I dunno, I think tossing all the mechanics that Delta Rising brought (ie nerfed xp, stupid enemy health levels, mandatory optionals -lol) would fix all the problems right there.
But go ahead, just tweak the stuff. After getting beaten to death by the baseball bat for this many months, the golf club doesn't look half as bad. :rolleyes:
Thank you for working to start fixing these queues.
I do have one question though. Does this mean that all queues will start getting Elite options so that the Advance no longer need to be adjusted for Elite players, like the STFs have been?
If so, then this is a major change in the right direction for fixing some of the very many problems that came with DR.
I do look forward to see how this works, and if there are any other good changes that will be coming.
Only the Azure Nebula Rescue Advanced mission will be changed at this time. In the future if the changes have the desired effect the other pve advanced missions may be modified. as for 'beatable', it may not be even after the changes are applied. However, they will not auto-fail any longer, robbing you of your reward. At least, if I'm reading the post correctly.
I agree with you 100% and have made a lot of posts asking for just this
I guess we need to post more and more about making a qualifying STF that mimics the desired STF to enter that every player has to complete solo before they can join the Q
Its a fact normals do not prepare the player for advanced and advanced's don't prepare players for elites
wonderful ! it's the best idea i've read since a long time, pal !
when it's hard for you to use vocal, and hard to participate actively in a fleet, it's really hard to get an idea of what you must expect in the next difficulty mode..
i don't know how it may work, but i totally subscribe to this, great !!!
I dunno, I think tossing all the mechanics that Delta Rising brought (ie nerfed xp, stupid enemy health levels, mandatory optionals -lol) would fix all the problems right there.
But go ahead, just tweak the stuff. After getting beaten to death by the baseball bat for this many months, the golf club doesn't look half as bad. :rolleyes:
No doubt! We're all very happy they're going to stop beating us with a stick and now only kick us until we cry...:) Good post! Made me laugh...:)
Nothing was said of DROPs being increased in this whole new Azure Nebula post ?
We earn Ec's from drops as well as having to be made to craft stuff for sale on exchange to earn Ec's !
We need more drops in this game drops are so low in all the past 5 years have I seen where I kill like 20 to 30 opponents before getting 1 drop or 2 just to random roll for them just to get maybe 1 or less drops at the end rewards your talking about being increased . Increase Drops please don't new ignorant and don't fix drops its a win win situation if you guys can actually add more drops in game ??
Nothing was said of DROPs being increased in this whole new Azure Nebula post ?
We earn Ec's from drops as well as having to be made to craft stuff for sale on exchange to earn Ec's !
We need more drops in this game drops are so low in all the past 5 years have I seen where I kill like 20 to 30 opponents before getting 1 drop or 2 just to random roll for them just to get maybe 1 or less drops at the end rewards your talking about being increased . Increase Drops please don't new ignorant and don't fix drops its a win win situation if you guys can actually add more drops in game ??
I miss the days when doing missions/patrols/etc earned EC. It was a stupid move to take that out.
This casual vet might just start playing some Advanced queues. I've always liked Azure Nebula.
Has this already been seen/tested on Tribble?
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
im with you bluegeek.. not played anything other than the odd Fleet Alert for ages.. the queu times were kinda crazy and the fail rate on pugs was somewhat unfortunate.. hopefully this will help remedy the problems.. nice to see.
thanks Cryptic, for this first REAL GOOD MOVE since a long time here !
have you seen how much players have posted positive reactions ? i hadn't seen that since so long...
may your tries and efforts be recognized like great ones and succeed in giving us back the fun we had +- one year ago !
you can see that you have rather reasonnable community, when you're proposing positive changes to them, don't you ?
good reaction and idea : it seems that most of the STO players will try to help you in realizing these changes in the good way and proportions.
thanks for this project, and your thoughts for improving my good old friend STO, it really needed it ^^
in this wait, thanks.
