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Do you think that cooldowns on patrol encounters should be scrapped?
stuart1965
Member Posts: 691 Arc User
As a means to relieve the boredom of PvE dead queues, I think patrol encounter cooldowns should be scrapped.
No its not a reporting bug. The PvE queues are usually dead,and its like watching paint dry waiting to get on.
No its not a reporting bug. The PvE queues are usually dead,and its like watching paint dry waiting to get on.
Do you think that cooldowns on patrol encounters should be scrapped? 81 votes
Yes
50%
41 votes
No
40%
33 votes
Not sure
8%
7 votes
0
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Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
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#TASforSTO
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What the man there said.
Yeah. This is generally my preference.
I'd look at the same thing with queued content. Instead of lockouts, maybe you get fleet marks in place of rep marks during the cooldown. Maybe add some unique cosmetic goodies to each queue that drop from the R&D bundle at the end as well. Limit rewards but don't limit playing. The net effect of limiting playing is that you get worse players in a queue.
Actually, I would have a lockout like we have now for quitting a team. Reduced or no lockout for failing. (You don't really need one because failing takes longer and a reward reduction for subsequent attempts covers that.) Reduced or no rep rewards for playing a queue during "the cooldown"/reduced dilithium but still get a chance at a bag of cosmetic goodies. The net result would be an increase in the quality of the average PUG because the best and most team friendly players could keep hitting the queue. They wouldn't be getting hard rewards, though.
They shouldn't be telling us when we can play!
It should be a Subscriber Perk to bypass all the CDs.
After the back to back grinding in Argala and Japori i understand why the various patrols have a cool down, but i think 30 minutes is too much. 15 minutes should be fine.
Mission replays should not have a cool down. Not with the current rewards.
It's also a bit annoying if you want to equip your ship with mission rewards you have to wait 30 minutes between each run.
I understand why the cooldown timers exist. Without them, people could just grind the easiest/quickest/most lucrative patrol over and over again instead of branching out a bit. Releasing cooldown timers for STFs would be the same thing as removing the whole lot of them except for infected space, because that's all anyone would do. Some do Khitomer, but I suspect that's filler while they wait for Infected to become available again. That's stupid.
This may not be popular opinion, however I do think it'd be best for the game to see the following happen:
1) Spend some development time ironing out the various STFs and patrols. Make the easy/lucrative ones less so, and the undesirable ones more appealing. Assess which STFs aren't first-timer-friendly and fix that. Trim down the overly-long ones until they're all about equal in terms of time required + effort required + rewards given.
2) Increase the STF and patrol cooldown timers by a lot. Something like 24 hours would actually be ideal. Yes, that's right--increase the cooldown timers so that people would only be able to pick their favorite once per day instead of all the time while disregarding everything else.
3) Add a random queue option for STFs and a random patrol option for patrols. When either STFs or patrols are accessed via random queues, no cooldown timer is applied, any existing cooldown timer is disregarded, and the rewards are supplemented with a choice-of-marks bonus with the possibility of a purple gear token (neural processor, voth implant, icoian datacore, etc) of choice as well.
This way, everyone could run their favorite once, then queue randomly if they want to STF or patrol grind. This is a far better outcome than what we have now--infected space, khitomer, and a bunch of empty queues all around them. And patrols? Yeah, I think right now everyone just does the same damned few over and over.
The back to back grinding in Argala and Japori wasnt anything new. The only reason that they came down on it was that people preferred Japori and Argala over other patrols and it didnt line up with the way Cryptic had envisioned us grinding. They wanted us feeling as if we were dragging our feet with everything and would turn to the CStore and Lockboxes for relief. And when that didnt happen they came down on us with the hammer. That was Cryptics fault for not forseeing players taking this route or that there was an issue with the way the content was scaling and providing rewards when they tested the expansion. And it was a heavy handed response to a behavior that has been exhibited by players since the beginning of MMOs.
All Cryptic accomplished with this was the exodus of players post DR. They may have been financially successful upfront. But if the Andromeda Giveway is an indication. Everyone that proclaimed Cryptic would be sacrificing long term sales and playerbase numbers for upfront sales and playerbase numbers were right.
2) Increase the STF and patrol cooldown timers by a lot. Something like 24 hours would actually be ideal. Yes, that's right--increase the cooldown timers so that people would only be able to pick their favorite once per day instead of all the time while disregarding everything else.
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Only be able to run stfs' like infected space/khitomer/crystal entity once per day. Bad, bad, bad idea. That would absolutely kill the game and time gate earning particular marks for rep gear even further. Plus there are some missions that some players myself included just do not like to run. So locking us out of a mission for 24hrs is as good as saying to me don't bother logging in and playing.
