There was a discussion in the DPS channels about this topic; to AFK or not to AFK, and what people do in these runs. One guy complained that he had two people just follow him to close rifts and activate the collectors, and that's all they did. A few of us responded with, "I WISH pugs would do that."
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.
Considering how many calls for entire mirror AFK premade matches I read in the numbers channels yesterday during my online time (there were more than for regular matches) enough peeps seem to have met with a common agreement on topic.
How about doing yet another numbers channel reform and league reset? Turn it into AFK 10.000, AFK 30.000 and so on… Ultimately in AFK Prime the top 15 AFK players in game could meet and sit everything out entirely.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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I hate the afk tendency in MI with a passion. So much so that I stopped playing the event couple of circles ago. But a premade afk run doesn't hurt me at all so let people do that if they want. They're not even gaining anything on me since this is time gated.
There was a discussion in the DPS channels about this topic; to AFK or not to AFK, and what people do in these runs. One guy complained that he had two people just follow him to close rifts and activate the collectors, and that's all they did. A few of us responded with, "I WISH pugs would do that."
Indeed. In my eyes there is nothing more satisfying than a pug which works without major communication. People not flying in blindly and trying to pewpew everything (sometimes even failing at that) but looking around what is happening, what are the others doing, adapting and supporting. Jumping in to draw aggro at precisely the place your cloaked ally wants to decloak to do some rift closing or whatever it is. Or vice versa flying in the shadows of some aggro guy to exploit the distraction of the enemies. At multiple place STFs people correcting the distribution by flying to another space when some sub group is struggling (or consists only of one when there should be two). That's where the fun and the game is for me. Sure, making a great DPS build is fine, but once acquired just rushing in and killing without thinking. Probably the same guys who will fight distraction mobs all day, having a party about their DPS while contributing nothing to the mission which is at another place entirely.
One follower should have been enough though.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Advanced queues used to have fail conditions. Then a massive whine arose from the playerbase, a whine of such magnitude that the Devs felt compelled to answer. The demand of this whine? Remove fail conditions from Advanced queues. Thus OP you assign blame for the complaints you have to the wrong people. It is your fellow players who are responsible & who will prevent the Devs from granting your wishes.
The problem wasn't the fail conditions but Cryptic labeled them as opitional.
Cryptic did not label them as optional, except in those difficulty settings where they were optional.
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.
I agree with OP generally. I think the current game modes should be left as is - but I'd like to see a new mode, something like "Simulation", to represent that it's 'more realistic', at least in terms of the franchise. This mode is generally around the difficulty of Advanced, but with extra stuff, it makes the game harder, but not by making the enemies tougher and do more damage, it adds more gameplay around the consequences for injury, damage and death. I feel this would work well because a lot of the basic plot lines for Star Trek over the various series' are around overcoming adversity when something's gone wrong.
For me, I'd like this to mean something like the following:
Remove the ability to switch ships except at a starbase facility (keep the ability to get into a small craft though ofc).
If your ship gets into less than 80% hull, it starts taking damage (basically the same as the things you see upon death in Adv or Elite), but at a fairly slow rate, increasing the lower your HP drops. (similar for you and your Boffs on the ground).
I'd like to remove the inventory based repair components, meaning that you need to wait for the timers to run out for each thing to be fixed (everything has a timer now, even if it's measured in days), or complete missions, R&D projects and Rep projects (see below) to repair them faster. I'd like these effects to mean things like it's possible for your warp drive speed to be dramatically reduced in sector space, etc.
If you get blown up, you don't just re-spawn, you go back to your main faction HQ after a splash screen showing escape pods!, the ship you were using has a timer on it in the ship selector saying "salvaging in progress", when that runs down it says "repairs in progress". I don't know how long would be appropriate, but for me I'd like these timers to range from hours to days, depending on different factors.
If you die on the ground, a similar system but with your waking up in sick bay on your ship with injuries that can't be healed for X hour or days that reduce performance, but otherwise you can do stuff normally.
There's a new project in the Rep tab that's for your ship. If it's been destroyed and is being salvaged/repaired you can complete Rep assignments to speed it up. (Contributing EC and materials for repair boosts). This can make the repairs go a lot faster.
Fleets can work on adding a Shipyard Repair facility to flee starbases that speeds up the repair rate too.
The "repairing" lockout stops you swapping modules to and from that ship, it essentially means you temporarily lose access to that ship entirely.