PS just one little more effort for improving the server's stability, connections and availabilty, and it will be soon a pleasure again to play sto ! ^^
Only the Azure Nebula Rescue Advanced mission will be changed at this time. In the future if the changes have the desired effect the other pve advanced missions may be modified. as for 'beatable', it may not be even after the changes are applied. However, they will not auto-fail any longer, robbing you of your reward. At least, if I'm reading the post correctly.
I am aware that it is only for ANR at this time. However, I would still like to know if we are getting Elite difficulty for other queues that only have Normal and Advance.
Not having Elite difficulty has resulted in more nerfs to players, and more buffs to the NPCs in the tug-a-war power struggle that they have with Elite level DPS players.
Personally, I don't run much rep gear at all on my main because I am not a min/max player, and don't chase power creep or DPS. For that reason, I don't need to run anything but the normal queues to get enough marks (with the bonus marks each day) to run the rep xp projects.
I don't need any of the rep gear on my builds, so the BNPs, CNI, and other special currencies for the rep gear is of no interest to me.
I do like to run Advance and Elite queues with friends that want something to do when we are online, and there is no grind event going. But, most of my friends can only handle Advance queues at most.
If they add Elite queues, then they can drop those Advance queues back down to Advance level players, and it will also help.
I am looking forward to testing this new change on the ANR, but am still hopeful that they realize that the optionals are only part of the problem. It does sound like they have finally realized that, but only time will tell.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Sounds like a good middle-of-the-road approach to start out with. Keeps the fails, but significantly adjusts the triggers for the fails. Awesome to see this worked on.
I'm still fairly new to all of this PVE's but I play with a friend that is an old pro at advanced and Elite PVE's.
The biggest problem that I see is that there are no instructions for newer people like myself that explain the steps in which to complete any PVE's.
So, if you don't have someone that can teach you, many players go in not knowing the process to complete that certain PVE and fail it, ALL THE TIME. It has gotten so annoying that we don't even play them anymore.
And good luck even trying to earn Ancient power cells or other kinds of special loot that would allow you do acquire cool stuff from Omega or other tier 5 rep. It takes so long...not being able to complete and win a PVE that it's not worth the aggravation of even playing the PVE
Then, even "IF" they could be won...10 marks, 5 marks etc. for a set of gear that requires 3000 marks and 20 Borg processors for Omega, ain't gonna happen in my life time.
How about you work on that PWE/STO or whomever you are that runs this game.
We have more fun patrolling and beating the **** out of AI and you don't need Omega stuff for that.
Would I like to have the awesome sets from Omega and other tier 5 rep, sure would. But not with the long time it takes and the aggravation it comes with tying to get it. I'll do without it until PWE or STO or whomever runs this game makes it worth while.
And to PWE and/or STO staff: I may not be a subscriber, however, if you look up my account you will see that I have spent more on this "free" game since Jan. than anyone else, I am sure of that and I'd be willing to bet on it.
Why do I tell you this? So that you know I'm not just a free loader complaining, I'm a serious Sto gamer that spends real money that pays you your profit regularly and it really sucks that I may never be able to get the stuff from Omega that I'd like because of the jacked up PVE's.
I Hated these Optional "Epic" Fails when they came out. I Stopped doing a PvE's almost out right. It like saying
" Meh Team Messed up, Why even Keep Trying any more? I Quit. I'm going to Club 47 & Drown my sorrows in Romi
Ale."
I've always played to the bitter end, giving it my all. Working to snatch Victory from the Jaws of Defeat or Die trying (repeatedly)
On another note: Why are Borg STF's Cool downs an hour? Be Great if they matched all other Cool downs of 30 minutes! :cool:
So, if you don't have someone that can teach you, many players go in not knowing the process to complete that certain PVE and fail it, ALL THE TIME. It has gotten so annoying that we don't even play them anymore.
If this game had no wiki...
If this game had no forums...
If there were not forums for this game on other sites...
If fleets did not have public facing information...
If folks never posted anything to YouTube...
...and the list goes on and on.
Then there might be a case of not having somebody that can teach you.
People not looking does not mean it's not there.
