I thought you were talking about a specific item, the Spec Point, not that running those Temporal/Mirror Research Missions giving you so much 'XP' that you can get a Spec Point. I've run them as well and they are very good at giving you 'XP' that results in a Spec Point, almost one when you Crit, otherwise about 2.5 Missions.
My TOS Temporal Recruit has been very greedy and has taken all of them since the Summer.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
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 know this thread has gone slightly off topic, but as casual player I want to say that for me its definitely better. Like posted I zoned into these so many times with the boss at 2% health not getting a shot in and no exp / tokens / dil and a 30 min cool down. Thanks a lot.
Fully aware that the majority of people posting here are long time players with max everything and whatnot, but most players are not. Like all MMOs STOs relies on generating new players and especially the borg queue is a good way to get tokens for one of the random reputation areas that almost never pops.
And so what if you “carry” a group of newbies or casuals a bit? All you’re doing is helping people get tokens / dil so they can better gear etc. Lets keep things in perspective. Its not like someone in white MK10 showed up in your elite queue and cause the STF to fail by miss doing an “optional”.
I think that these are fun and try and enter at least a few each day. I regret that they changed things as the whole extra leveling up part was one of the perks of these alerts, but whatever!
Getting a Ship Mastery is no big deal even now with Red Alerts not being XP Boost Zones. Two or three Borg RAs, a Tholian (XP stinks now in this, when it used to be the best), an ISA, and a CCA (never really any good as there is not many targets) and my Bulwark was done. Sure it's not 5 Levels, only 4, but we are talking about 25 or so minutes and lo and behold you know everything about how to get the most out of that class of ship.
Is it preferable to the way it was before? Perhaps not, but maybe, if you were not the one blowing the hell out of everything before anyone got there as you now get all the XP (though nerfed) as part of the Team.
Tokens in a Lockbox? All that will do is to provide another lucrative market on the Exchange for some. Specialization Points were either part of the Weekly giveaway for the first run of a Featured Episode, Cryptic general giveaways, or the 10 of 10 Reward from the Federation Admiralty Campaign. Never were those points in a Lockbox.
This now leads me to a 'problem' in the Admiralty System with the Federation Tour of Duty. As you know, when you reach 10 of 10 in a Campaign you are awarded a special reward. For the Romulan it is 4 Special Item Upgrade Tokens (for my mind it should be more than 4, or now that we've seen them, 4 of something like the Phoenix Upgrades). For the KDF it is 30k Dilithium. For the Federation it is 2 Spec Points.
All well and good, but if you have maxed out your Spec Trees, Cryptic removed the banking of Spec Points and replaced it with 2,880 Dilithium instead for each. So now while the KDF awards 30k Dilithium, the Federation awards 5,760 instead (2x 2,880) - not really balanced. Perhaps making the Reward for the Federation be a choice of 2 Spec Points OR 2 Ship Mastery Tokens may provide another method of getting those Tokens if they were to create something like that.
You're mistaken, you've been able to get spec points from lockboxes ever since July of 2015.
A couple temporal research assignments = a spec point. With the mirror incursion research ones you can run 20 of them at a time.
I got >60 spec points over the course of one xp weekend just running the doff missions, to finish everything on my temporal recruit. It's a very good alternative progression route for people who don't like grinding.
It's about time they put mastery xp in the boxes too. I would even be cool with it if it was like 1 token adds 1 mastery level, so you need 5 to fully master a ship.
I keep forgetting about those temporal missions. Might as well check them out on my AoY recruit which doesn't have the full spec package yet.
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.
As for instance-hopping... I won't argue about taste, just point out that from the server design point of view, when it's done by everybody, it kind of defeats the purpose of having instances in the first place.
The purpose of instances is to allow more than 5 players to play it at once. How does hopping defeat that? Get real.
I meant quadrant instances, not the mission instances. Whose purpose is to balance server load by dispersing players in sector space and social maps to different nodes in the server cluster with minimum of fuss and ideally, only an occasional need to actually transfer anyone.
That has zero relevance to the topic at hand. Quadrant instances don't interact with mission instances in any way.
As for instance-hopping... I won't argue about taste, just point out that from the server design point of view, when it's done by everybody, it kind of defeats the purpose of having instances in the first place.
The purpose of instances is to allow more than 5 players to play it at once. How does hopping defeat that? Get real.
I meant quadrant instances, not the mission instances. Whose purpose is to balance server load by dispersing players in sector space and social maps to different nodes in the server cluster with minimum of fuss and ideally, only an occasional need to actually transfer anyone.
That has zero relevance to the topic at hand. Quadrant instances don't interact with mission instances in any way.
Seems we meant completely different things by "instance-hopping" then. There were quadrant instances with the Borg/Tholians and ones without them and you could, by constantly changing quadrant instance, get into more RAs than you could if you just waited for them in a single instance.
If this is all because of the complaint that you can't gain super-quick points for starship mastery, and now have to actually do a bit more playing of the game in order to get your mastery levels... go sit in the corner and cry.
