i think the complaint isnt so much that argala was 'fun' as much as argala was an option. now that option lo longer exists. its xp reward has been nerfed, it has had a timegate added, and a pittance of an xp 'boost' was reinstated in some of the places that had been nerfed so hard in earlier patches. no matter how you look at it, there are now far fewer opportunities to gain meaningful xp than ever. thats what many people arent happy about.
i think the complaint isnt so much that argala was 'fun' as much as argala was an option. now that option lo longer exists. its xp reward has been nerfed, it has had a timegate added, and a pittance of an xp 'boost' was reinstated in some of the places that had been nerfed so hard in earlier patches. no matter how you look at it, there are now far fewer opportunities to gain meaningful xp than ever. thats what many people arent happy about.
Except that there are a LOT of options, just that users don't always wish to explore them once they find one that suits them.
I have leveled from 50 - 57 in under 2 weeks, and with the XP boost weekend, I will most likely be at 60 before the end of Saturday.
There are a lot of Episodes that reward 2000+ XP along with non-bound loot that can be sold. Even with the lowered return on replays, with the Bonus Weekend these replays will again reward a high amount of XP.
There are a lot of DOFF missions that reward +1000 XP along with leveling your commendations, and getting other types of rewards for completion, including Dil or EC.
Foundry Missions have decent rewards as well. If you are looking just to max skill points, pick one of the Farming Space Missions. You will not only level your ship, but yourself as well, until you hit max rewards for Foundry Missions.
A 30 minute cooldown isn't excessive, it is just change that people hate.
Those who do not spend all their time grinding/playing one single instance/mission/patrol, do not appear to be upset or worried about the change.
It is the user who spends all their time/effort on this single thing that are the most upset.
If they diversify, they will find themselves less upset or stressed about relatively minor changes.
since when doing the same thing over and over again is fun? I stopped grinding argala after 2 patrols.
25% bonus isn't much when you put it on the table though. Now if they extended that 25% boost to doffing it would make things a little easier I guess, but as is, the closest thing to an option for leveling will be the Undine Space zone.
"Why all the sales"?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
im looking forward to the fleet becoming a fleet again and the solo leveling going away
would be nice to get some pugs going as well
Now all we got to do is get this crazy fails and timers removed
Our fleet did Argala grinding together its only been on occasion that i have solo ran Argala, before 3 or 4 members of my fleet have come online wanting to team up. Its a lot more fun and even then we did STFs together to break up Argala runs so boredom didnt set in. Helps us to teach tactics and build on our loadouts and ship designs.
Everytime I see complaints about the same thing
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Except that there are a LOT of options, just that users don't always wish to explore them once they find one that suits them.
I have leveled from 50 - 57 in under 2 weeks, and with the XP boost weekend, I will most likely be at 60 before the end of Saturday.
There are a lot of Episodes that reward 2000+ XP along with non-bound loot that can be sold. Even with the lowered return on replays, with the Bonus Weekend these replays will again reward a high amount of XP.
There are a lot of DOFF missions that reward +1000 XP along with leveling your commendations, and getting other types of rewards for completion, including Dil or EC.
Foundry Missions have decent rewards as well. If you are looking just to max skill points, pick one of the Farming Space Missions. You will not only level your ship, but yourself as well, until you hit max rewards for Foundry Missions.
A 30 minute cooldown isn't excessive, it is just change that people hate.
Those who do not spend all their time grinding/playing one single instance/mission/patrol, do not appear to be upset or worried about the change.
It is the user who spends all their time/effort on this single thing that are the most upset.
If they diversify, they will find themselves less upset or stressed about relatively minor changes.
Problem is, you need 150k exp to get a spec point, and you need, what was it, around 70 spec points to fill out the tree? Sooo...yeah, you'll be running those missions for a very long time. Good luck with that ^^
"Why all the sales"?
