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Season 12: Number crunching time?
bioixi
Member Posts: 764 Arc User
As you might already know, some queues, some duty officers assignments, reputations, missions, etc, are outdated, rewards or reputation requirements are not up to current standard.
For example, borg reputation asks you for 1000 marks for a piece of equipment instead of 750, some reputations lack of elite marks, some duty officer assignments ask you for a lot of officers, time and extra resources and reward very little, most queues are empty because rewards are not up to date, you can easily finish crystalline catastrophe under 5 minutes and earn 40-50 marks (not counting the bonus) meanwhile other more long and complex queues reward less marks.
The breach, for example, is a great queue, it's fun and very well designed, but the rewards are awful.
Some queues still ask for 20 people, they can be done with 5 (hell, most of those queues are so outdated they can be done solo).
So, do you think season 12 would be a good time to bring old queues, reputations, missions, assignments, etc up to date with today's standards?
For example, borg reputation asks you for 1000 marks for a piece of equipment instead of 750, some reputations lack of elite marks, some duty officer assignments ask you for a lot of officers, time and extra resources and reward very little, most queues are empty because rewards are not up to date, you can easily finish crystalline catastrophe under 5 minutes and earn 40-50 marks (not counting the bonus) meanwhile other more long and complex queues reward less marks.
The breach, for example, is a great queue, it's fun and very well designed, but the rewards are awful.
Some queues still ask for 20 people, they can be done with 5 (hell, most of those queues are so outdated they can be done solo).
So, do you think season 12 would be a good time to bring old queues, reputations, missions, assignments, etc up to date with today's standards?
Season 12: Number crunching time? 90 votes
Yes, time to fix the numbers.
64%
58 votes
No, numbers are ok right now.
3%
3 votes
I Don't Care.
20%
18 votes
Other - Specify.
12%
11 votes
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Exactly. Story episode designers don't need to stop work while someone else tweaks doff rewards.
Yeah, but they usually do this kind of changes per season instead of per patch.
They have to calculate numbers and test them, so it's better to test them all at the same time instead of 1 at a time, plus you get to know how much the game will change as a whole.
If you change mission rewards now, and 2 months later queue rewards, you might TRIBBLE up, because mission rewards looked good when you tested them, queue rewards looked good when you tested them, but queue rewards+mission rewards crashed the market the next month.
Nobody said anything about making episode designers tweak numbers.
This.
Exactly this.
This. So much this. Regular cleanups on each part of the game, tweaking where required, should indeed be done on the clock. At least every half season, if not monthly.
Join the Deltas today!
It's a massive job though and one which can easily be described as a season.
Personally i hope the so called elite marks go the way of the dinosaur (not the voth) and are removed. Perhaps a reduction in overall cost as well.
Though I admit I don't know if that has to be done in Season 12 specifically. I presume they are already busy working on it anyway.
Maybe it needs some help as well by having versions of these missions in the general episode flow so that people can at least get an idea of the map layout and objectives (I remember the days of the various borg ground stf's having walkthrough's that people had created in the foundry for just such a purpose).
Also, have you considered that the discrepancy is a deliberate, calculated move by someone who wants to "encourage" you to use gear from the non-Omega reps? I oppose such manipulations, but if it were the case they aren't going to admit it or implement the change we'd prefer.
@askray @jodarkrider @pwlaughingtrendy anti-zombie cannon please
1- The numbers on Mark cost for sets do add up. Task Force Omega rep sets are only 3 items. 3 x 1k marks = 3k marks. Other reps have the Warp Core/Singularity involved, and are 4 pc sets. 4 x 750 = that's right, 3k marks. What you're getting is a discount on the 4 pc set end to keep things equal overall. And so there's no need to throw that out of balance and update the cost of the borg sets. And before we try to argue about how old those sets are ... yes, 4 pc iconian is the "meta" approved most recommended gear set in the game. But there's enough builds out there that are still making use of items from MACO, Adapted MACO and Assimilated (especially the engines) to drive home the point that the gear is still relevant, still used, and the price is fine.
2- The devs are someday going to call you all out on your stated "desires" versus your actual behavior. What I mean is that a lot of people post that they want a real challenge. They want harder things. They want content to feel challenging. And I'm sure they believe that. But the reality is ... there's a ton of Public queues that are dead because they take too long. The behavior the players exhibit is pretty clear. ISA and CCA are so popular because they're quick, easy, and allow people just enough taste of an encounter before ending and letting them move on to something else. This is a major positive for the game. These queues are all lowest common denominator. So they cater to the most players by being fast, easy and capable for both poor geared players and over geared players. When people want to do something massively challenging, they can take to the private queues and put together carefully selected teams of players they trust. But for a public PUG? The system skews towards what easy, and fast. And that currently works quite well with the current system.
So I submit that yes, I am totally in favor of continually updating the STF experience in this game.
But I also want us to face up to the fact that our behavior is telling the devs that we like the PUGs just the way they are currently. And that the rep gear costs are quite balanced right now.
I choose the first option on the poll.
But I guess we could do this anytime.. actually and a buff on fleet marks/Fleet credits would be good.
My bad. Carry on.
I don't think they know how the game is played, I don't think they care, I don't have confidence in their basic competence.
As the "more modern" queues, with "timegates" built in - whether "integral" like "you need to save freighters for X minutes in GG" or "forced" like MI, illustrate, the "desired goal" seems to be one "standard payout" for 15-20 minutes of play.
As such, the "outliers" are the popular queues, that are paying said "standard payout" after 2-5 minutes of play. Therefore, it would be "beneficial" to Cryptic if all "outliers" were brought into line with the "15-20 minute queue standard", instead of attempting to rescale the other queues to pay 3-7x what they are currently.
Grinds are supposed to give you a long term goal to work toward, not something that can be knocked out in a night of play...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]