Parents play peek-a-boo with their babies at an extremely early age to help them learn about object permanence and that just because they don't see something - that does not mean it is not there...sometimes they have to look for it.
Kind of like this will serve as my last post on the forums, because I simply no longer wish to be involved with this game...but I'll still be out there.
If this game had no wiki...
If this game had no forums...
If there were not forums for this game on other sites...
If fleets did not have public facing information...
If folks never posted anything to YouTube...
...and the list goes on and on.
Then there might be a case of not having somebody that can teach you.
People not looking does not mean it's not there.
Parents play peek-a-boo with their babies at an extremely early age to help them learn about object permanence and that just because they don't see something - that does not mean it is not there...sometimes they have to look for it.
Kind of like this will serve as my last post on the forums, because I simply no longer wish to be involved with this game...but I'll still be out there.
Have fun, all...
Aw TRIBBLE. You was one of the reasons why the forums was a good place. Hate to see ya go mate.
Whoa hold up. Releasing a single mission as a test bed and then waiting for player feedback before making tweaks and then ultimately rolling out the changes on a wider scale? Who are you people and what have you done with Cryptic?
Jokes aside, this is a very good thing. You should do more things like this.
Yes. Actually soliciting and using player feedback before rolling out wholesale changes? Whoever these impostors are, I don't care. As long as useful changes are made and player feedback is actually taken into account, the impostors can stay. Let the real Cryptic crew stay kidnapped.
the main thing that was the problem was the fail with the optionals, i mean whoever thought that up must of been heavily drunk and smoking drugs or had a rock in their head the size of a pea.
it was the only problem. since thenm i have not set foot in an advanced stf since the changes were made. so if the devs have finally got the message that the optionals will no longer fail the whole mission, but rather just fail the optional as it should, then i may come back into it.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Kind of like this will serve as my last post on the forums, because I simply no longer wish to be involved with this game...but I'll still be out there.
Have fun, all...
I can't say i have a high opinion of the average player skills, but the fail optionals were simply a step too far..
You can read all the wiki articles, browse the forum day and night and watch every youtube there is, but in the end you have to try the advanced queues.
The gap between normal and advanced is so large it is ridiculous. Because of that gap the normals cannot be considered a learnign tool for advanced. Additional the fail optionals effectively killed any real possibility to learn in advanced.
I prefer the carrot and stick approach (reward if you do something right) instead of the punishment tactic ( fail and wait 30 minutes if someone in the team messed up).
If you cannot see the benefits of making the optionals optional again then perhaps a place of social interaction (forum) is not suited for your needs.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Well this looks like the most promising news about difficulty changes since DR launched. I'm actually looking forward to seeing how this pans out. My only hope is that the 'normalisation' of rewards doesn't mean we're going to see a big nerf to the amount of marks we can earn by running advanced queues.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
While I like that there is a test and feed back session going on with these changes, I have to question some of them. Under the new optional rules you have to have so many point I think it said tem in five minutes. Is this queue going to guarantee us that many points to accomplish this task. Right now I have seen where it is almost impossible to get that many points in that among of time.
I don't like this change to some queues because the advance queues are not really that hard. I do think some queues are easier and some are harder on the same setting and would love to see this normalized. Just to give an example is I placed second place in a crystalline cataclysm normal with no bridge officers. I have a problem dumbing down queues for mediocre players. If they can't handle the queue maybe they don't need to play them.
These sound like good changes to me, and I think the Dev team is on the right track here.
The current fail conditions, with the lockout timer for all difficulty levels, acted as a discouragement to even try harder Advanced queues. Under the proposed changes to Azure Nebula Rescue, players can try a harder queue, and start to learn how the optional really work, and what needs to be done to meet them, and while they are learning, they are still getting rewards, so their time isn't totally wasted.
With Advanced queues, like Elite Queues, also dropping the rare crafting materials, this certainly has the opportunity to open it up to more players, while allowing Cryptic to keep Elite as truly Elite content.
Very, very welcome news indeed. Things in this post I like:
Optionals being optional again.
Testing before mass launch.
The post itself: yay for communication!