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
*shrug* I guess you gotta do it like the old STF days now, find the a valuable 30 minute rotation. Heck I don't even grind DR and I know another good patroll to go to with things to blow up
It will take what .. one day to figure out few maximizatons?, perhaps 2 cause if the number crunchers tally all difficulties of all STFs, ground zones, DR sectors, and other sectors
Argala system patrol will have a 30 minute cooldown. This will make leveling high level characters even harder. Not to mention specialisations.
Cryptic, out of curiosity, are you actually trying to drive players away or are you just really good at making poor decisions?
Please read the current patch notes.
Of course they nerf argala but therefore they increase rewards (xp dil spec) for Missions, stf, Battlezones etc. That are the things players really want to play in the game. Argala was only a way for players to curve around cryptics fatal errors with the XP and dil revamp in DR.
With this patch today they are on a good way to bring the fun back to STO with the attempt to reanimate STF queues etc.
No one can really see permanently farming Argala as fun making end game content. So lets forget it.
Give the changes a chance.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] ... IST MIR ZU SCHWER ... UND ICH WILL NICHT
Of course they nerf argala but therefore they increase rewards (xp dil spec) for Missions, stf, Battlezones etc. That are the things players really want to play in the game. Argala was only a way for players to curve around cryptics fatal errors with the XP and dil revamp in DR.
With this patch today they are on a good way to bring the fun back to STO with the attempt to reanimate STF queues etc.
No one can really see permanently farming Argala as fun making end game content. So lets forget it.
Give the changes a chance.
The problem is - they aren't leaving the option for those stubborn enough to grind Argala and Gerren. The changes to the queues give more xp - true. But lets take an averge ISA group. If you can run ISA in 7 or 8 minutes for 3,000 - 5,000 xp, this is still a massive drop in xp earned over 2 or 3 Gerran for 5200 xp per run.
So yes - other content is being increased, but not enough to be competitive to what we had. I applaud Cryptic for trying to revitalize other content - but the problem is - they aren't fixing the base problems. Spec points are a bad idea because players are willing to grind gear over time. People are willing to grind reputation.
But for a character - I want my CHARACTER as good as he can be as soon as possible. Making friendships with alien races, upgrading my extremely large, powerful starship, mastering new techniques. These things should take weeks or months. But a game needs dedicated target points. "I'm max level!" then "I'm geared enough for the first raid!" Then "I've maxed a reputation!" Then "I can go into the harder raid!" Here, all we have is 'Yay... next spec point.'
The elephant in the room is - the grind is the only way to keep people playing. The only thing in the game to keep people logging in. 1 PVE mission every 3 months isn't a healthy game. That's why we have grind events every week, there's nothing else in the game to require logging in. The grind hasn't been removed. Nerfing Argala and Gerren hasn't made it go away. Giving a buff to other content hasn't removed this. It's just forced you from the most profitable map because players are moving faster then Cryptic wants.
The problem is - they aren't leaving the option for those stubborn enough to grind Argala and Gerren. The changes to the queues give more xp - true. But lets take an averge ISA group. If you can run ISA in 7 or 8 minutes for 3,000 - 5,000 xp, this is still a massive drop in xp earned over 2 or 3 Gerran for 5200 xp per run.
So yes - other content is being increased, but not enough to be competitive to what we had. I applaud Cryptic for trying to revitalize other content - but the problem is - they aren't fixing the base problems. Spec points are a bad idea because players are willing to grind gear over time. People are willing to grind reputation.
But for a character - I want my CHARACTER as good as he can be as soon as possible. Making friendships with alien races, upgrading my extremely large, powerful starship, mastering new techniques. These things should take weeks or months. But a game needs dedicated target points. "I'm max level!" then "I'm geared enough for the first raid!" Then "I've maxed a reputation!" Then "I can go into the harder raid!" Here, all we have is 'Yay... next spec point.'
