On another note. Atmosphere Assault shuttle mission is amazing, and people were falling over themselves to do it the last shuttle weekend.
You look at the queue now, its a wasteland, 0 players queued last few nights I've checked.
Wonder if they made a regular starship version if it would be popular.
Seems to have all the right ingredients; fairly brief at 5-10mins. Gorgeous map (maybe one of the nicest in game), interesting encounters with the walker type enemies, fairly compact map with straight forward optionals. fair enough payout for time to complete, its almost too generous during shuttle events.
What a shame it only gets attention during shuttle weekend
The problem is that the STO community is full of nothing but lazy people who want 2000+ marks for any mission lasting more then 30 seconds, which Cryptic will OFC never give, so they just space Crystalline Entity because they can DPS through it in seconds.
Translation: The STO community, like humanity in general, is full of (mostly) rational people who realize that only suckers do 20 minutes work for 1 minute's pay.
The problem is that the STO community is full of nothing but lazy people who want 2000+ marks for any mission lasting more then 30 seconds...
Pretty much this. And there have been many... Many... MANY debates on the forums on how to solve the problem. Some of which just boil down to "Make universal marks so I can just grind Infected."
Yes, a lot of so-called "solutions" are the exact opposite. But then a lot of player suggestions are always just plain begging for free stuff/more reward for less effort, thinly veiled as improving the game.
As I've long said, to actually fix the queue imbalance:
1. Scale numeric rewards to average completion time
2. Remove all the "choice of marks"
3. Add unique rare drops
4. Increase cooldowns
I'm sure thats not a big news to anyone here. Most public queues are dead, even when looking at existing, already active Q you hardly see more than 10-15 up at anytime. With season 13 they are balancing space powers, introducing new "competitive" queues. Is there any thought on reviving all those dead q...
Just increase Dil and Mark rewards, I think that's all they can do at this point.
Well, they could bind the less active queues into a mission set with some random shiny as reward (like the way the old Borg STF's did)...but I'm sure someone will find a reason to hate on that idea, again.
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
I have a buddy in my fleet that I do random queues with. We generally q-up for several at a time and wait. Sometimes that wait is pretty long. Which is kind of sad considering the number of qs we are waiting on. Back when they had the hourly bonuses, one of which was bonus marks, nearly all the qs were popping. Not that the loss of the hourly stuff is the only reason the qs are empty. I think the private channels have really hurt the pug queues a lot. All those good players who aren't there to carry garbage pugs looking to get better rewards. I'm not really sure how to fix the problem at this point and neither is cryptic apparently. The idea of rotating the queues to force people to play what's available won't work. It will just make people not play at all. I know I wouldn't.
The elephant in the room in the shrinking playerbase. Many of us have been here for years and done just about everything the game has to offer multiple times. With many other game choices out there many people just aren't putting much time into STO.
The elephant in the room in the shrinking playerbase. Many of us have been here for years and done just about everything the game has to offer multiple times. With many other game choices out there many people just aren't putting much time into STO.
True, at least partly. STO was never good at keeping players busy - there is nothing you can really achieve. There is no desireable random loot, all items worth having are set and easily optainable via window shopping. In terms of item scavenging, STO is not even in the same league as other crawlers and H&S titles like Diablo 2 where you could dedicate a whole season searching for a specific item. There are no big raids that require teamwork and dedication and that can fail fifty times before you finally pull through. There is no open-ended gameplay (exploration cough ) you can replay indefinitely and always encounter something new and write your own stories. This game is designed for the short sprint, not the long run. The only thing that's really something for the long haul are fleets, but even those don't really reward you with a strong sense of accomplishment.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
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"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
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The problem is that the STO community is full of nothing but lazy people who want 2000+ marks for any mission lasting more then 30 seconds, which Cryptic will OFC never give, so they just space Crystalline Entity because they can DPS through it in seconds.