As for the rewards, I like the idea but it's less of a concern for me. I just want to be sure I've got a reasonable chance of a PUG victory and have fun doing that.
I'll definately check out Azure Nebula, it's one of my favorite queues so I'm happy it's the first one on the list. I am looking forward to having fun with the Advanceds again.
I would like to see things like VCI, BNP, APC and Injectors all scaled at 1 for norm 2 for advance and 3 for elite that would set it so that people who are not ready for the more challenging runs have options.
Does this mean no more hard cap on the amount of marks we can earn in this mission?
Azure Nebula Rescue launched with season 7 and at first the max amount of marks we could earn was 18 then later it was bumped up to 24. No matter how many ships we freed or how high our score was, we got 24 marks, period. This mission has a 15 minute timer and the mark reward always felt too low for the amount of time we had to spend in it. (Keep in mind this is for normal mode. Harder difficulties weren't introduced until a few months ago.)
We have been asking you to increase the mark rewards for this mission for over 2 years. Better late then never I suppose.
I always loved this mission but it always came down to pure luck. Sometimes we wound up getting nothing but ships that awarded 1 point each from almost all asteroids and when that happened we couldn't even get the max of 24 marks, usually about 18.
It's nice to see you guys are trying a new approach finally. If this all works out, maybe the PvE queues won't be so dead for most missions.
I do have a suggestion that's a bit unrelated: any chance you could give us a daily bonus fleet mark reward for qualifying content like we have for all reputation marks?
If you want people to fill the queue's not only do you need to look at changing the things mentioned but also make the rewards worth the time. the main reason why a lot of use do not Pug or even fly them with our fleet is because we don't need marks or mark X or even Mark XII items We Need mark XIII and IVX items for our ships why have the headache of pugging when no matter what I get is just going to have to go thru the upgrade process I would fly elites a hell of a lot more if the gear that was dropping was in the range of mark XII white to IVX purple it
I agree that some things need to be changed between normal and advanced and elite but at the same time cryptic needs to draw a line in the sand and stop catering to the people out there that are a bunch of whiners and refuse to look up the information to complete the STF's when they can not figure it out on there own. There are tons of resources and also fleets out there that help and have or can tell people where to go to learn what is need to complete the STF's If they are willing to learn
Comments
But go ahead, just tweak the stuff. After getting beaten to death by the baseball bat for this many months, the golf club doesn't look half as bad. :rolleyes:
Only the Azure Nebula Rescue Advanced mission will be changed at this time. In the future if the changes have the desired effect the other pve advanced missions may be modified. as for 'beatable', it may not be even after the changes are applied. However, they will not auto-fail any longer, robbing you of your reward. At least, if I'm reading the post correctly.
wonderful ! it's the best idea i've read since a long time, pal !
when it's hard for you to use vocal, and hard to participate actively in a fleet, it's really hard to get an idea of what you must expect in the next difficulty mode..
i don't know how it may work, but i totally subscribe to this, great !!!
No doubt! We're all very happy they're going to stop beating us with a stick and now only kick us until we cry...:) Good post! Made me laugh...:)
Nothing was said of DROPs being increased in this whole new Azure Nebula post ?
We earn Ec's from drops as well as having to be made to craft stuff for sale on exchange to earn Ec's !
We need more drops in this game drops are so low in all the past 5 years have I seen where I kill like 20 to 30 opponents before getting 1 drop or 2 just to random roll for them just to get maybe 1 or less drops at the end rewards your talking about being increased . Increase Drops please don't new ignorant and don't fix drops its a win win situation if you guys can actually add more drops in game ??
I miss the days when doing missions/patrols/etc earned EC. It was a stupid move to take that out.
Has this already been seen/tested on Tribble?
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Message me in-game (@tm706) for help
1st Alpha Quadrant Fleet
have you seen how much players have posted positive reactions ? i hadn't seen that since so long...
may your tries and efforts be recognized like great ones and succeed in giving us back the fun we had +- one year ago !
you can see that you have rather reasonnable community, when you're proposing positive changes to them, don't you ?
good reaction and idea : it seems that most of the STO players will try to help you in realizing these changes in the good way and proportions.
thanks for this project, and your thoughts for improving my good old friend STO, it really needed it ^^
in this wait, thanks.
