get the rep marks I need. It's a waste of time doing a pve event that takes 30 minutes+ for the same rewards I can get from something that takes less than 15 minutes. On most of that stuff they decreased the rewards for normal mode and increased the difficulty on advanced and elite without increasing the rewards for the harder modes.
And let's not forget what they did the dil rewards. They royally screwed us over on that. Normal mode use to give 480 dil then with DR launch it was cut in half. Players complained so they increased it, but it's still less than what it was before DR. They did the same exact thing with the dil reward from borg STFs when season 7 launched.
Honestly I'm getting sick and tired of this ****. The rewards are a certain way for months/years then suddenly they decide they're too high? If it was a few weeks after a season launched I could understand. But when we go around 2 years of having the normal mode PvE events rewarding 480 to suddenly less, yeah that doesn't sit well with me. And they wonder why the queues are dead.
Nukara Prime: Self Descruct - increased rewards. Seriously? NOBODY does the Nukara hard mode events in the PvE queue. They died completely a few weeks after they were added to the PvE queue window. The problem was too many idiots not realizing they needed an EV suit. Even after the entire team told them they needed a suit they still ran out and died. They never said a word in the chat. Just ran out and died a few times then left.
Mine Trap - increased rewards. Big deal. I always loved Mine Trap, but what killed it a long long time ago was the fact that almost every time we did it there would be at least 3 or more AFK players who stood there the entire time doing absolutely nothing. Eventually the event died and nobody does it anymore. It's been about a year since I've been able to get into it.
With no explanation at all... No more money for you cryptic! I'm going to play this game just for star trek stories and i'm going to play it as a single player game! TRIBBLE this... i'm going to Narnia!
TBH crash...your right there are things more fun ..alot more
When a game stops being fun....why play it
A game is supposed to be fun clearly STO is no longer fun it feels like punishment so someone please stop this train i want off .....im off to somewhere..anywhere else then here.
Shouldn't have to know the right places or ask for anyone's permission to play the game no matter how trivial the initiation might be, just on principle. I queue up in SWTOR, group with random people and we all do our jobs (some better than others) with minimal communication, and then go our separate ways again. I don't need anyone's help, I don't need anyone's permission, I just play the game without any outside nonsense or worthless social connections required, and it works just fine there.
Which points to there being something special about the average STO player out there that it's an issue here, eh? I've never encountered it at the level it exists here in STO...
I'm not sure why a suggestion for healthier queues would be something you'd expect to be an attempt at countering something you had said...
...but it makes as much sense as your usual drivel.
A personal attack for no reason during a debate?
What a shame.
Free Tibet!
This would be another example of the drivel I mentioned. Where was the personal attack? The attack was not on you, but the nonsense you tend to post.
You said nothing I said in that post countered what you said...er...again, why did you think it was meant to counter what you were saying? So your reply was drivel.
Then this post, calling your reply drivel is not calling you drivel. It's not an attack on you, it's an attack on the nonsense you tend to post. So again, more drivel...further reinforcing the opinion that's what you tend to post.
A personal attack would come more in the form of asking if you were incapable of discerning the difference of things, not even subtle things but rather obvious things, and calling into question your intelligence. I'm not going to do that, and no that wasn't doing that with that - it's just an example of what a personal attack might look like.
You don't want to blame the players for AKFing, leeching, showing up unprepared, trolling, and contributing to an increase in the amount of failures - adding in the slight increase in requirements for the queues making that all that much more likely for the folks that don't put the least bit of effort into things before showing up or even those that have stated that they're going to troll the queues as a form of protest over various changes. You want to blame Cryptic for that, because players obviously cannot be held responsible for their behavior and actions...see...drivel, yeah?
The queues are dead...yet folks are running private queues fine...by avoiding those players that were causing an increased amount of problems in the public queues. So more drivel, eh?
Players shouldn't have to organize to be able to run an STF...they shouldn't have to find channels, find other players, or do any of that - they should just be able to hit up the magical teaming tool and go at it. For Normal? For Advanced? For Elite? A difference of opinion...
...but when a suggestion is made for what could be done to bring some folks back to the public queues, by providing some of the same screening process that the channels do; it's a case of stating that it's not a counter argument? Yeah, drivel.