Translation: The STO community, like humanity in general, is full of (mostly) rational people who realize that only suckers do 20 minutes work for 1 minute's pay.
The problem is that the STO community is full of nothing but lazy people who want 2000+ marks for any mission lasting more then 30 seconds...
Pretty much this. And there have been many... Many... MANY debates on the forums on how to solve the problem. Some of which just boil down to "Make universal marks so I can just grind Infected."
Yes, a lot of so-called "solutions" are the exact opposite. But then a lot of player suggestions are always just plain begging for free stuff/more reward for less effort, thinly veiled as improving the game.
As I've long said, to actually fix the queue imbalance:
1. Scale numeric rewards to average completion time
2. Remove all the "choice of marks"
3. Add unique rare drops
4. Increase cooldowns
4/4
But I'd add;
5. Featured Queue rotation, like we had a couple years. Hourly rotation.
Featured queue rotation will not work, you have to increase the rewards to time it takes to play the longer STF's.
Remove ISA/CCA/KSA/CSA/TFA/MINE out of the queues won't make me want to play any of the Iconian, Temporal or Terran STF's as the mark rewards for those are poor even using the reputation mark booster tokens.
All it would do is make me just go to Dyson Ground Battlezone to get my Dilithium. Or play the Romulan Patrols until the STF's i want to play come back into rotation.
You'll find others will simply not bother logging in if their favourite STF is taken out of rotation.
At present you have the purple materials for R&D drop in certain STF's (Admiralty also throws them at you) Add a guaranteed box of 20-30 Z-particles to some of the longer STF's and it may make me dive into them. Can't get enough Z-particles or Rubidium
or
Select 2 STF's 1 Ground 1 Space daily that offer double or triple the rewards for playing them, Dil/Marks and R&D.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
They probably need to utilize the accolade system to make doing those queues more interesting.
I mean, right now, it is all about not running them more than what is necessary for players to fill the Rep bars and buy store stuff, right? Once players are done with that, it is all dried up.
Well...add something else to go for...not tied to the Rep Store.
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“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
featured queue of the week with special prizes - costumes etc... for collecting the new featured currency. This would get me to play much much much much more than the upcoming season will.
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."
The queues have been declared dead many times, so that means they're zombies now.
If Cryptic were to 'fix' them, it would make them necromancers and the moderators would have to shut down Cryptic HQ. That might make matters even worse.
And now a more serious reply: I haven't been able to log on for the past couple of days, but last weekend there was still some activity, in many queues. Maybe less than usual, but that may have something to do with all the events we got in the last months.
Besides that, I would suggest and support what has been suggested before: rebalancing the rewards, and making the queues playable with less than 5 players on the team.
Cryptic is aware of this issue and a fix is already on the Tribble test servers, namely, they just removed the box that showed how many people are in the queue. That way there are no longer empty queues, and you can not prove otherwise.
On a more serious note, I think we just have to face the fact that the STO playerbase is very small, so to spread them out over all those options results in a lot of empty queues. Perhaps it is time to reduce the amount of available queues? say, have a weekly rotation of 3-5 queues in various difficulties and cycle that every week?
Honestly I do not think increasing the rewards is the road to go, this game already is a cakewalk, and everything is already handed on a silver plattern.
Cryptic is aware of this issue and a fix is already on the Tribble test servers, namely, they just removed the box that showed how many people are in the queue.
That does remove an element of auto-correlation: players only joining certain queues because they see that people only join certain queues. On their own they might experiment, like an individual human being, but with the herd in sight....moooo!
Certainly, the big problem will still here after the update, ie. too many queues for a given population. But unless Cryptic doubles back on this change, an element of bias will be reduced.
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I didn't quite expect this much response. Clearly I'm not the only one that sees there is a problem and a lot of solution has been put forth. Cryptic seem to have found its own "fix" by removing how many ppl are queued and how many are playing, remove it from sight, problem don't exist anymore... well lazy way to look at it.
