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Additional Rewards Throughout Star Trek Online (Updated)
pwgroverclvlnd
Member Posts: 11 Cryptic Developer
We hope you are enjoying the recent improvements to the rewards. This recent update added a lot of different ways to earn more Skill Points, Expertise and Dilithium. Based on feedback and session data collected over the weekend, we are seeing a trend that some patrols are seeing more play than others based on their Dilithium reward. Most patrols are rewarding 480 Dilithium. Some are awarding 360 Dilithium, while a few are rewarding 720. In order to simplify the system and encourage play of any patrol for the Dilithium, we are making every patrol reward 480 Dilithium for completion. This change will not affect the Skill Points or Expertise being rewarded and will only affect the Delta Quadrant and Tau Dewa Patrols that were recently modified.
We will continue to monitor the play session, as well as your feedback, and make further changes as needed.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Copied from previous post:
We are pleased to announce a large-scale improvement to rewards to Star Trek Online. Over the past few months, we have been trickling out some minor changes, but now the bulk of the improvements we have been working on is complete and will be available this coming Thursday, February 26th.
The changes we made were based on your feedback, as well as extensive data mining of things like completion times, participation and success rates. The main goal we had in mind was to treat Skill Points, Expertise, and Dilithium more like a time currency that is, you play for X minutes you will earn Y rewards. Although this will never be an exact science, we wanted to ensure that time invested would earn you similar rates of these rewards across the game regardless of what you choose to play. This mostly meant an increase or addition of rewards to much of the game content, but in a few cases, there were reductions where some content was over-rewarding. What we did was look at actual playtime data, as well as our own internal playtesting, and normalized the rewards across content like patrols, queues, adventure zones, missions, etc. Not every piece of content has been fully updated, but most of the primary content was adjusted with this philosophy in mind.
PvE Queues:
Sector Patrols (Delta Quadrant and Tau Dewa Sector Block):
Adventure/Battle Zones:
Missions:
These changes should be a vast improvement to your reward experience in Star Trek Online. Although this is the bulk of the changes we have been working on, we have a few more changes planned in the pipeline. We will also be monitoring playtimes, participation and success rates of game content and continue to adjust rewards as needed. We look forward to you enjoying the new improvements and, more importantly, your feedback.
We will continue to monitor the play session, as well as your feedback, and make further changes as needed.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Copied from previous post:
We are pleased to announce a large-scale improvement to rewards to Star Trek Online. Over the past few months, we have been trickling out some minor changes, but now the bulk of the improvements we have been working on is complete and will be available this coming Thursday, February 26th.
The changes we made were based on your feedback, as well as extensive data mining of things like completion times, participation and success rates. The main goal we had in mind was to treat Skill Points, Expertise, and Dilithium more like a time currency that is, you play for X minutes you will earn Y rewards. Although this will never be an exact science, we wanted to ensure that time invested would earn you similar rates of these rewards across the game regardless of what you choose to play. This mostly meant an increase or addition of rewards to much of the game content, but in a few cases, there were reductions where some content was over-rewarding. What we did was look at actual playtime data, as well as our own internal playtesting, and normalized the rewards across content like patrols, queues, adventure zones, missions, etc. Not every piece of content has been fully updated, but most of the primary content was adjusted with this philosophy in mind.
PvE Queues:
- PvE queues have had their Skill Point and Expertise rewards increased significantly. For most, this is approximately a three-fold increase.
- Dilithium rewards for Normal difficulty PvE queues have been increased from 360 to 480.
Sector Patrols (Delta Quadrant and Tau Dewa Sector Block):
- A reward of 480 Dilithium has been added to all of the sector patrols.
- Skill Point and Expertise rewards have been adjusted so they give a relative amount to one another for the expected play time. For the most part, this meant a reduction in Skill points and Expertise for Delta quadrant Patrols as they were far over-rewarding compared to the rest of the game.
- A 30-minute cooldown has been built into the sector doors for patrols preventing player from re-entering the same patrol until this timer is complete. This timer starts after the mission is completed, similar to the cooldowns found on PvE Queues. Patrol completion times vary greatly from patrol to patrol and from player to player. Adding a cooldown times allows us to keep the rewards relatively high, but still keep them normalized and acts failsafe in the event certain loopholes or exploits develop.
- Tau Dewa Sector Block patrols now each reward 10 Romulan Marks upon completion of that individual patrol, and there is no longer a daily mission that needs to be obtained in order to earn mark rewards from these patrols. This should make them functionally the same as their Delta Quadrant counterparts.
Adventure/Battle Zones:
- All Adventure Zone and Battle Zone missions award Skill Points and Expertise for completion.
