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Stop killing the game with kindness
wildeye042
Member Posts: 87 Arc User
The fact that afk games are now a thing should make it clear that STO has a problem with making things too easy. The lack of failure conditions and guaranteed rewards have made this devolution inevitable and made the game increasingly bland, repetitive, and boring.
Normal difficulty could probably be left alone but advanced/elite difficulty should have fail conditions. Now that you can buy rep tokens with marks, there is no longer an absolute necessity to neuter advanced/elite difficulties.
I understand not wanting to make the game too difficult for new and casual players but I would argue that challenging and rewarding options for everyone else is important to retain those long-term players.
Normal difficulty could probably be left alone but advanced/elite difficulty should have fail conditions. Now that you can buy rep tokens with marks, there is no longer an absolute necessity to neuter advanced/elite difficulties.
I understand not wanting to make the game too difficult for new and casual players but I would argue that challenging and rewarding options for everyone else is important to retain those long-term players.
Post edited by wildeye042 on
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As for advanced, I am okay with just having more difficult enemies. I see advanced as "training" for elite in which I always attempt to complete the secondary objective... whether or not the other players do so is a different matter. But if they want to do elite, then they better learn that the optionals are in fact mandatory and in some cases they must be completed before the primary objective is done.
However, when it comes to AFKers, Cryptic is far too lenient.
I know vast parts of the community and challenging tasks do not sit well with the average STO player.
Latest Mirror is the best example we could get. I know running it sucks so either I play it or not BUT I DO NOT AFK IT. In my case I made my peace with 2 toons out of 10.
Sadly many others do not see it that way. The advanced version even offers higher rewards for better performance so one gets a clear perspective. But do peeps go for it? All those “isa is too easy” forum dudes for example? Hehe, no. Low light this weekend was seeing multiple of the DPS numbers guys even asking for entire AFK premades.
Glad a friend of mine and I just pugged it. We ran into @felisean, did our part and had an engaging but successful pug. Feli even though me a few things about the map I didn’t knew even though this is the 3rd or 4th time I participate in this event.
For every player eager for a good fight we get like nine others which are not. Sad, but that is just the way it is in STO.
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Any contribution should matter, IMHO.
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Should a token contribution really matter, or is that just an invitation for AFKers to abuse the system?
Considering the crying we had on the forums because people recieved AFK penalties in whta is basically a speed run of ISA or similar queues because they didn't get enough damage in alongside the high DPSers, I don't think Cryptic has an easy job here. You don't want too many false positives, and not too many false negatives.
I mean, yeah. Something must be done!
While I realize you are being sarcastic, it's actually kinda useful because sometimes enemies will spawn at the last minute before closure and ruin one person's attempt to close the rift, but the other person's will go through
But anyway, I have seen more bragging about going AFK on forums/reddit than I have seen it in action. And I've been doing it 8-9 times a day. Only the first day did I see it and I guess people realized they were angering other people.
I think Cryptic has a very easy job here. They clearly don't care about the false positives the DPS meter penalty causes and they have absolutely no reason to put up some system to punish players who choose not to complete objectives they themselves made optional, just because some players don't get what "optional" means (hint, it means "not mandatory").
Those objectives are optional on purpose, it's Cryptic's standard procedure. The game is full of waiting missions, Mirror is not even the worst. It's just one that gives a unique event reward that attracts more people to it than the others.
Personally, I think they should put down some tough mandatory objectives and fail conditions on Mirror next time, including Normal, even if just to teach the whiners to be careful what they wish for. But not likely that's going to happen, either.
I agree. I have seen more complaining about AFK on the forums than in the MI event themselves. I run it anywhere from 7-13 times a day. On Normal, though.
I have HEARD about the AFK Teaming in some of the chat channels, of which I am not involved with. Not sure it is even true. Those folks in those channels do not seem like the types who would do that. They LIKE to play the game...that is why they are IN those chat channels in the first place.
Why would they go through the trouble to team to do nothing???? They wouldn't.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Someone asked if it was an AFK run.
I said no.
They said they weren't interested.
I didn't even know you could afk MIA !?
Anyway, over the weekend I only saw MIA AFK games being called in the channels.. Was kind of surprising and a little disturbing.
So I took my talents to normal PUG... And had some great contributing teammates.
Call me crazy...but I like to shoot bad guys, and do stuff while in a mission....
In fairness though, I guess I can understand that people with many toons just aren't interested in participating fully when they're doing 8-20 alt runs a day.
Can't say I blame them.
We have an event and of course we want maximum participation, for the metrics if nothing else. This event must be completed X number of times to get a reward, so we also need to make sure people can/will run the event that many times. We also have to factor in that this event is team play only.
If we give this event some tough, mandatory objectives, a lot of players will quit playing the event altogether after only one or two times of getting stuck with a "bad" team and failing the objectives, thus spending a lot of time with nothing to show for it at the end. Event participation drops drastically and our metrics are in the pits. We can avoid this by either leaving the objectives mandatory, but making them so easy even a mediocre player can solo them, or we make them optional and just give greater rewards if they are completed.
No matter what we do, players will complain so the bottom line is what is the best way to keep the maximum numbers of players running the event so the metrics stay high.
We provide options, that's what. Make them optional with greater rewards if completed, but also provide a version of the event where they are mandatory for those players who prefer that type of thing.
Edited for a bit of grammar
Fact is the mission's already designed from the ground up to keep the maximum number of players in, for maximum length of time. The time limit, the optional activities, everything. All of it translates to a mission that's impossible to lose for even the worst players, but also impossible to finish fast even for the best. It's all the same for Cryptic if players do the optionals or not, as long as they're in the map putting their minutes down on the metrics board.