The elephant in the room is - the grind is the only way to keep people playing. The only thing in the game to keep people logging in. 1 PVE mission every 3 months isn't a healthy game. That's why we have grind events every week, there's nothing else in the game to require logging in. The grind hasn't been removed. Nerfing Argala and Gerren hasn't made it go away. Giving a buff to other content hasn't removed this. It's just forced you from the most profitable map because players are moving faster then Cryptic wants.
What it sounds like to me is cryptic is trying to force people through a funnel so they progress the way they want at the pace they want and not the player.
What it sounds like to me is cryptic is trying to force people through a funnel so they progress the way they want at the pace they want and not the player.
And that is the problem. If there's so little endgame content that they have to pace you playing - we have way bigger problems then Argala. There is no other MMO that tries to keep you from maxing your levels. Every other game tries to shove you to max level so they can only make new content.
The "Argala grinders" have whined for months that the game is no fun because they're "forced" to grind the same thing over and over. "Forced" meaning that one thing allegedly gives more reward than other things so they can't resist grinding it even though they hate it (hint: self-control makes for a happier life).
Now they nerf that "forced grind mission" and buff other things so there isn't any temptation, and slap on a cooldown for good measure for those who fail to notitce otherwise, so nobody under any circumstances is "forced" to grind it anymore. And what to the whiners do? Why, whine some more of course, because now they can't grind it anymore it suddenly becomes the greatest fun they ever had. It's hilarious.
Seriously, as soon as the whining about Argala started, it was blatantly obvious that this would be the inevitable outcome. If you didn't want to get rid of the grind after all, maybe you shouldn't have complained about it so much. :rolleyes:
It's just forced you from the most profitable map because players are moving faster then Cryptic wants.
No. they locked down patrol grind because you people weren't doing anything else because of XP gain compulsion.
What are 1000 argala grinders at any given time good for in STO?
they aren't gaming, nor playing, nor buying, they just mindlessly repeat same mission over and over take a server slot that would be better used for actual content and then call that a "Character progress".
C'mon. If you want your captain and ship at the very best you need to play and learn the game, having all spec points will not help you at all against enemies and in time by actually playing the game you will also get spec points as well.
What it sounds like to me is cryptic is trying to force people through a funnel so they progress the way they want at the pace they want and not the player.
Ding ding ding! Winner! I (And a certain irritated african) have been saying this for years: "Playing as Intended" is NOT a good long-term strategy for business.
But yeah, they should just sell "Cryptic Zen Login Bots" so our toons play the way we're "supposed" to.
What it sounds like to me is cryptic is trying to force people through a funnel so they progress the way they want at the pace they want and not the player.
I'd say the opposite. By trying to normalize the rewards, they're giving the broadest set of options. They're trying to make it so that grinding the same patrol over and over isn't the only way to make noticeable progress.
And the devs have gone on record several times saying that they expected spec points and other end-game things to be goals over time. The only problem has been players who have wanted everything as quickly as possible, and have then resorted to running Argala several hundred times.
The only thing we're being forced to do here, is to not do the same single piece of content over and over... because those who are doing that content over and over, are often complaining about it. So in this case, the devs have listened to player feedback and made it worthwhile to play anything else in the game.
When DR came out, there were complaints that Cryptic was forcing us into repeating the same Delta Quadrant content over and over to progress. With this patch, they're explicitly saying that they never intended that to happen - by increasing rewards elsewhere, and barring the repeating-grind of Argala.
Problem is, you need 150k exp to get a spec point, and you need, what was it, around 70 spec points to fill out the tree? Sooo...yeah, you'll be running those missions for a very long time. Good luck with that ^^
And this is different from grinding a single thing over and over and over and over again how?
Regardless of HOW you get the points, you need the points.
My comment was regarding the difference between grinding the same damn thing over and over and over again trying to get those points, compared to diversifying how you play to achieve the same thing.
I have leveled from 50 - 57 in under 2 weeks, which means I have gotten 7 Specs point during that time.