PS just one little more effort for improving the server's stability, connections and availabilty, and it will be soon a pleasure again to play sto ! ^^
I am aware that it is only for ANR at this time. However, I would still like to know if we are getting Elite difficulty for other queues that only have Normal and Advance.
Not having Elite difficulty has resulted in more nerfs to players, and more buffs to the NPCs in the tug-a-war power struggle that they have with Elite level DPS players.
Personally, I don't run much rep gear at all on my main because I am not a min/max player, and don't chase power creep or DPS. For that reason, I don't need to run anything but the normal queues to get enough marks (with the bonus marks each day) to run the rep xp projects.
I don't need any of the rep gear on my builds, so the BNPs, CNI, and other special currencies for the rep gear is of no interest to me.
I do like to run Advance and Elite queues with friends that want something to do when we are online, and there is no grind event going. But, most of my friends can only handle Advance queues at most.
If they add Elite queues, then they can drop those Advance queues back down to Advance level players, and it will also help.
I am looking forward to testing this new change on the ANR, but am still hopeful that they realize that the optionals are only part of the problem. It does sound like they have finally realized that, but only time will tell.
What about Borg Neural Processorors, Ancient Power Cells, Isomorphic Injection, and Voth Cybernetic Implants?
Will they still be rewarded for Advanced, regardless of the optional objectives?
Interested to see how it plays
I just hope it's not too late.
The biggest problem that I see is that there are no instructions for newer people like myself that explain the steps in which to complete any PVE's.
So, if you don't have someone that can teach you, many players go in not knowing the process to complete that certain PVE and fail it, ALL THE TIME. It has gotten so annoying that we don't even play them anymore.
And good luck even trying to earn Ancient power cells or other kinds of special loot that would allow you do acquire cool stuff from Omega or other tier 5 rep. It takes so long...not being able to complete and win a PVE that it's not worth the aggravation of even playing the PVE
Then, even "IF" they could be won...10 marks, 5 marks etc. for a set of gear that requires 3000 marks and 20 Borg processors for Omega, ain't gonna happen in my life time.
How about you work on that PWE/STO or whomever you are that runs this game.
We have more fun patrolling and beating the **** out of AI and you don't need Omega stuff for that.
Would I like to have the awesome sets from Omega and other tier 5 rep, sure would. But not with the long time it takes and the aggravation it comes with tying to get it. I'll do without it until PWE or STO or whomever runs this game makes it worth while.
And to PWE and/or STO staff: I may not be a subscriber, however, if you look up my account you will see that I have spent more on this "free" game since Jan. than anyone else, I am sure of that and I'd be willing to bet on it.
Why do I tell you this? So that you know I'm not just a free loader complaining, I'm a serious Sto gamer that spends real money that pays you your profit regularly and it really sucks that I may never be able to get the stuff from Omega that I'd like because of the jacked up PVE's.
" Meh Team Messed up, Why even Keep Trying any more? I Quit. I'm going to Club 47 & Drown my sorrows
Ale."
I've always played to the bitter end, giving it my all. Working to snatch Victory from the Jaws of Defeat or Die trying (repeatedly)
On another note: Why are Borg STF's Cool downs an hour? Be Great if they matched all other Cool downs of 30 minutes! :cool:
If this game had no wiki...
If this game had no forums...
If there were not forums for this game on other sites...
If fleets did not have public facing information...
If folks never posted anything to YouTube...
...and the list goes on and on.
Then there might be a case of not having somebody that can teach you.
People not looking does not mean it's not there.
Parents play peek-a-boo with their babies at an extremely early age to help them learn about object permanence and that just because they don't see something - that does not mean it is not there...sometimes they have to look for it.
Kind of like this will serve as my last post on the forums, because I simply no longer wish to be involved with this game...but I'll still be out there.