This reply is mostly what I think could help the most
As I've long said, to actually fix the queue imbalance:
1. Scale numeric rewards to average completion time
2. Remove all the "choice of marks"
3. Add unique rare drops
4. Increase cooldowns
At least for the marks you need you'll have to actually do the proper rep mission. Queues died out when choice of marks came out. Why work so hard for so long when you get all you need in no time. At least it will promote diversity.
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E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
Honestly it might sound weird, but I think that if they did add back in drops that are specific to certain stfs (maybe even difficulties) than the chance to have them drop could be linked to the completion of optional objectives in those stfs. Such a system would promote two things, the first would be to promote engaging in more of the stf content, but also improve the value f completing the optional objectives in stfs (most of all in normal and advanced).
I could see it that you would have 1-5% baseline chance to get a drop unique to the stf you were running at the completion of the stf (could have several unique drops on the table too), then based on how many of the optional objectives you completed that chance could be increased with the amount increase based on the difficulty of the stf.
Main problem is to many Que's on to small player base... Next problem is private Que's, so overall small player base seems even smaller in pub's... Third problem is, overall completely broken game... First, insane amount of available DPS... NPCs balanced around that DPS with insane amount of HPs, instead of being smart... To much deference between free ships and not free ships, so with that you effectively kill PvP, because either you pay to be competitive, or you go fu*k yourself... OFC that is bad for crowd numbers, and bad for PvP... For that you should look at WoT, they maintain ok-ish power balance between free tanks and those for money, and you can have tier X tank completely free, but ofc you can't do that in few days...Problem is also to fast progress to the end game... You can reach lvl 60 in few days with intensive playing main storyline's, and last free ship is on lvl 40, so with that you kill any need to progress, expect to reach that insane amount of DPS so you can kill Borg tactical cube in one run... And for to fix all that and finally made this game PvP focused, instead of boring PvE rep grind, you need to fire curent development , and bring some fresh blood... Then you need more than simple "plasmonic leach" nerf to bring that DPS in check... You also need competive free top tier ships as reward for reach end game that must be by far more time consuming than it's now, so that PvP would be an option for everyone, not just for those who pay for tier 6 ship and made them DPS monsters that can one shoot everyone else...
it actually isnt that hard, make a random que like pretty much every other MMO that gives more marks/rewards for joining it, while still having individual ques, just increase the lock out times to an hr.
They also need to lock out normal ques @60 making it just a -59.
the biggest issue, however, is that there is no real reward system, reputation is a terrible system and doesn't encourage people to play STF's.
There is a reason why every other mmo also uses a dungeon, then raid based system, with random drops from bosses.
Being able to play lvl 50 content to gain access to all reputation items is idiotic.
Enh.. my head canon is that rep gear represents bleeding edge tech that can't be mass-produced, thus you need to acquire materials so that it can be constructed.
Cryptic is aware of this issue and a fix is already on the Tribble test servers, namely, they just removed the box that showed how many people are in the queue.
That does remove an element of auto-correlation: players only joining certain queues because they see that people only join certain queues. On their own they might experiment, like an individual human being, but with the herd in sight....moooo!
Certainly, the big problem will still here after the update, ie. too many queues for a given population. But unless Cryptic doubles back on this change, an element of bias will be reduced.
The only "element of bias" is the reward structure. Forcing (new) players to figure by trial and error which queues are popular and which are not solves nothing, they will still figure it out.
Cryptic is aware of this issue and a fix is already on the Tribble test servers, namely, they just removed the box that showed how many people are in the queue. That way there are no longer empty queues, and you can not prove otherwise..
Lol made me chuckle. and i'm hoping they change that. I've played around with the new UI on Tribble and when you compare it to the current one on Holodeck in terms of functionality it's 2nd rate and is in no way a QOL improvement other than separating queues by mark choice.