And no, the random STF idea I proposed would, if anything, lift the time gates since you'd be able to queue for random STF after random STF with no wait at all. The only "drawback" is that you'd have to experience more of the game instead of playing the same old infected/khitomer/crystalline milk runs day after day, year after year.
As a player lock me out of content, lose my participation in the game. All content is there to be played, however it is and should always be the players choice what content they wish to run.
If as a Developer you are unhappy because the new mission is not being played maybe you need to look at why. Is it the content itself ?, the difficulty ? or is the reward vs time played not appealing to the player, rather than taking offence to the fact it's not being used and blocking out existing queues on the hope of shoehorning people into it.
You're idea would kill the game, people would log in, do daily, log out and come back tomorrow.
I do agree with having MORE patrols so that cooldowns don't even matter.
Maybe a daily spec point/tech for completing 3-5 randoms. Yeah, I realize that risks devaluing spec points.
I should note that featured STFs (currently, that includes CC and the Iconian stuff) should have the queue times they have now. They're current content after all, so allowing people to run them often should be encouraged.
So... I don't know. I'd probably be more interested in doing a few at a time if I didn't have to wait on a cooldown, but I don't really care about progression anymore (sorry, I find post-DR progression incredibly boring, and... whatever, side topic). We can just cycle the few queues that actually have participation if we need dilithium, and maybe do the FE once a week for the one Spec Point per account... otherwise, meh. Since I have the queues and the free Transwarp to the FE, I've pretty much got covered what I feel like bothering with anyway.
I certainly wouldn't be troubled by the removal of patrol cooldowns, but I'd rather they just un-nerfed the progression as a whole (TRIBBLE it, it may be a side topic but it is relevant), including episode replay penalties and doffing nerfs-that-supposedly-weren't.
So, STO is entertainment. Players should be able to do what they have fun with and not be lead around to do what someone else wants them to do.
This is going to come across as harsh, but if you're a developer and people would rather play "the same, tired, washed-out one ad nauseum", maybe that says something about the content you're creating...
Edit:
I would also say that as a developer - if you have content people want to play, you should let them play it. Locking them out of it just drives them away.
Also, if a developer noticed that some players preferred doing certain things a lot and other things less so, it might be a smart thing to make more of the stuff that people like and less of the stuff they don't. Assuming of course the developer wants them to stick around and pay.
The last year has really worn on me and my time in STO has dropped dramatically. Much of the content I enjoyed has been removed or time gated to death, replaced with more and more daily missions (like Crystalline), more DOFF-alikes (dump R&D in there, and the new send your extra ships on missions stuff) and missions that take forever no matter how well you do at them (timed missions a la Gates of Gre'thor).
I do these not because I enjoy them, but because I'll miss out on something if I don't. Contrast that with something like the old ISE / current ISA, the old Mirror Universe (when events changed hourly each day, not the Vauthil station TRIBBLE), and even things like Japori or Argala. I played those because they were fun and I got something I wanted. Not something I felt compelled to do or I'd miss out.
I've played for 5 years and pumped literal thousands of dollars into STO. That's gone to 0 recently and I know I'm not alone in this. I'm basically just hanging on from nostalgia. Removing timers on patrols and the Borg events would go along way to opening up some content a lot of people enjoy.
It says something about the time:reward ratio of the content.
Do a complete cycle of a ground battlezone and you won't see your xp bar budge at all.
Do one five minute patrol and you'll get a third of a bubble.
While that's true, battlezones are mind numblingly boring. The time:reward ratio on them would have to be inordinately high for me to even consider stepping foot in one again.
wile i find it annoying and hate it i do see how it is necessary with the way the game is currently set up
Frankly, they need to adjust the leveling grind. I've figured out how to get a spec point about every 3 days, but it requires me to have my ship parked somewhere I don't want to be parked all day.
I suspect people cling to Infected Space not because they like it (contrary to what you are suggesting) but because:
1) It's familiar and they know it. One problem with STFs having all these special objectives is that people feel pressured to learn them, which they may not want to do because they already know exactly what to do in Infected Space. Many people don't like stepping outside their comfort zones.
2) It's easy. I haven't been to it in years because I've been done with borg rep for a long time now, but I don't recall it being all that difficult even before we had all these advanced gear options. Blow up borg, blow up gate, blow up tac cube, win game. Pretty hard to TRIBBLE up compared to say, Brotherhood of the Sword, where the frustration is indescribable when you're the only one who tries to shut down the devices.
Ask yourself: Do they want to play it because they genuinely like it, or because of what I mentioned previously--low risk high reward?
One thing about running a game like this is, no matter what you do, there's always going to be people who complain about it. This is when you have to weigh in on what's more important:
a) Keeping the I-only-do-Infected-Space crowd happy, but the PvE queues in an unhealthy, absymally-empty state except for Infected Space...
-or-
b) Upsetting a few people (only at first in most cases) by forcing them outside their comfort zones into other STFs--STFs that you have recently revamped to be on par with Infected Space in terms of difficulty, time required, and rewards dispensed.
I mean seriously, killing the exact same borg in the exact same manner day after day, year after year? How can people not be sick of that by now?
This I'll agree with, and that's why I think the devs should review the existing STFs, make them all relatively equal in terms of time/risk/effort/reward, then introduce randomized queues.
I won't disagree here, either. I also play World of W*rcraft, and in this most recent expansion, they introduced a follower system and shipyard system which are very much our duty officer system. People's biggest complaints involve how these menu micromanagement systems replace actual gameplay with, well, menu management.
I fully agree with those complaints, and thankfully, Bl*zzard is probably going to be moving away from this kind of gameplay in the next expansion. I wish Cryptic would learn from Bl*zzard's mistakes (the shipyard in particular was quite poorly-received by players) and scrap the admiralty system before it even rolls out.
The last thing I want to do in this game is manage even more menus. Seriously, I just want to experience Star Trek story content, and of course blow stuff up both in space and on the ground.
The daily trap is bad game design in terms of fun factor, but great in terms of keeping people in the hamster wheel. Unfortunately, pseudo-mandatory dailies exist in nearly every MMO because they need their players to keep coming back every day.
Personally, I'd prefer the pseudo-mandatory stuff was weekly-capped instead of daily-capped so that I could get the 'chores" out of the way, then play how I actually wanted, be it the Voth battlezone, random STF queues, foundry missions, or just goofing off on ESD or wherever.
If they removed the timers on patrols and STFs, they might as well just delete every STF that wasn't Infected Space and every patrol that wasn't Argala (am I thinking of the right one? Thanks to the ongoing lag, I can't get into the game right now to verify)
Logic fail. Even if they do farm dil left and right, they're still capped at 8000 per day + 500 from fleet dil mine + 1000 every two days from subscription. The only way to override that hard cap is to farm on multiple toons.
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You're definitely wrong there. There's a lot of people, myself included, who enjoy running ISA. I have literally hundreds of thousands of Omega Marks that I will never spend, even to convert to dil. I'm not alone in this either, I have a bunch of friends who enjoy running it as well. It's fun. Maybe not everyone enjoys it, but it's a good time.
So here's the thing. As I said, this is entertainment, it's an optional thing people choose to do because it's fun. Precisely because of that you're not going to FORCE anyone to do anything, other than perhaps uninstall the game and never look back. You have to attract people. STO's been hemorraging people because Perfect World doesn't seem to get this. Make a game work, make it unfun and eventually people will walk away.
As I said, it's fun. People tweak builds, try different things. It's a constant and lots of people enjoy doing it over and over again.
That would literally end the game for me. If I can't play the STFs I want to play, I'm out. Some of them are literally the most boring thing ever. They're not fun. It's not just time/risk/reward. I couldn't care less about getting a single thing out of ISA at this point. I don't need dil, i don't need equipment, i don't experience, I just want to have fun. And again, I'm not alone.
Argala's a good one, but there are others that are fun. Any of the "blow up some ships" missions in Tau Dewa were well liked. Just like the old Mirror Invasion - people just like blowing ships up.
But yes, they could remove the majority of STFs and they wouldn't be missed. A lot of them are snooze fests and just not fun to play. Here's a complete list of the ones I personally enjoy:
Infected: The Conduit (ISA)
Khitomer Vortex (KSA)
Azure Nebula Rescue
Federation Fleet Alert
Starbase Fleet Defense
You'll probably notice a theme with them. They're space. They're action packed. They're simple - blow stuff up. They're not timer locked in that you progress the waves by beating them. (Azure is technically on a timer, but it's a race for points and the max waves you can face is fixed).
And the oddball - the only ground mission - Mine Trap
Ones I use to enjoy but are now removed:
No Win Scenario
Mirror Universe Invasion
Elachi Alert
Trying to force people to play ones they don't want to play isn't going to work. Either Cryptic will make content people want to play or they'll move on. It's that simple.
I won't argue with that. I do enjoy patrols and ground battlezones where your primary goal is to just kill anything that moves, and I do wish more STFs were pretty much just slaughterfests. In World of W*rcraft, the unpopular 5-man dungeons are typically the ones that try to do more than present players with bad guys to massacre.
I agree, and that kind of theme is what I'd like to see applied to all the other STFs. Wouldn't it be nice to see the aspects you enjoy about the queued content you listed in all queued content? Cryptic's devs seem to like making STFs with weird quirky objectives and forced wave timers when I feel safe in saying that most people just want to kill bad guys and bosses at their own pace.
Give me a dungeon, pack it full of bad guys and bosses, then let me kill my way through it. That's not asking much, I don't think.
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