- We added Elite Marks (Borg Neural Processors, Ancient Power Cells, Voth Cybernetic Implants, and Isomorphic Injections) to Adventure/Battle Zones. We wanted to respond to feedback that there were not enough places to earn elite marks outside of PvE Queues:
- Borg Neural Processors have been added as a once per day reward to the following missions on the Defera Invasion Zone: Modus Operandi, Getting to the Bottom of Things, Uninvited Guests, Counter Offensive
- Ancient Power Cells have been added as a once per day reward to the following missions on the Kobali Prime Adventure Zone: At the Gates, The Last Stand
- Note that you can already earn Voth Cybernetic Implants by defeating a V-Rex on the Voth Ground Battle Zone and the Undine Isomorphic Injections from defeating the Planet Killer in the Undine Space Battlezone in the Solanae Dyson Sphere.
Missions:
- Missions found in the episode journal will reward Dilithium for both first time play (a large bonus amount) and replay (a smaller amount).
- Skill Point and Expertise rewards for mission replay have been increased (by an additional 25% in most cases).
- First-play rewards for repeatable Delta Rising missions have been improved from Mk XIII Rare rewards to Mk XIII Very Rare rewards. Replay rewards for those missions remain as Mk XII Rare rewards.
These changes should be a vast improvement to your reward experience in Star Trek Online. Although this is the bulk of the changes we have been working on, we have a few more changes planned in the pipeline. We will also be monitoring playtimes, participation and success rates of game content and continue to adjust rewards as needed. We look forward to you enjoying the new improvements and, more importantly, your feedback.
Cryptic Studios Team Member
Post edited by pwgroverclvlnd on
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If it is your intent that people make use of the missions, then there needs to be a benefit for doing so, otherwise I would imagine people will acquire the initial reward(s) and then jump back into their STFs.
Edit: Otherwise, I'm liking the changes.
This one thing, for people who already played through the missions prior to this change and got the Mk13 Rare, is there no way they can go back and get the Mk13 VR version then?
Some of those patrols take a dreadfully long time and really deserve the higher payout. Equalizing things to 480 just means it's more efficient to run whatever the quickest patrol is again.
Cryptic logic:
People play this because it rewards more for their time and effort so they must enjoy that more... Let's lower it's rewards and force them to grind more in other places so they can have no fun whatsoever.
You guys need to get a serious grip of how much you're destroying the fun of end game. The XP grind is beyond a joke.
~Smirk
Three times an irrelevant bonus is still irrelevant.
On a side note, could we please get an update to the rewards for non-DQ/Tau Dewa patrols along the lines of the dilithium rewards added to the new patrols please
And as a nit pick on the details for battlezone rewards - really would have been nice if you'd actually announced that the dilithium rewards were being nerfed by over 50% for each capture point/open mission because that was not a nice stealth nerf when you're trying to tell people you're listerning to their feedback on rewards being nerfed left right and centre.
480 is hardly irrelevant for how fast some of those patrols go. I'm much more concerned with the rewards in the longer, involved patrols.
I assumed that the talk of scaling reward would cause that to vary based on the length of the Episode.
Carraya
Japori
Beta Thoridor
Gamma Eridon
Narendra
Archer
Sorry to spoil the fun but, just nerf these. You're gonna do it anyway eventually. The sooner, the better.
Please re-evaluate the XP requirements/earnings for leveling-up.
Thanks.
Otherwise, I'm sad to see you're nerfing some of the dil rewards. :rolleyes: >shakes head in disappointment<
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Put another way:
Original Setup:
Let's say patrols 1-3 each take 9 minutes, and award 720 dilithium.
Let's say patrols 4-6 each take 7 minutes, and award 480 dilithium.
Let's say patrols 7-9 each take 5 minutes, and award 360 dilithium.
Let's say patrol 10 takes 15 minutes, and awards 720 dilithium.
And patrol 11 takes 2 minutes, and awards 360 dilithium.
So P1-3: 80 dil/min
P4-6: 68.6 dil/min
P7-9: 72 dil/min
P10: 48 dil/min
P11: 180 dil/min
So I'll do 11 whenever it comes up, followed by 1-3, and avoid 4-10. Especially 10. That one is never getting done. In other words (as stated) I'm favoring some patrols over others.
"Solution": Make patrols 1-11 all worth 480 dilithium.
P1-3: 53.3 dil/min
P4-6: 68.6 dil/min
P7-9: 96 dil/min
P10: 32 dil/min
P11: 240 dil/min
So I still do 11 whenever possible. Now I'll likely do 7-9 next, and then pick one or two from 4-6 to fill out the 30 minutes. I'm never doing 10 and (now) not doing 1-3. I'm still favoring some and avoiding others (and the "must have" and the "never do" two patrols are the same two patrols).
In fact, it seems like it actually makes things worse - the spread between the minimum reward/time and the max is even larger than before.
Thanks for this post. You summed it up much better than I could.
+1. That one cannot even reclaim the unique DR rewards is just bogus to me.