It nearly doubles the number of clicks to select and join a PvE in it's current WIP state. 4 Clicks to join CCA on Holodeck vs 7 on Tribble.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Thing is, cryptic really has no idea how to size that carrot properly. They've tried and failed on more than one occasion and it really dosen't like seem that they're getting the hang of it.
I find it nothing short of hilarious that anyone can suggest this when STO's rewards are some of the most over generous in any MMO out there.
What's that? I'm too busy playing SWTOR at the moment and getting great drops that don't have to go through an 8k-9k cash refining limit.
- New enemy appears
- New weapons and tech developed to combat new enemy (i.e new reputation)
- Fight said new enemy using weapons and tech NOT specifically designed to combat new enemy
- Over time, obtain the various items of weapons and tech designed to combat new enemy
- Eventually obtain all parts of the weapons/tech sets designed to combat said new enemy.
By which time you are sick and tired of fighting them.
it actually isnt that hard, make a random que like pretty much every other MMO that gives more marks/rewards for joining it, while still having individual ques, just increase the lock out times to an hr.
They also need to lock out normal ques @60 making it just a -59.
the biggest issue, however, is that there is no real reward system, reputation is a terrible system and doesn't encourage people to play STF's.
There is a reason why every other mmo also uses a dungeon, then raid based system, with random drops from bosses.
Being able to play lvl 50 content to gain access to all reputation items is idiotic.
I must confess, the reputation system makes me laugh. It's quite ridiculous when you really think about. I mean basically, the scenario is:
- New enemy appears
- New weapons and tech developed to combat new enemy (i.e new reputation)
- Fight said new enemy using weapons and tech NOT specifically designed to combat new enemy
- Over time, obtain the various items of weapons and tech designed to combat new enemy
- Eventually obtain all parts of the weapons/tech sets designed to combat said new enemy.
By which time you are sick and tired of fighting them.
And seriously, can you imagine if this scenario were in an episode? The only way THAT could play out would be this:
XO: Captain, Starfleet has sent us an update regarding our deadly new enemy, the Whateverians - they've developed weapons and technology designed specifically to be effective against them!
Captain: Excellent! When do we return to spacedock to have them equipped?
XO: We don't Sir.
Captain: We don't? What do you mean?
XO: Our orders are to engage the Whateverians immediately.
Captain: But if Starfleet have developed Tech that is effective against the Whateverians surely it makes sense for that tech to be fitted to our ship?
XO: Sorry Sir - Starfleet's orders are to fight them six times. Starfleet will then let us have a torpedo that is effective against them. We then have to fight them another eight times, at which time we'll be given a deflector......
Captain: Forget Starfleet's tech - by the time we obtain it all we'll have defeated the whateverians anyway.
So you suggest we get the rewards first and then...well why bother playing the content at all.
Comments
You look at the queue now, its a wasteland, 0 players queued last few nights I've checked.
Wonder if they made a regular starship version if it would be popular.
Seems to have all the right ingredients; fairly brief at 5-10mins. Gorgeous map (maybe one of the nicest in game), interesting encounters with the walker type enemies, fairly compact map with straight forward optionals. fair enough payout for time to complete, its almost too generous during shuttle events.
What a shame it only gets attention during shuttle weekend
Yes, a lot of so-called "solutions" are the exact opposite. But then a lot of player suggestions are always just plain begging for free stuff/more reward for less effort, thinly veiled as improving the game.
As I've long said, to actually fix the queue imbalance:
1. Scale numeric rewards to average completion time
2. Remove all the "choice of marks"
3. Add unique rare drops
4. Increase cooldowns
Just increase Dil and Mark rewards, I think that's all they can do at this point.