You want to blame Cryptic for everything - you want to deny players have any responsibility - etc, etc, etc...imho, drivel. There's more than enough TRIBBLE to blame Cryptic for that if the regular posters on the forums all took one item, no two items, we'd need more folks to cover all the TRIBBLE. There's little need to make stuff up like so many folks out there like to do. And there's definitely no need, imho, to go about trying to ignore the TRIBBLE that players do and the part they play in things.
Cryptic didn't push folks to the channels and the rest. Players did. There was a huge discussion about it before Delta Rising launched...another one of those gating discussions, and it was pointed out that folks would go private to avoid the queues like the plague. Tada...
So no, the instances aren't dead...but a lot of folks are just tired of their fellows contributing nothing but failure so they went private and are enjoying themselves. And then there are those folks that used to get carried found that when there were five of them in the group it went nowhere. They're on the forums complaining, eh?
Thought I read somewhere shortly after the initial announcement that the reason behind this was that power creep(that the devs caused, by the way) was getting too high for this scenario making it pointless if people are blowing through it.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
Yet more ad hominem for no reason.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand - for the rest of us who can post without getting angry
Rewards reduced + arbitrary fail conditions = less players in the queues.
Fixing both of those would see the queues fill back up in no time.
Free Tibet!
2) Increasing rewards will not decrease the number of AFKers, leechers, unprepared folks, nor trolls - rather that will increase them and give further reason to avoid public queues.
3) Adding rewards to Normal would bring those issues to Normal in the public queues, but it would also provide Normal as an additional option for those in channels or Fleets to pug them until they were ready for Advanced.
4) Cryptic adding even more rewards to solo and mob play will be a way to avoid those players while not having to deal with any channels, friends, fleets, or the rest - but it will not help the public queues.
5) Queues that are too easy and/or are over-rewarding create a path of least resistance that players will take advantage of...balancing the queues so that they reward based on effort/risk/time would create a balanced menu of options for the player.
6) Some form of screening/gating could reduce issues with Advanced and Elite queues, but it could not eliminate those issues.
7) As the player created issues worsened, the number of player created methods to avoid those issues increased.
8) This is a MMO. We're talking about team content.
This has resulted in the CCA for public queues which will after the update be horrendously hard to run in public. In private 10K DPS channel plus will still destroy it in a minute, whereas in public they'll be lucky to get it before the timer causes a failure.
There's a lot of variables that the metrics fail to account for and this is just one of them.
It would also be good if there was an actual ship building tutorial ingame that highlighted the basics, like using one type of damage (phaser, disruptor etc...) and using a single type of weapon (Beam array's, Cannons etc..). Also pointing out that when running a weapon based build it's best to pump all weapon related skills/traits etcetera to max. Just these basics would get most people over 5k and on their way to 10k no problem with just the most basic of Green Mk XI gear.
I always find it a little odd that I can bring out a Faeht Warbird on my Eng Reman Alt, run 7 Mk X Green Polarons and a mickey mouse console setup and still get 4-6K DPS without much hassle. Sure it's likely to get it's TRIBBLE kicked, but it's only running green gear throughout, with the Cryoplasma Singularity from the Winter Event being the single exception.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
First off, thanks for giving the information minus the ad hominem. I seriously want to put you on ignore sometimes because of the frequent attacks in your posts, even when they aren't directed at me. It's not just you and the person you dislike in the debate here, you know. It brings other people down and lowers the average level of debate.
My two cents: The queue system was put together at some expense and time for Cryptic. It's by far the easiest way for players who aren't forum rats or in a fleet to find a team to play with. It should be healthy and people should be able to find a group through there with a reasonable chance of success.
Some queues are far easier than others, which is a big part of the topic here. They are taking some of those and making them harder, yet doing almost nothing to make the hardest and least played ones better. I do believe that the non-optional optionals on advanced should have not have been done. They could have a less than optimal reward for failing an optional, but if it is an auto fail then it's not optional anymore.
I would be in favor of some form of gating for elite or advanced queues. An accolade for unlocking advanced runs and another to unlock elite sounds reasonable.
I, for one, am happy that BNPs and stuff are getting distributed into single-player content. I just want to be a trekkie, and I want to do it in a l33t ubercruiser dreadnaught with MKXIV Mako Omega turbotoys. Pro gaming is for pro games, not this.