(Argala-Farn-Borg Battlefield will get you 5 tiers of mastery in a couple of hours)
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I've been using the same ships on all characters for about a year so this isn't a big deal to me, but I would argue that the chore of "leveling the mastery" on a ship is pointless and should be eliminated entirely. That would solve most complaints about these red alerts. When I was in the business of leveling ships I would only do the tholian alert and only on exp weekends hoping to hit it in 1 run. If not I'd finish with a borg. Now I would hesitate before buying a ship I wanted when faced with an hour per character of leveling it.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
As for instance-hopping... I won't argue about taste, just point out that from the server design point of view, when it's done by everybody, it kind of defeats the purpose of having instances in the first place.
The purpose of instances is to allow more than 5 players to play it at once. How does hopping defeat that? Get real.
I meant quadrant instances, not the mission instances. Whose purpose is to balance server load by dispersing players in sector space and social maps to different nodes in the server cluster with minimum of fuss and ideally, only an occasional need to actually transfer anyone.
That has zero relevance to the topic at hand. Quadrant instances don't interact with mission instances in any way.
Seems we meant completely different things by "instance-hopping" then. There were quadrant instances with the Borg/Tholians and ones without them and you could, by constantly changing quadrant instance, get into more RAs than you could if you just waited for them in a single instance.
Looks like it. I was referring to starting an alert, finishing it then switching to another instance to do multiple runs in a row (or, when the finished instance bug was on, find one that was still live).
They didn't kill the alerts, they're always available. Even so, you don't have to queue long- the best thing they did with the alerts was to make all mark types available. The only downside is they added a cooldown, which is only a problem if you don't have any alts to switch to.
All well and good, but if you have maxed out your Spec Trees, Cryptic removed the banking of Spec Points and replaced it with 2,880 Dilithium instead for each. So now while the KDF awards 30k Dilithium, the Federation awards 5,760 instead (2x 2,880) - not really balanced. Perhaps making the Reward for the Federation be a choice of 2 Spec Points OR 2 Ship Mastery Tokens may provide another method of getting those Tokens if they were to create something like that.
Apart from the fact that I could readily accept your idea, the Fed/KDF balancing isn't really an issue. If Fed doesn't give you stuff you need, don't fed. Similarily if you have enough unrefined dil for two lifetimes and a half, don't klink. Again similarily for Roms. If nothing in the admiralty missions is interesting anymore, don't admiral. It's not like any of these chains give special stuff you can't get otherwise (a good way to gather prisoners and maybe colonists if you're trying to run multiple clusters at once, true, but nothing is needed from any of those trees, so only use the one useful to you)
@xyquarze & @coldnapalm No I mean unfun by having to wait for the q to be full before you can enter. Unlike before where you could go in alone and not have to wait 5 minutes. Unlike before where it gave a lot of xp so that you could level ship mastery's fairly quickly. If you are happy with the change that's fantastic...I'm happy for you. IMO it sucks because I have to level my ship mastery's elsewhere at a slower pace and I have to wait for the q to pop now, which at certain times can take several minutes for a "mission" that doesn't last as long as the wait.
@coldnapalm yeah I like having fun in game. it's not fun waiting in qs. I liked being able to just enter and do it. Probably why I like battle zones and avoid the qs when possible.
Besides, the mastery you gain from killing a Borg Cube in Red Alert is still pretty good, never mind what you get from taking down the V'ger command ship. Certainly if getting a ship to T5 is your goal, it's the way to go. I have many ships I still have to get to that level (gotta catch 'em all! ), spread across all my toons, so it's going to take a while!
If this is all because of the complaint that you can't gain super-quick points for starship mastery, and now have to actually do a bit more playing of the game in order to get your mastery levels... go sit in the corner and cry.
(Argala-Farn-Borg Battlefield will get you 5 tiers of mastery in a couple of hours)
.
I've been using the same ships on all characters for about a year so this isn't a big deal to me, but I would argue that the chore of "leveling the mastery" on a ship is pointless and should be eliminated entirely. That would solve most complaints about these red alerts. When I was in the business of leveling ships I would only do the tholian alert and only on exp weekends hoping to hit it in 1 run. If not I'd finish with a borg. Now I would hesitate before buying a ship I wanted when faced with an hour per character of leveling it.
Yeah that's why they desperately need to add Ship Mastery Tokens to the next lockbox.
I support this idea. They would end up reasoably priced on the exchange and I would absolutely use them. The last thing you want is to de-incentivize your customers from making a purchase.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
But...but the Metrics says Waiting in a Queue is the Best Thing Ever and the Players Love It!!
which is the real underlying problem here.
Well,another problem is that you can't let it ngo, as it seems.
Regardless of how valid your points are, or are not, your insistence in using more than two old mememic words almost every time makes you seem like some spoiled brat. I may be alone in this, but it is just whining to me and I feel hard pressed to look for your actual arguments when it's always "best metrics ever and the players love it". Especially considering that it's from a single sentence from a single interview by a single dev, where most of the points that riled people back then have long since been moot.