I am not "chasing the end' but playing the game. Running missions, STF's, Doing Dailies, Keeping my Doff missions running constantly, Doing Foundry missions, etc.
Not by running the same thing over and over and over again so this change has not caused me to erupt in nerd rage.
1- It was a Stealth nerf applied to Tribble and thanks to the real testers (players) we found out what was coming days before today.
2- No DEV wouldn't touch the topic or even wanted to respond to tribble for feedback till today.
3-I'm amazed there wasn't that many players flammed about "Argala".
Either now they just dont care and proven to PWE that players do love the "best expansion ever"...timegated them and herded them for 3 months to Argala...now that they got their "good" numbers of those playing Delta quadrant they just swept Argala under the rug...we are not just numbers
At least they have something decent for putting this information on patch notes unlike Tribble notes....very late notes to in Holodeck to avoid the community flaming (unprecendented by the way)
IMO I rather they dont touch Argala with another XP nerf. I could care less for DIL. At the same time you wont see real numbers till the Bonus weekend is over but on tribble it went from 5K to about 2k...a net loss still for Argala even with XP....just wait till Monday but GREAT strategy from management team to keep this under wraps and minimize playerbase complains through the weekend.
I can only speak for myself but some of us are not that naive and we were hoping that with the new EP things would get better at least with the communication process and avoidance of Stealth nerfs like it was the case in tribble a few days prior to this....another 100000x fiasco.
Im not saying Cryptic can't do anything right....but Communication is very critical. Time to move on and play even less of STO.
And this is different from grinding a single thing over and over and over and over again how?
Regardless of HOW you get the points, you need the points.
My comment was regarding the difference between grinding the same damn thing over and over and over again trying to get those points, compared to diversifying how you play to achieve the same thing.
I have leveled from 50 - 57 in under 2 weeks, which means I have gotten 7 Specs point during that time.
I am not "chasing the end' but playing the game. Running missions, STF's, Doing Dailies, Keeping my Doff missions running constantly, Doing Foundry missions, etc.
Not by running the same thing over and over and over again so this change has not caused me to erupt in nerd rage.
Now it will take you about 1 week per spec point with 2 hours of play per day because at level 57 your enteringing the 150k zone per spec point
so by the time you finish intel 2 new spec schools will be out ! at the current rate of release
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Comments
Then complain about the grind to do so.
Some people just like to complain?
Yeah, my daughter does the same. She's hormonal.
Scotty says:
PUGs are easy to find.
Ones that dont suck and cause instant mission failure? Thats hard.
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
free jkname
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
It is not "locked" and yes, you can still do it.
There is now a 30 minute cooldown in place that brings it more in line with other missions, STF's etc that already have a 30 minute cooldown in place.
Last time I looked, Cryptic isn't Burger King, so I am surprised that a lot of people think they are entitled to get things their own way.
If they actually boost XP worth a TRIBBLE, otherwise its just more of making leveling a pain in the backside.
since when doing the same thing over and over again is fun? I stopped grinding argala after 2 patrols.
Misery loves company.
Except that there are a LOT of options, just that users don't always wish to explore them once they find one that suits them.
I have leveled from 50 - 57 in under 2 weeks, and with the XP boost weekend, I will most likely be at 60 before the end of Saturday.
There are a lot of Episodes that reward 2000+ XP along with non-bound loot that can be sold. Even with the lowered return on replays, with the Bonus Weekend these replays will again reward a high amount of XP.
There are a lot of DOFF missions that reward +1000 XP along with leveling your commendations, and getting other types of rewards for completion, including Dil or EC.
Foundry Missions have decent rewards as well. If you are looking just to max skill points, pick one of the Farming Space Missions. You will not only level your ship, but yourself as well, until you hit max rewards for Foundry Missions.
A 30 minute cooldown isn't excessive, it is just change that people hate.