If they ever change the event, it will be to attract those people who think it's too tedious to play at all in it's current form. Not the people skipping the optionals or the people complaining about others skipping the optionals.
AFK games are a thing because of Cryptic time gating events. It has nothing to do with difficulty. If you want a harder game, delete your account and start over. That should give you a good understanding of how "easy" the game is.
It's not so much impossible to finish fast, so much as it is impossible to get the optionals at all. Add to that the grief you get from NPCs when you're trying to close rifts and you see why I started to AFK it. It may be different for you, but my thinking was that if it's impossible to succeed, why bother trying?
If I want to actually play to win, I play the regular version. AFKing MIA is more of a protest for me than anything else.
I am not specifically referring to MI.
I have been in many other queue missions where other player "contributions" have been absolutely ZERO. For those types of transgressions I would like to see a 20 hour AFK penalty. For habitual AFK abusers, the penalty will be account wide.
I haven't actually played the Advanced version in years. Back then, the station dying did fail the mission in Advanced and it was deliciously hard, but being able to get the event trinket in Normal of course spoiled the whole thing. Why bother getting a team together to survive Advanced when it wouldn't get us anything we couldn't get free and easy in Normal?
My thinking is, I always play it to win. It's not my fault the devs made killing the dreadnought the only action that's actually needed to win it.
There's such a different range of opinions on what counts as contributing to the run, that I don't think you can get 10 people to agree on what should count as contribution vs the criteria for an AFK penalty.
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Trollwise the fail condition in ISA specifically was poorly chosen, but for a large part that too was exaggeration. I saw someone fail ISA by attacking the wrong side exactly once over the entire tenure of the fail conditions, and I'm not that quick to assume it was a troll instead of a newbie who didn't know better. Most of the fail conditions were pretty trollproof.
And honestly, with all the power creep, even covering a "wrong side" incident in ISA wouldn't be that big a deal anymore.
Do some damage? You may be contributing a little...but it would still go faster if you actually kill things and then close the rifts.
Far to lenient the current system is...
They need to put a system that does a automatic kick vote if people don't do enough damage...sure maybe a few people will get kicked from ISA...well that is just one STF...there are 3 other STFS where people can get Borg marks and processors.
Let the dps one hit wonders have their one pointless no skill involved spam fest STF...plenty of others to choose from.
Exactly BUT Cryptic needs to be clear what the word OPTIONAL means, As it stands when a mission states there is an optional there is a different meaning on elite which leads to confusion on the part of players doing elites for the first time. Cryptic needs to have the phrase MANDATORY MISSION REQUIREMENT replace the phrase OPTIONAL Mission requirement in Elites. At no time should a "Optional" be a mandatory you want it to be Mandatory then say so don't leave it hanging disguised as Optional. Being very clear in mission requirments goes a very long way in the overall enjoyment of the game. You would have expected Cryptic to have learned that from the Fiasco DR was.
My instance was blatant trolling.
"Oh I wonder if my spec point is in this generator?" on the opposite side we were on.
Generator go boom, we have to scramble to TRY and salvage it.
"Nope. I guess it isn't." Flies off, most likely laughing at us.
ISA Failed. 30 minute lockout. No Reward.
And consider when this was. When they said that Advanced would be the same as the old Elite. Which was actually not the case as they also had made NPC HP Sponges making our previously good Elite builds feel like n00b builds before they fixed that issue.
And while you do mention the power creep... that makes it a non issue NOW. Back then it didn't. Hell... get a coordinated team, and maybe even a Megawell Science Ship, and you can split the team 50/50 and still get the optionals in ISA.
Implemented correctly, fail conditions do add a level of difficulty that give players a challenge. But its also possible to be exploited by Trolls who's only getting on to cause trouble and force a lockout because they think its funny.
I'm kinda one of those people who think Advanced should be left as is, but still allow for Elite to have Fail conditions. After all, Elite is supposed to be for people who really want a challenge, kinda like Korfez. But the majority of players won't enjoy that or be able to afford the specialized builds that are sometimes necessary for Elite content with the fail conditions.
The problem wasn't the fail conditions but Cryptic labeled them as opitional. This indeed set the entire DR revamp of queues up for utter fails. If Cryptic had clearly stated that the side goals were indeed mandatory then in the dialogue box the entire fiasco would have been avoided. Cryptic utterly failed by pasting the label optional on mandatory mission goals. Small wonder people complained. I loved all the rants against people who pointed out the difference between the meanings of the word optional and mandatory. The sad thing was those railing against players pointing out that the two words have different meanings pointed out they had a lack in eduaction when it came down to word meanings. Hopefully Cryptic has in big red letters OPTIONAL MEANS OPTIONAL AND IS NOT REQUIERED FOR MEETING BASIC MISSION GOALS.
Except it wouldn't be exclusive to ISA. It would have to be across the board. And then... well... there goes EVERYONE except the top DPSers. You get even 1 DPSer in a PUG, you're kicked.
Running Counterpoint? NO YOU'RE NOT! You're AFK and Kicked because there's 1 DPSer in there as well.
Running Procyon 5? NO YOU'RE NOT! You're AFK and Kicked because there's 1 DPSer in there as well.
Running Borg Alert? NO YOU'RE NOT! You're AFK and Kicked because there's 1 DPSer in there as well.
Need I go on?
So what would you consider as a low DPS score, <10K. I have 3 characters that Ive rolled as healers and they get less than 10k. With what you're suggesting those characters and other people who don't care about high dps would be kicked from every stf.
There should be a system that uses an afk timer in stfs. Meaning no keys pressed within a certain amount of time would auto kick the player.
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