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Cryptic: Don't nerf the rewards...
sirsitsalot
Member Posts: 2,803 Arc User
Hey Cryptic... If you feel like your players are consuming your grindfests too quickly, Don't nerf reward payouts. Leave them and costs for existing things exactly the way they are. When your next grindfest comes out, just raise the costs on the things associated with it. Players will earn payouts at the same rate as always, so you won be taking anything away from them. And you still get to control the rate of progression.
In a way, I understand why the XP costs to advance from 51-60 are so high. If you ask me, the xp cost hike should have been applied starting at RALH. These are FLAG OFFICER ranks. advancing through them should take longer than regular commissioned officer ranks. The mistake, in my opinion, was locking your story content behind the level advancement. It worked for the commissioned ranks because there were plenty of missions to do, and their payouts pretty much helped move the advancement along. The same cannot be said of the new level advancement.
I would much rather have you guys just not release content until you are ready for us to have it, than lock it behind a ridiculously long grind to have it taunting us.
Just my opinion, which I know does not matter worth spit.
In a way, I understand why the XP costs to advance from 51-60 are so high. If you ask me, the xp cost hike should have been applied starting at RALH. These are FLAG OFFICER ranks. advancing through them should take longer than regular commissioned officer ranks. The mistake, in my opinion, was locking your story content behind the level advancement. It worked for the commissioned ranks because there were plenty of missions to do, and their payouts pretty much helped move the advancement along. The same cannot be said of the new level advancement.
I would much rather have you guys just not release content until you are ready for us to have it, than lock it behind a ridiculously long grind to have it taunting us.
Just my opinion, which I know does not matter worth spit.
"There can be no meeting of the minds between two parties
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
Post edited by sirsitsalot on
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While this will greatly increase the rate of levelling again, it would make the perceived grind lower, which in turn would improve player happiness and as a general rule devs would be able to put out new spec trees before the non-grinders get through the existing ones with a buffer. As it is now people are looking at the spec trees thinking "why bother?" and rightly so, by the time they've got most of the points they will either be bored out of their minds or there will be a new spec tree and their morale will drop in a similar manner, at least if each primary tree is completable just before the next one comes out people will get the satisfaction of finishing the trees which would in turn encourage them to do the next one.
Without the pointless grind - there isn't a game. If we eat up the grind, we have no reason to play. So instead of developing fast repeatable content to keep us playing - instead of balancing the queues to the average player - they're taking away the easiest way to level to shoehorn us where they want us to play.
It isn't a very pretty picture to be honest.
what.
increase XP for unused PVE qeues?
My friend, these queues are deserted for a reason:
THEY SUCK. They are not fun. They are badly designed. And more often than not: they completely miss why people come and play the game.
Sry to burst the bubble: There is no santa clause.
For every 30% nerf you get a 3% xp/time-buff on the queues (numbers are exemplary, but you get the picture). The devs want you on your knees for grinding, but you can delegate it to your doffs. Till they nerf those rewards too.
Isn't it to crush the noobs, see them driven from the game, and hear the lamentations of their parsers?
STFs don't reward nearly as much as other areas of the game (with few exceptions) that's why they are unused
For some fun is secondary. People out there will and do play awful content if it's offers the best payout for the least effort.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1384331
(As riffed from the TOS episode "The Immunity Syndrome")
Cryptic nailed it with the original revamp, having unique drops tied to the different STF's, requiring players not to grind just one, but all the STF's to get the gear, which gave incentive to play them all.
On top of that, you actually got the equipment sets as a reward, something you don't with the reputation system.
Leveling up reputation only grants you the ability to purchase the gear, but you still need to pay EC and dilithium to obtain it.
I would willingly spend hours cycling through the ground and space STF's in the day in the chase for those rare elusive gear drops.
But these days i feel zero motivation and pretty much just farm the easiest and quickest PvE queues like everyone else.
My character Tsin'xing
You would need to increase those rewards dramatically. And then, because it's the maps no one wanted to run in the first place, it would be an exercise in frustration with missions failing due to failed optionals or undergeared players.
Still, theres a reason why the vast majority of MMORPG's use that system, because it works.
Its a sure fire way to keep people playing group content, and not have the graveyards STO has.
I don't know if it would work, but maybe a hybrid system could be implemented.
Cryptic could add a very rare chance for Advanced Queues to drop Mk XIII Ultra Rare Reputation set pieces, and for Elite Queues to drop Mk XIV Epic gear pieces.
That would add a little extra incentive for people to play all the content, while still giving those who like the reputation system the option to grind marks and upgrade reputation gear.
I liked that system, it made gearing toons easier and helped preserve fun in the content.
As for those saying about how the unplayed content is not fun being the reason for it being unplayed. I find some of them very fun, the problem for me is the lack of rewards, as much as fun is it's own reward that doesn't help people get things in game.
RNG is easier only when it smiles upon you.
"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 old system worked, EXCEPT the drops. What they could have done was just tweak the drop rate tables so that certain drops were given out more logically or that drops were individual rather than 1-per-match, and so forth.
With the new rep I could get onboard with it if it weren't such a blatant dil sink.
Before we'd play a game, get a decent dil reward (960-ish?) with a weekly STF double dil reward, get a rare drop or even on top of that a very rare drop. The rare drops could give you a decent dil reward (480-ish?) or could be directly traded for weapons/gear. WITHOUT PAYMENT. Now, you have to grind xp levels and time to unlock tiers which unlock projects, which you then pay TRIBBLE-tons of dil to unlock store categories -- which you then get the honor of paying CRAPTONS^3 of dil to get a single item. Oh, and your per-mission dil rewards are fractions of what they used to be. Oh, and if you get marks you can convert them for dil but not at a reasonable rate and at a slow-as-hell time-gated interface to keep you from cashing in.
It's an exponential increase of dil costs and frustration for very little return. All they had to do was increase the drop rates.
Okay, all that aside, they could have gone the whole rep-store method but without the massive dil sinks. They should have put more emphasis on the rep currency required (very rare drops) and only needed a token dil.
Most other MMO's also have some sort of "token" system to go along with the random drops, i.e. even if you don't get the gear you want/need during that run, you still get a handful of tokens you can save up to eventually get that gear. It means that even people who are unlucky with RNG can still get some reward for the time and effort they put in helping the group with a given dungeon/raid/whathaveyou.
That's really how the marks and such should have worked in STO (and maybe that was the original idea?) instead of being the sole source of gear.
That said, as much as I absolutely despise RNG, and always wish that there was less of it in any given MMO, I can't help finding myself almost wishing for STO to go back to random drops as well. At least in that way, there's a chance (again, so long as RNG smiles on you) you can gain gear at faster rate than one can currently and there would be a genuine sense of satisfaction when the gear you needed finally dropped. As opposed to now, where all the caps and cooldowns make for a steady but tediously slow uphill climb, and where earning rewards often amount to just tossing more marks and dilithium onto a growing pile that you either don't have a use for or cannot use yet.
That's how it used to work here, the only 'issue' was that you couldn't get Mk 12 stuff that way, but if I'm not mistaken Mk 11 was either 20 or 30 EDCs (there's a term I haven't used in years...) the only problem with the system was that people were annoyed that they weren't getting Mk 12 gear, I myself had issues completing some sets for my alts at Mk 12 but with the lack of difference between 11 and 12 I never saw reason to complain about it.
-Argala
-Crystal Entity (Adv or Elite)
-Infected: The conduit (Adv or Elite)
Is this cloud nine? IMPROVE player happiness? You don't own cryptic and even though STO needs lots of balancing what makes you think that this what they are going to do. As of now is nerf after nerf to make grinding even harder to cope. Don't mind grinding but looks like someone in there have the wrong idea of "extreme" grinding. People wont grind till they bleed from their eyes or urethra. This whole thing needs more balancing instead of Nerfing. IMO DIL helps...but XP is actually becoming a higher commodity than DIL and that aint right.
RNG is never good. I know of people that played for a day and had everything they wanted, others gave up after a year of getting nothing.
Now I wouldnt mind an RNG with some kind of built in counter. Like say if you dont get the special unique reward after twenty successful runs, you WILL be given it on the twenty first run. Leaving the RNG as a pure unrestrained beast leads to the 'Loot Cave' scenero of Destiny. Teams of players sitting in front of a spawning point for MONTHS trying to get one specific drop.
No thanks.
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
Vanilla WoW dungeons provide a great example; 10-20% drop rate for any given bind on pickup item from a given boss, 0.1% drop rate for any given bind on equip item from any given NPC in the dungeon.
Only a handful of exclusive items had a low drop rate off a specific NPC, and no "must have item" had a super-low drop rate off a specific non-instanced-content NPC (ie the "loot cave" scenario mentioned by the poster above).
To you maybe... I like most of em....
I never said that's what I think they will do, just what I think they SHOULD do, I wholly expect them just to nerf the rewards and if we're REALLY lucky add dilithium we don't presently need to things we don't presently play. Also, if you checked any of my posts about the exp grind you would see how much I dislike it, I have even gone so far as to suggest that it is a sign from the devs that they are desperate for us to be in game for longer, which is (and always would) backfiring.
Cryptic just can't win with you people!
Think expectations are just as low as they can be at times. Besides if one would complain about every bug and nerf in game one would keep at it at the level we receive them.
Time to be creative in complaining. :rolleyes:
Me as well.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
And yet some from the beginning (once the split the stfs into ground/space and removed randomized rewards) were staples of playing STO where people connected through pugging...before the giant nerf called Delta Rising.
The stfs may have sucked for a very few elite players who even now steamroll content but for many of us, the time vs reward and casualness of the stfs created whole communites and fleets before rewards were killed and the difficulties were tuned to make us all craft with the junk, randomized system forced onto everyone.
But sure, they sucked. Is this before or after Cryptic ruined them for a small group of extreme dps players?