Those who do not spend all their time grinding/playing one single instance/mission/patrol, do not appear to be upset or worried about the change.
It is the user who spends all their time/effort on this single thing that are the most upset.
If they diversify, they will find themselves less upset or stressed about relatively minor changes.
25% bonus isn't much when you put it on the table though. Now if they extended that 25% boost to doffing it would make things a little easier I guess, but as is, the closest thing to an option for leveling will be the Undine Space zone.
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
Our fleet did Argala grinding together its only been on occasion that i have solo ran Argala, before 3 or 4 members of my fleet have come online wanting to team up. Its a lot more fun and even then we did STFs together to break up Argala runs so boredom didnt set in. Helps us to teach tactics and build on our loadouts and ship designs.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Problem is, you need 150k exp to get a spec point, and you need, what was it, around 70 spec points to fill out the tree? Sooo...yeah, you'll be running those missions for a very long time. Good luck with that ^^
And a merry freaking Christmas to you too, Ebenezer.
-jonsills, 'Cryptic Why the sales..instead of Fixing XP leveling and this game?'
It will take what .. one day to figure out few maximizatons?, perhaps 2 cause if the number crunchers tally all difficulties of all STFs, ground zones, DR sectors, and other sectors
Please read the current patch notes.
Of course they nerf argala but therefore they increase rewards (xp dil spec) for Missions, stf, Battlezones etc. That are the things players really want to play in the game. Argala was only a way for players to curve around cryptics fatal errors with the XP and dil revamp in DR.
With this patch today they are on a good way to bring the fun back to STO with the attempt to reanimate STF queues etc.
No one can really see permanently farming Argala as fun making end game content. So lets forget it.
Give the changes a chance.
Even if you didn't running into technical issues you probably would have stopped getting Xp from enemy kills not long into running it.
The problem is - they aren't leaving the option for those stubborn enough to grind Argala and Gerren. The changes to the queues give more xp - true. But lets take an averge ISA group. If you can run ISA in 7 or 8 minutes for 3,000 - 5,000 xp, this is still a massive drop in xp earned over 2 or 3 Gerran for 5200 xp per run.
So yes - other content is being increased, but not enough to be competitive to what we had. I applaud Cryptic for trying to revitalize other content - but the problem is - they aren't fixing the base problems. Spec points are a bad idea because players are willing to grind gear over time. People are willing to grind reputation.
But for a character - I want my CHARACTER as good as he can be as soon as possible. Making friendships with alien races, upgrading my extremely large, powerful starship, mastering new techniques. These things should take weeks or months. But a game needs dedicated target points. "I'm max level!" then "I'm geared enough for the first raid!" Then "I've maxed a reputation!" Then "I can go into the harder raid!" Here, all we have is 'Yay... next spec point.'
The elephant in the room is - the grind is the only way to keep people playing. The only thing in the game to keep people logging in. 1 PVE mission every 3 months isn't a healthy game. That's why we have grind events every week, there's nothing else in the game to require logging in. The grind hasn't been removed. Nerfing Argala and Gerren hasn't made it go away. Giving a buff to other content hasn't removed this. It's just forced you from the most profitable map because players are moving faster then Cryptic wants.
What it sounds like to me is cryptic is trying to force people through a funnel so they progress the way they want at the pace they want and not the player.
And that is the problem. If there's so little endgame content that they have to pace you playing - we have way bigger problems then Argala. There is no other MMO that tries to keep you from maxing your levels. Every other game tries to shove you to max level so they can only make new content.
Now they nerf that "forced grind mission" and buff other things so there isn't any temptation, and slap on a cooldown for good measure for those who fail to notitce otherwise, so nobody under any circumstances is "forced" to grind it anymore. And what to the whiners do? Why, whine some more of course, because now they can't grind it anymore it suddenly becomes the greatest fun they ever had. It's hilarious.