Considering it was not a queue at all previously, calling it "the exactly same queue" is obviously false.
Okay, here I wasn't thinking meta enough. I considered the actual gameplay when fighting the borg, but now can see where the "unfun" may be coming from.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Considering it was not a queue at all previously, calling it "the exactly same queue" is obviously false.
Okay, here I wasn't thinking meta enough. I considered the actual gameplay when fighting the borg, but now can see where the "unfun" may be coming from.
Correct. The starting mode is like they listed every possible form of tedious hoop-jumping they could think of and stacked them all together. I mean, if it's a queue why isn't it in the queue list like everything else? Why do we have to go into sector space and transwarp to the butt-end of the quadrant just to press a "join queue" -button? Just to top it all, the transwarp prompt still doesn't say if you're on cooldown for the mission so it may well be you're doing all that just to be told you're on cooldown at the end (and even then, not how long you have to wait).
When they changed the Nukara Prime hard missions into queues (again, making them less fun in the process) they at least had the decency to put them in the regular list, instead of just replacing the instance doors with a join queue button.
Comments
My TOS Temporal Recruit has been very greedy and has taken all of them since the Summer.
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.'
With Red Alerts, Argala, Gerren and Farn Delta Patrols.
Still miss the bonus skill points, though.
Don't follow your logic. The Red Alerts of the old style are gone. You have to find the next best thing. The Delta Patrols work.
Fully aware that the majority of people posting here are long time players with max everything and whatnot, but most players are not. Like all MMOs STOs relies on generating new players and especially the borg queue is a good way to get tokens for one of the random reputation areas that almost never pops.
And so what if you “carry” a group of newbies or casuals a bit? All you’re doing is helping people get tokens / dil so they can better gear etc. Lets keep things in perspective. Its not like someone in white MK10 showed up in your elite queue and cause the STF to fail by miss doing an “optional”.
I keep forgetting about those temporal missions. Might as well check them out on my AoY recruit which doesn't have the full spec package yet.
That has zero relevance to the topic at hand. Quadrant instances don't interact with mission instances in any way.
Seems we meant completely different things by "instance-hopping" then. There were quadrant instances with the Borg/Tholians and ones without them and you could, by constantly changing quadrant instance, get into more RAs than you could if you just waited for them in a single instance.
I've been using the same ships on all characters for about a year so this isn't a big deal to me, but I would argue that the chore of "leveling the mastery" on a ship is pointless and should be eliminated entirely. That would solve most complaints about these red alerts. When I was in the business of leveling ships I would only do the tholian alert and only on exp weekends hoping to hit it in 1 run. If not I'd finish with a borg. Now I would hesitate before buying a ship I wanted when faced with an hour per character of leveling it.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Looks like it. I was referring to starting an alert, finishing it then switching to another instance to do multiple runs in a row (or, when the finished instance bug was on, find one that was still live).
Apart from the fact that I could readily accept your idea, the Fed/KDF balancing isn't really an issue. If Fed doesn't give you stuff you need, don't fed. Similarily if you have enough unrefined dil for two lifetimes and a half, don't klink. Again similarily for Roms. If nothing in the admiralty missions is interesting anymore, don't admiral. It's not like any of these chains give special stuff you can't get otherwise (a good way to gather prisoners and maybe colonists if you're trying to run multiple clusters at once, true, but nothing is needed from any of those trees, so only use the one useful to you)
And by "unfun" you mean that the exactly same queue lost its appeal because of less XP? That's not how I define "fun".
Considering it was not a queue at all previously, calling it "the exactly same queue" is obviously false.
Welcome to Star Trek In Line : Special queue edition with 50% more queue lines lol
I support this idea. They would end up reasoably priced on the exchange and I would absolutely use them. The last thing you want is to de-incentivize your customers from making a purchase.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Well,another problem is that you can't let it ngo, as it seems.
Regardless of how valid your points are, or are not, your insistence in using more than two old mememic words almost every time makes you seem like some spoiled brat. I may be alone in this, but it is just whining to me and I feel hard pressed to look for your actual arguments when it's always "best metrics ever and the players love it". Especially considering that it's from a single sentence from a single interview by a single dev, where most of the points that riled people back then have long since been moot.
Okay, here I wasn't thinking meta enough. I considered the actual gameplay when fighting the borg, but now can see where the "unfun" may be coming from.
Correct. The starting mode is like they listed every possible form of tedious hoop-jumping they could think of and stacked them all together. I mean, if it's a queue why isn't it in the queue list like everything else? Why do we have to go into sector space and transwarp to the butt-end of the quadrant just to press a "join queue" -button? Just to top it all, the transwarp prompt still doesn't say if you're on cooldown for the mission so it may well be you're doing all that just to be told you're on cooldown at the end (and even then, not how long you have to wait).
When they changed the Nukara Prime hard missions into queues (again, making them less fun in the process) they at least had the decency to put them in the regular list, instead of just replacing the instance doors with a join queue button.