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What this guy has said, and as I posted in the last thread mathematically you've nerfed the rewards for XP gain again with the last update, and now you're nerfing the dil rewards as well? I agree entirely with Kham, this is getting to be beyond a joke, and frankly I'd even go as far as to say that is an understatement.
What I would really like to know, is what on earth the logic was behind this in the first place? I mean you changed the numbers to supposedly be a zero numbers game, and that was a nerf, then these changes have created another nerf to XP gains, and that's not even starting on the whole Tau-Dewagate mess.
As I said in the last thread I said that XP Event levels of gain should be the norm, if not a bit (understatement of my own?) more, as frankly right now I simply do not see why I should invest my time doing something I get little to no reward for.
You should go into politics.
You know exactly how to make a flat-out nerf sound like something completely different.
Okay, lets review real quick.
1-You nerf the xp rewards for Argala, then give small amounts of xp to the other stuff in the game, which now takes even longer for those that were grinding to level up take even longer than it did before.
The proper thing would have been to give the same xp reward per time to all of the other content in the game.
2-You used metrics over this weekend, where you change not one thing to patrols, but three. The Dil rewards, Dil rewards, and time gated them. So, your metrics are way off.
You said, "we are seeing a trend that some patrols are seeing more play than others based on their Dilithium reward." However, how do you know that all of those other patrols that are now being run were ONLY because you gave them more Dil as a reward? I am pretty sure that if you didn't nerf xp rewards in Argala, and it was still giving the most xp, it would have still seen more players there.
3-Everytime an idea is implemented, and no one there thinks it through properly, we end up with just another mess you are going to try to fix. Seriously, just take a min to think about it.
You see more players playing one set of patrols because they have more Dil. Then you equalize the rewards no matter how long it takes to finish them. So, this means that the quicker patrols now reward more for their time than before, the ones in the middle are not changed, and you nerf the ones that rewarded appropriate for their time.
What do you seriously think is going to happen? Anyone in their right mind is going to just run all of the quicker missions now because they are obviously rewarding more for the time spent than the others. You just created the exact same situation, just with quicker missions. No one there could have seen this coming? Really?
I am sorry, but whoever is the one calling the shots here doesn't know what they are doing.
First, you have power creep as the only focus in the game. If something new doesn't sell, it is buffed to do more DPS so it will sell. You have ridiculous Dil sinks in the game that haven't even been addressed properly. You keep trying to keep those trying to grind the xp so that they can unlock stuff hidden behind it, and making it an even longer grind for them. And now, you are worried about the Dil rewards in some of the patrols?
Trust me, people playing a few patrols more than others is NOT the problem here. Using Dil and xp to herd, or bribe players (whichever one you choose to use) is not going to fix the game's problems. All it will do is frustrate more of the players that are still playing, and that is not a good thing at this point.
Don't misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that adding a few Dil and xp rewards is a bad thing. That was actually a smart thing. But, nerfing the xp that we were able to get from Argala was just bad form. It was still giving out less xp than what it should have before, and now is giving out even less. Then time gating the patrols, while you don't do that to the BZ. Followed by the nerf to longer mission rewards, while buffing the quicker ones.
Too many bad calls can actually make one small good one look bad. Look at DR. The art was amazing. But that often gets overshadowed by the horrible direction that ones in charge took. Too many bad decisions that were made have caused DR to leave a very bad taste in a large amount of players. And that is still going on.
Please, please, stop making bad decisions, and try to see what this game really needs, and work on that. It will be much better time invested, and you will start seeing more rewards coming back to you. That is how a business works.
What he said.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Hi,
first of all thank you for adjusting rewards throughout the game. Nevertheless any reasoning towards any form of balance between them still seems to escape me. Perhaps you could clear up a few questions.
- You settle a single patrol to 480 Dil while having the same number for a queued event in normal mode. The time/effort ratio on some of them is massively different though. Why?
- You enhanced the means to earn skill point through queued events threefold. Unfortunately in reality this seems to be increase which settles a reward at some ~3k SP even for an elite match. Considering the obstacles to rerun highly rewarding patrol missions in normal mode due to timers now how is this considered an improvement to rewards?
- My gaming time varies so I have a picture on different timeframes of the day. In my impression general queue participation still seems as low as ever throughout the day. Do you think this could be in any way reward/effort related?
Thank you in advance.
- Connor
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Why on earth would we be happy with a method that reduces overall XP and renders attempting to level even worse than continually re-running Argala...
I really don't get your metrics for balance as they aren't based on logic, just based on someone looking at numbers in a spreadsheet with no context.
"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."
riiiiight. causes loss of fun. sure. because everyone in here hasn't spent I don't know....MONTHS complaining about grinding Argala. now you have to play different things.
I was enjoying trying out some of the patrols in other sectors I've never done. But if all patrols are going to reward the same no matter what, then I'll just wait until someone makes a list of the shortest ones and just run those over and over again.
Argala 2.0, here we come!