Seriously, as soon as the whining about Argala started, it was blatantly obvious that this would be the inevitable outcome. If you didn't want to get rid of the grind after all, maybe you shouldn't have complained about it so much. :rolleyes:
No. they locked down patrol grind because you people weren't doing anything else because of XP gain compulsion.
What are 1000 argala grinders at any given time good for in STO?
they aren't gaming, nor playing, nor buying, they just mindlessly repeat same mission over and over take a server slot that would be better used for actual content and then call that a "Character progress".
C'mon. If you want your captain and ship at the very best you need to play and learn the game, having all spec points will not help you at all against enemies and in time by actually playing the game you will also get spec points as well.
Super SpecialStar Trek Online Review
SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
We are Travelers
Ding ding ding! Winner! I (And a certain irritated african) have been saying this for years: "Playing as Intended" is NOT a good long-term strategy for business.
But yeah, they should just sell "Cryptic Zen Login Bots" so our toons play the way we're "supposed" to.
I'd say the opposite. By trying to normalize the rewards, they're giving the broadest set of options. They're trying to make it so that grinding the same patrol over and over isn't the only way to make noticeable progress.
And the devs have gone on record several times saying that they expected spec points and other end-game things to be goals over time. The only problem has been players who have wanted everything as quickly as possible, and have then resorted to running Argala several hundred times.
The only thing we're being forced to do here, is to not do the same single piece of content over and over... because those who are doing that content over and over, are often complaining about it. So in this case, the devs have listened to player feedback and made it worthwhile to play anything else in the game.
When DR came out, there were complaints that Cryptic was forcing us into repeating the same Delta Quadrant content over and over to progress. With this patch, they're explicitly saying that they never intended that to happen - by increasing rewards elsewhere, and barring the repeating-grind of Argala.
And this is different from grinding a single thing over and over and over and over again how?
Regardless of HOW you get the points, you need the points.
My comment was regarding the difference between grinding the same damn thing over and over and over again trying to get those points, compared to diversifying how you play to achieve the same thing.
I have leveled from 50 - 57 in under 2 weeks, which means I have gotten 7 Specs point during that time.
I am not "chasing the end' but playing the game. Running missions, STF's, Doing Dailies, Keeping my Doff missions running constantly, Doing Foundry missions, etc.
Not by running the same thing over and over and over again so this change has not caused me to erupt in nerd rage.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1383521
and also on this thread:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1383521
1- It was a Stealth nerf applied to Tribble and thanks to the real testers (players) we found out what was coming days before today.
2- No DEV wouldn't touch the topic or even wanted to respond to tribble for feedback till today.
3-I'm amazed there wasn't that many players flammed about "Argala".
Either now they just dont care and proven to PWE that players do love the "best expansion ever"...timegated them and herded them for 3 months to Argala...now that they got their "good" numbers of those playing Delta quadrant they just swept Argala under the rug...we are not just numbers
At least they have something decent for putting this information on patch notes unlike Tribble notes....very late notes to in Holodeck to avoid the community flaming (unprecendented by the way)
IMO I rather they dont touch Argala with another XP nerf. I could care less for DIL. At the same time you wont see real numbers till the Bonus weekend is over but on tribble it went from 5K to about 2k...a net loss still for Argala even with XP....just wait till Monday but GREAT strategy from management team to keep this under wraps and minimize playerbase complains through the weekend.
I can only speak for myself but some of us are not that naive and we were hoping that with the new EP things would get better at least with the communication process and avoidance of Stealth nerfs like it was the case in tribble a few days prior to this....another 100000x fiasco.
Im not saying Cryptic can't do anything right....but Communication is very critical. Time to move on and play even less of STO.
and that's the problem. you are level a piddly 57 and got your super easy spec points for hitting the next. do you know what happens when you hit 60?
Now it will take you about 1 week per spec point with 2 hours of play per day because at level 57 your enteringing the 150k zone per spec point
so by the time you finish intel 2 new spec schools will be out ! at the current rate of release
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse