As stated in the title, please increase the dilithium rewards for replaying episodes. Why? Here is a simple list of pros and cons:
Pros:
"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".
Since episode replays take
longer, yet reward
less than patrols, the above statement is obviously
not the case.
- My undying love and affection.
Cons:
- Time involved in adjusting the numbers.
- Some people will complain about anything, including this.
So, pretty please?
Comments
I agree with this, just for different reasons, we need more dil on the dil exchange.
via Imgflip Meme Generator
The obvious win/win solution is to give people a choice, not to remove one or the other.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Both XP and dilithium rewards need to be higher.
^This guy knows what's up.
As someone who only grinds dilithium, I'd rather see dilithium rewards slashed by 50% and XP doubled across the board.
Asking for more dilthium is counter productive for the people that would actually be grinding these missions.
If people are playing enough that it's "grinding," their limit on dilithium production is their refinement, not their ore gain.
Not really, because people still only have a limited about of time to play(and grind). Currently, if I want to grind dilithium, I'll do a patrol over an episode replay, because the patrol is much more rewarding. However, if the episode replay rewards at least as much as the patrol, I might do it instead just to have something different to do. But my point is, you can still only do one at a time. So even if they increased the amount of dilithium replays reward, that doesn't give me more time to play each day, so it doesn't increase the amount of dilithium I would have earned in my given playtime.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Replays aren't a good source of dil, not a good source of XP, they don't offer marks for your rep projects, the gear is generally rare or lower and never any better on replays than MkXII, the drop rates aren't any better than anywhere else... so it's kind of a massive deterrent, as when you replay episodes you don't feel like you're accomplishing anything.
I'd like to go back and replay episodes, to get to go through the story and whatnot again but I can't without feeling like my time is being "wasted" because there's no carrot like is attached to the queues or patrols so I feel almost "forced" to play that content, even though I'd rather play episodes sometimes... and that leads to feeling negatively about what I'm playing, to feeling negatively about the game, and feeling like I'm "grinding" and not playing.
Worse, Cryptic (waaay back in the Dstahl days) has said previously that "Featured Series" are basically done with because the episodes don't see the same kind of replay as, say, a queue. Since it takes more time to make an episode, and people don't play them as much they see it as a loss, they view it through that good old (incredibly myopic) metrics-based "ROI" window they insist on using to make all of their decisions. Which is ludicrous... give us no adequate rewards for playing something and it's tough to expect us to play it anyway, and beyond questionable to then use that response as a justification for curbing developing time in response.
And I can't help but think they know this since we've seen adjusted rewards for various parts of the game before, both up and down in an attempt to incentivize or deter people from playing specific content more or less. They know what we're playing and they know we want decent rewards. Which has me thinking the entire reason that replays have such abysmal rewards is because they don't want us playing them. They don't want those rewards to be equal since they don't want those metrics to improve because if they do that means they'll have a black and white objective reason to create more story content which... well, it's takes more effort than banging out a brain dead "patrol" where you get an opening text bubble then blow up one wave of ships, then another, then another, then another, then another, then you get a closing text bubble, collect your reward and move onto the next patrol where you get a slightly different opening text bubble, then blow up one wave of ships, then another, then another, then...
To be frank, I just think Cryptic is a lazy developer. The different factions get nearly exact ports of ships. We get "retrofits" and "refits" and "T6 refits" and "fleet ships" and "Tier 6 fleet ships" where they try and sell us slightly better versions of the same ship over and over instead of developing new ones or even just allowing us to upgrade old ones at no cost or for in-game currency. We have factionless content with barely (or not at all) altered dialogue (you'd be amazed how many people think Romulan Republic officers are members of their "ally" faction and not simply working with them... and how do they even know which faction you've signed on with?). It's all just... very lazy.
As such, yeah... I think the rewards need to be better, but I think them being garbage is WAI so I don't expect it to change.
Let's not forget dil weekend was the same week and that played a part in the failure to reach the third tier that week as almost no players were doing episode replays for 3 or more days.
I generally agree with you, i think you got some good points.
But i don't agree with your theory that they don't want us to play Episodes in a long term. They wouldn't put such a high efford in creating them. I think they don't see episodes as content that you are supposed to do over and over. That's what dailies are for.
My suggestion is to make shorter versions of existing Episodes and make them into dailies. Similar like the Deferi dailies and Breen storyline. They could make that for every episode arc (klingon war, romulan arc and so on).
This would generate variety and long term motivation, since you wouldn't have to do the same stuff over and over again.
First, I think that would be very cool. Unfortunately, it would also require a lot more work than simply increasing the replay reward figures. So again, while I would love if they actually did what you suggest, I think it is far less likely than a simple numerical increase.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
This. (Though, I mean, both would also be nice...)
OK, "pretty please" hasn't worked, so I'm prepared to take this to the next level:
Pretty pretty please?
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Currently any given episode mission can take upwards of 20-30 minutes (depending on if you read the dialogues or not), compared to the 5-10 minutes of a patrol.
Also, replaying an episode has the same half hour cooldown like patrols do.
All this, and episodes give only 40% of the dil payout of a given patrol...
That and the experience isn't really worth the time investment either, same reasons listed above.
Personally I'd rather play an episode or two for my daily dilithium, but the payouts aren't worth it, so I end up doing patrols and FAWing my way to those purple crystals.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I'm probably going to annoy some people, but one of the dumbest ideas Cryptic had was to not put story content in the C-store. They have little financial incentive to create new story missions and increasing the dilithium reward would probably reduce it even more.
Think so as well.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Selling power creep, especially with the decreasing options presented by canonical source material, will only grow increasingly difficult. Additionally, there is no shortage of ships, consoles, etc, already in the game.
There is, however, a shortage of content.
I say all this knowing it would likely exclude me from some content, but for those who are willing to at least pay something into the game, it would be highly beneficial.
I agree that playing on a higher difficulty should reward more dilithium than standard difficulty. However, that is true of all content, not episode missions specifically, which are what I am talking about.
To reiterate my point: they told us(see OP for quote) that similar time investment should reward similar rates of rewards, *regardless* of the type of content you play. That means that if you spend 10 minutes playing an episode you should get *about* the same reward as if you spend 10 minutes playing a patrol. However, that is nowhere near the case. In fact, you get less reward for playing an episode, even though it takes *longer* than playing a patrol. That is the opposite of what they told us.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008