As a general thing I'm a fairly antisocial player. I was raised on single player games, I love single player games, I prefer them. I play this MMO because it's Star Trek. That said I've found it quite enjoyable.
My first three months in this game, I did not open the chat box at all. I did my research via the STOwiki and I made a cursory trip through the forums. The fleet I was invited to died the month after I joined as apparently the Starbase grind was too much for them, so I was alone again.
After I was taken through the STFs by friends of a friend I started PUGing. I actually met more friends via the randomness of the PUGs, which was actually a bonus. It made me more social.
So reflexively I don't like anything that makes general random PUGing a weaker experience/process. I'm also opposed to them continuing to make us work harder for less, though I'm glad they increased the XP gain at least.
But you have raised some solid points on the player failings that have weakened PUGs. Do you think a general player rating system would help? The system tracking idle time in queued content, people who abandon the mission, or even how many times you get killed (obviously with more leniency based on normal and less for an Elite). If your rating is too low, then you can't join Advanced or Elite and you have to rebuild your rating by running normal.
Although honestly putting the difficulty or rather the HP of the enemies at something more normal for casual players and dropping failure rewards altogether (failure rewards which seem to be completely counterproductive and weird, I mean a reward for failing?) would probably do the trick.
For difficulty increases I'd rather see more enemies that behave like Vaadwaur ground troops. Those A$$*oles are absolutely brilliant. They're much more engaging than a simple HP damage sponge. I still don't get why I have 75K HP and a ship of comparable size that I can destroy, needs 300-600K HP.
As I recall the Devs said that with the introduction of Tier 6 ships, No Win had become too winnable.
I'd be happy if I were not auto-teamed with people I currently have on ignore. I tend to clean out my ignore list regularly. Because I tend to fill it regularly.
I'm generally not a fan of systems like that - things without the human interaction element. They can end up being punitive, unable to read any nuances of what happened - Hell, they're even subject to trolling.
It's one of those things where I can see an issue there, but I've honestly got no suggestions on how it could be addressed.
Offer rewards for Normal...well, Advanced would still offer better rewards regardless of what Normal offered. Offer rewards from single-player missions...well, queues would still offer better rewards.
There are all sorts of things where it could reduce the matter...cause a bunch of folks would be happy out there getting stuff at a slower pace as long as they could get it. But there are other folks that would just...well...yeah.
Can't remember which thread I mentioned that I see somewhere between a 20-30% fail rate on ISA from doing public pugs, but I should have mentioned that the vast majority of those were not from any sort of a lack of DPS or the like. Most were sabotages or folks chasing butterflies either on purpose or because they were running some goofy bot.
There's just that group of bad apples...meh.
It would certainly cut down on the troll factor, because weak assistance and fails caused by their hands, hurts their ability as well to PUG higher than normal.
Not completely without its merits but, not 100% foolproof either.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
The trolls and false elitists (and by that I specifically mean the guys who are first to call you noob for not doing enough DPS, or not fitting into their plan, while not offering any instruction or direction before, during, or after while they were TRIBBLE up the mission) are plenty vicious and annoying, and there's no need to mention ESD chat, but by and large I've found the folks in this game to be all around swell.
One would think that would factor in yeah. Well understood sir, it's a mirror reflection of the disconnect between us and the people making decisions. Their metrics and our experiences aren't matching up.
Also you can't make it entirely a player moderated system either, because there could easily be a group of trolls who could swarm neg a player's rating making it unable for them to play even if they're innocent. It would open up a variety of cyber bulling of its own. And nobody wants that.
Maybe a rare chance for one of the Very Rare Material or Elite Mark to drop, for the top scoring player on normal. Then one guaranteed for everyone on Advanced and so on.
I don't like the idea of them dropping from a normal single player mission. Perhaps get three maybe five as the big reward for the first playthrough of a final mission in a story arc, but only on the first playthrough. But not something that is earnable on replay.
Certainly not.
I think the only high quality method would be for the system to rate general performance and then to have the an official, say a Dev actually shadow the player during a queue mission and then confirm poor or troll performance and sabotage. But that would require a WHOLE lot of manpower that's not really practical.