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Thoughts on Events, Daily Things, Choice and Fun
mrcaton1
Member Posts: 6 Arc User
It's hard for me to say that I've enjoyed the Anniversary Event. I thought the FE was an interesing story, though I hate the maze and I hate having to play it multiple times for the set. I'm not even one of those who MUST get every item on every character. I'm only getting the Kobali set on my main and on my main KDF guy. My other alts are going without, and still it's a drudgery to play through it five, six, seven times.
The reward for the Omega minigame is obviously very nice, and clearly it's got people logging in to grind particles. Can't really say that it's' fun, though. Still, I've been doing it because I don't want to feel like I missed out on a chance to upgrade my gear.
The problem with events like this and the Crystalline event that's upcoming is that it keeps many players from doing other things that it seems the devs are invested in encouraging--like playing or designing foundry missions, for one. The new system for seeing foundry missions in sector space is a great idea. I love it. However, I don't want to play a foundry mission or anything else right now because I don't want to miss out on making my character more capable of doing the (now very difficult) advanced and elite queues by upgrading my gear. So I log on, play my guitar hero mini game for as long as I can stand it, and log off. I can't wait for the event to be over so I don't feel obligated to collect particles. Yes, I realize its a choice I'm making to grind instead of doing other things, but I wish it wasn't a choice I had to make--a choice between enjoying the game today and getting geared up to enjoy the game in the future. Those two things should not be opposed to one another.
I wish the dev team would consider altering these events and the Crystalline event to look more like the Lobi Crystal featured episode event, or even the shuttle event. During those, I have a choice of which missions I can play to earn the daily reward, and I end up playing missions that are fun that are normally ghost towns in queue. Instead of forcing us to fight the Crystalline Entity ad nauseum, why not have a "Nukara STF" event or a "Borg STF" event or a "Romulan STF" event that lets us get the daily reward with some choice which missions to queue for? I mean, I always thought Mine Trap was fun, but who gets to play it these days? Events like this with worthwhile rewards open queues and get people playing content.
Instead of forcing us to play the Dust to Dust FE multiple times, why not offer a choice of re-playing some of the other Delta Rising content to earn the reward? I'd enjoy another play through with some of those missions, but you're not incentivizing it--you're incentivizing replays of a single episode and grinding particles that offers zero engagement in content. I mean, I truly LOVE flying my pergrine fighter. But I barely took part in the shuttle event because I felt like I was missing out on gear upgrades by queuing for those missions instead of playing the Omega game.
I don't mind playing the game to earn rewards. I like the game. I want to play it. I just hope we'll see more choice (like the aforementioned Lobi crystal event) in the future to get me out of the monotony. Seriously, thanks for the gear upgrades. But next time, let me blow something up in order to earn it.
The reward for the Omega minigame is obviously very nice, and clearly it's got people logging in to grind particles. Can't really say that it's' fun, though. Still, I've been doing it because I don't want to feel like I missed out on a chance to upgrade my gear.
The problem with events like this and the Crystalline event that's upcoming is that it keeps many players from doing other things that it seems the devs are invested in encouraging--like playing or designing foundry missions, for one. The new system for seeing foundry missions in sector space is a great idea. I love it. However, I don't want to play a foundry mission or anything else right now because I don't want to miss out on making my character more capable of doing the (now very difficult) advanced and elite queues by upgrading my gear. So I log on, play my guitar hero mini game for as long as I can stand it, and log off. I can't wait for the event to be over so I don't feel obligated to collect particles. Yes, I realize its a choice I'm making to grind instead of doing other things, but I wish it wasn't a choice I had to make--a choice between enjoying the game today and getting geared up to enjoy the game in the future. Those two things should not be opposed to one another.
I wish the dev team would consider altering these events and the Crystalline event to look more like the Lobi Crystal featured episode event, or even the shuttle event. During those, I have a choice of which missions I can play to earn the daily reward, and I end up playing missions that are fun that are normally ghost towns in queue. Instead of forcing us to fight the Crystalline Entity ad nauseum, why not have a "Nukara STF" event or a "Borg STF" event or a "Romulan STF" event that lets us get the daily reward with some choice which missions to queue for? I mean, I always thought Mine Trap was fun, but who gets to play it these days? Events like this with worthwhile rewards open queues and get people playing content.
Instead of forcing us to play the Dust to Dust FE multiple times, why not offer a choice of re-playing some of the other Delta Rising content to earn the reward? I'd enjoy another play through with some of those missions, but you're not incentivizing it--you're incentivizing replays of a single episode and grinding particles that offers zero engagement in content. I mean, I truly LOVE flying my pergrine fighter. But I barely took part in the shuttle event because I felt like I was missing out on gear upgrades by queuing for those missions instead of playing the Omega game.
I don't mind playing the game to earn rewards. I like the game. I want to play it. I just hope we'll see more choice (like the aforementioned Lobi crystal event) in the future to get me out of the monotony. Seriously, thanks for the gear upgrades. But next time, let me blow something up in order to earn it.
Post edited by mrcaton1 on
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Comments
The Omega mini-game is a bit of a bore after awhile and mouse lag is frustrating, but I find that I am grinding that mini-game from time to time. It is kinda hard to pass up an opportunity to get a tech upgrade that is better than superior without the need to spend EC or play Advanced / Elite STFs to get the mats (which I do not do). Though I might buy some mat from the Exchange so that I can continue crafting Omega tech upgrades after the anniversary event ends. I find that I sometimes end up spending hours grinding for Omega mats across various toons with short breaks here and there to give my eyes and hand/wrist a rest.
Yeah, if it was not the fact that I want the ship on all my toons and to get as many Omega tech upgrades as I can, I would be playing STO less and / or do something else in STO that is fun. I play foundry missions because they are a good source of dilithium ore with a minimum payout of 1,440 and a max of around 2,640 or so every 20 hours. That excludes the "Investigate Officer Report" mission which rewards 960 dilithium ore.
I am not overly excited about the upcoming Crystalline Cataclysm event, but I will play it to earn the 50,000 dilithium reward. At least the mission itself will be shorter than "Dust to Dust". Cryptic needs to do more events that people do not care about like the "Shuttle Event" which I did not even bother to attempt doing...
WE HAVE TOO MANY GOD D*** CURRENCIES AND IT NEEDS TO STOP!
A great idea would be vastly simplifying the system...I don't mind having different marks and 'tokens' like Ancient Power Cells and Isomorphic Injections being put into particular queue types, but the R&D items in different queues is a straight up bad call.
The core problem with this is that Cryptic is artificially plumping up the rate at which people play certain queues, instead of you know, doing what a game does and making them something people WANT to play. But I guess it serves the metrics better to have people endlessly hate-grinding queues that are horribly designed with annoying mechanics and annoying enemies, rather than face the fact that players hate to play them and wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole without this 'carrot'.
Also the payouts in the queues are way too variable. For example, it's astoundingly stupid that Dyson ground Battlezone pays more dilithium than the Undine space Battlezone.
ARE THEY NOT BOTH BATTLEZONES?! ISN'T THAT WHY YOU CREATED THEM?!
Wipe out all the various purple R&D tokens and instead replace with a single R&D token like Salvaged Technology.
Easy Space/Ground Queues:
50 Marks (+Daily Bonus Box)
No Rep or R&D Tokens
Assorted Mats
480 Dilithium
Medium Space/Ground Queues:
75 Marks (+Daily Bonus Box)
1 Rep Token, 1 R&D Token, Assorted Mats
720 Dilithium
GET RID OF OPTIONAL (but Mandatory?) FAIL CONDITIONS
Hard Space/Ground Queues:
100 Marks (+Daily Bonus Box)
2 Rep Tokens, 2 R&D Tokens, Assorted Mats
960 Dilithium
My advice, spend less time changing the size, color, and content of the carrot to suit monetization metrics, because at that point you're making the grind as painful as possible to get people to pay their way through it and burning them out/frustrating them in the process. It's been shown time and time again that when players of F2P games feel fleeced their reaction is to bail.
Instead make a better carrot to begin with and we'll play for fun. It is possible to have both fun and profit in a game.