Have fun, all...
You know, I think I might just stick around to fight the good fight...
Aw TRIBBLE. You was one of the reasons why the forums was a good place. Hate to see ya go mate.
Yes. Actually soliciting and using player feedback before rolling out wholesale changes? Whoever these impostors are, I don't care. As long as useful changes are made and player feedback is actually taken into account, the impostors can stay. Let the real Cryptic crew stay kidnapped.
it was the only problem. since thenm i have not set foot in an advanced stf since the changes were made. so if the devs have finally got the message that the optionals will no longer fail the whole mission, but rather just fail the optional as it should, then i may come back into it.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I am quite curious how this turns out.
I can't say i have a high opinion of the average player skills, but the fail optionals were simply a step too far..
You can read all the wiki articles, browse the forum day and night and watch every youtube there is, but in the end you have to try the advanced queues.
The gap between normal and advanced is so large it is ridiculous. Because of that gap the normals cannot be considered a learnign tool for advanced. Additional the fail optionals effectively killed any real possibility to learn in advanced.
I prefer the carrot and stick approach (reward if you do something right) instead of the punishment tactic ( fail and wait 30 minutes if someone in the team messed up).
If you cannot see the benefits of making the optionals optional again then perhaps a place of social interaction (forum) is not suited for your needs.
I don't like this change to some queues because the advance queues are not really that hard. I do think some queues are easier and some are harder on the same setting and would love to see this normalized. Just to give an example is I placed second place in a crystalline cataclysm normal with no bridge officers. I have a problem dumbing down queues for mediocre players. If they can't handle the queue maybe they don't need to play them.
The current fail conditions, with the lockout timer for all difficulty levels, acted as a discouragement to even try harder Advanced queues. Under the proposed changes to Azure Nebula Rescue, players can try a harder queue, and start to learn how the optional really work, and what needs to be done to meet them, and while they are learning, they are still getting rewards, so their time isn't totally wasted.
With Advanced queues, like Elite Queues, also dropping the rare crafting materials, this certainly has the opportunity to open it up to more players, while allowing Cryptic to keep Elite as truly Elite content.
As for the rewards, I like the idea but it's less of a concern for me. I just want to be sure I've got a reasonable chance of a PUG victory and have fun doing that.
I'll definately check out Azure Nebula, it's one of my favorite queues so I'm happy it's the first one on the list. I am looking forward to having fun with the Advanceds again.
Vice Admiral Mathrias | U.S.S. Utrecht (Blockade Runner Retrofit)
Vide Admiral Kyurin | U.S.S. Cairhien (Fleet Dreadnought Cruiser)
Vice Admiral Kiarl Leftrin | U.S.S. Aegir (Fleet Recon Science Vessel)
--= Starfleet Strategic Command =--
Azure Nebula Rescue launched with season 7 and at first the max amount of marks we could earn was 18 then later it was bumped up to 24. No matter how many ships we freed or how high our score was, we got 24 marks, period. This mission has a 15 minute timer and the mark reward always felt too low for the amount of time we had to spend in it. (Keep in mind this is for normal mode. Harder difficulties weren't introduced until a few months ago.)
We have been asking you to increase the mark rewards for this mission for over 2 years. Better late then never I suppose.
I always loved this mission but it always came down to pure luck. Sometimes we wound up getting nothing but ships that awarded 1 point each from almost all asteroids and when that happened we couldn't even get the max of 24 marks, usually about 18.
It's nice to see you guys are trying a new approach finally. If this all works out, maybe the PvE queues won't be so dead for most missions.
I do have a suggestion that's a bit unrelated: any chance you could give us a daily bonus fleet mark reward for qualifying content like we have for all reputation marks?
I agree that some things need to be changed between normal and advanced and elite but at the same time cryptic needs to draw a line in the sand and stop catering to the people out there that are a bunch of whiners and refuse to look up the information to complete the STF's when they can not figure it out on there own. There are tons of resources and also fleets out there that help and have or can tell people where to go to learn what is need to complete the STF's If they are willing to learn