Well, they could bind the less active queues into a mission set with some random shiny as reward (like the way the old Borg STF's did)...but I'm sure someone will find a reason to hate on that idea, again.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
True, at least partly. STO was never good at keeping players busy - there is nothing you can really achieve. There is no desireable random loot, all items worth having are set and easily optainable via window shopping. In terms of item scavenging, STO is not even in the same league as other crawlers and H&S titles like Diablo 2 where you could dedicate a whole season searching for a specific item. There are no big raids that require teamwork and dedication and that can fail fifty times before you finally pull through. There is no open-ended gameplay (exploration cough ) you can replay indefinitely and always encounter something new and write your own stories. This game is designed for the short sprint, not the long run. The only thing that's really something for the long haul are fleets, but even those don't really reward you with a strong sense of accomplishment.
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4/4
But I'd add;
5. Featured Queue rotation, like we had a couple years. Hourly rotation.
Remove ISA/CCA/KSA/CSA/TFA/MINE out of the queues won't make me want to play any of the Iconian, Temporal or Terran STF's as the mark rewards for those are poor even using the reputation mark booster tokens.
All it would do is make me just go to Dyson Ground Battlezone to get my Dilithium. Or play the Romulan Patrols until the STF's i want to play come back into rotation.
You'll find others will simply not bother logging in if their favourite STF is taken out of rotation.
At present you have the purple materials for R&D drop in certain STF's (Admiralty also throws them at you) Add a guaranteed box of 20-30 Z-particles to some of the longer STF's and it may make me dive into them. Can't get enough Z-particles or Rubidium
or
Select 2 STF's 1 Ground 1 Space daily that offer double or triple the rewards for playing them, Dil/Marks and R&D.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
I mean, right now, it is all about not running them more than what is necessary for players to fill the Rep bars and buy store stuff, right? Once players are done with that, it is all dried up.
Well...add something else to go for...not tied to the Rep Store.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
If Cryptic were to 'fix' them, it would make them necromancers and the moderators would have to shut down Cryptic HQ. That might make matters even worse.
Besides that, I would suggest and support what has been suggested before: rebalancing the rewards, and making the queues playable with less than 5 players on the team.
also, devs should add reps on specific episodes, ones with longer mission timer.
On a more serious note, I think we just have to face the fact that the STO playerbase is very small, so to spread them out over all those options results in a lot of empty queues. Perhaps it is time to reduce the amount of available queues? say, have a weekly rotation of 3-5 queues in various difficulties and cycle that every week?
Honestly I do not think increasing the rewards is the road to go, this game already is a cakewalk, and everything is already handed on a silver plattern.
That does remove an element of auto-correlation: players only joining certain queues because they see that people only join certain queues. On their own they might experiment, like an individual human being, but with the herd in sight....moooo!
Certainly, the big problem will still here after the update, ie. too many queues for a given population. But unless Cryptic doubles back on this change, an element of bias will be reduced.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
This reply is mostly what I think could help the most
At least for the marks you need you'll have to actually do the proper rep mission. Queues died out when choice of marks came out. Why work so hard for so long when you get all you need in no time. At least it will promote diversity.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
I could see it that you would have 1-5% baseline chance to get a drop unique to the stf you were running at the completion of the stf (could have several unique drops on the table too), then based on how many of the optional objectives you completed that chance could be increased with the amount increase based on the difficulty of the stf.
They also need to lock out normal ques @60 making it just a -59.
the biggest issue, however, is that there is no real reward system, reputation is a terrible system and doesn't encourage people to play STF's.
There is a reason why every other mmo also uses a dungeon, then raid based system, with random drops from bosses.
Being able to play lvl 50 content to gain access to all reputation items is idiotic.
My character Tsin'xing
Lol made me chuckle. and i'm hoping they change that. I've played around with the new UI on Tribble and when you compare it to the current one on Holodeck in terms of functionality it's 2nd rate and is in no way a QOL improvement other than separating queues by mark choice.
It nearly doubles the number of clicks to select and join a PvE in it's current WIP state. 4 Clicks to join CCA on Holodeck vs 7 on Tribble.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
What's that? I'm too busy playing SWTOR at the moment and getting great drops that don't have to go through an 8k-9k cash refining limit.
Also this. ^
Great plan.