You can still use any other ship in your list.
If all the ships in your list are being repaired, you can "rent" one from your faction HQ that's a fixed stock issue ship appropriate for your level, but can't be upgraded - it'll be pants, but at least it's something, and as Shran says "when you lose your ship, you rarely get rewarded with a new one", unless you're Kirk or Picard ofc.
A similar system to the above for the Boff's too, so that if they die on a mission they might be out of action for hours or days getting healed. Again, if you run out of Boffs you default to some sort of level appropriate generic Boff until your real Boffs are healed.
Doff missions that appear in your list when your Boffs are injured or your ship is damaged, completing these assignments will boost the recovery speed of your Boffs and repair speed of your ship (things like "conduct physiotherapy", "research a new treatment for disruptor wounds", "reroute EPS conduits", "apply cortical stimulation" etc.)
For me these types of things on an extra setting would really add to the immersion and RP of the game, and expand the doff lists to make them relevant to your ship rather than a bit random as they are now. I definitely wouldn't replace the existing difficulty settings though, this would be an optional experience for people who want to go a bit further.
Why don't they simply bring in performance related marks as a bonus to players who actually bother to play the STF.
Set a threshold of rifts closed/enemies destroyed/generators engaged each giving the player points then the devs set a minimum you need to reach in order to get the bonus marks for the event and make the bonus decent instead of like 10-15 like they normally do.
The system knows exactly what we are doing anyway so it has this information already, it just needs setting up then settings for each STF as per requirements. This will mean that people will not be going afk if they have to actually do something, though they would probably use a bot instead which is just as infuriating.
There was a discussion in the DPS channels about this topic; to AFK or not to AFK, and what people do in these runs. One guy complained that he had two people just follow him to close rifts and activate the collectors, and that's all they did. A few of us responded with, "I WISH pugs would do that."
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.
The fact that you have people in your group that complains that other people are being smart and closing portals and powering relays isn't so much an issue with there being a wide range of opinion on contribution...it's more of a comment on why DPS people are so hated. That is so mind boggling stupid, I have no words for it. Seriously, everyone on channel should have ripped him a new one for that idiocy...not just a few of you.
There were quite a few of us wondering what crack the guy was smoking... Help is help, period. If the players are being useful, then that allows myself and others to be useful elsewhere. At the very least, more things for me to nuke!
There was a discussion in the DPS channels about this topic; to AFK or not to AFK, and what people do in these runs. One guy complained that he had two people just follow him to close rifts and activate the collectors, and that's all they did. A few of us responded with, "I WISH pugs would do that."
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.
Considering how many calls for entire mirror AFK premade matches I read in the numbers channels yesterday during my online time (there were more than for regular matches) enough peeps seem to have met with a common agreement on topic.
How about doing yet another numbers channel reform and league reset? Turn it into AFK 10.000, AFK 30.000 and so on… Ultimately in AFK Prime the top 15 AFK players in game could meet and sit everything out entirely.
Comments
Considering how many calls for entire mirror AFK premade matches I read in the numbers channels yesterday during my online time (there were more than for regular matches) enough peeps seem to have met with a common agreement on topic.
How about doing yet another numbers channel reform and league reset? Turn it into AFK 10.000, AFK 30.000 and so on… Ultimately in AFK Prime the top 15 AFK players in game could meet and sit everything out entirely.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
But what really caught my eye was this
Indeed. In my eyes there is nothing more satisfying than a pug which works without major communication. People not flying in blindly and trying to pewpew everything (sometimes even failing at that) but looking around what is happening, what are the others doing, adapting and supporting. Jumping in to draw aggro at precisely the place your cloaked ally wants to decloak to do some rift closing or whatever it is. Or vice versa flying in the shadows of some aggro guy to exploit the distraction of the enemies. At multiple place STFs people correcting the distribution by flying to another space when some sub group is struggling (or consists only of one when there should be two). That's where the fun and the game is for me. Sure, making a great DPS build is fine, but once acquired just rushing in and killing without thinking. Probably the same guys who will fight distraction mobs all day, having a party about their DPS while contributing nothing to the mission which is at another place entirely.
One follower should have been enough though.
I agree with OP generally. I think the current game modes should be left as is - but I'd like to see a new mode, something like "Simulation", to represent that it's 'more realistic', at least in terms of the franchise. This mode is generally around the difficulty of Advanced, but with extra stuff, it makes the game harder, but not by making the enemies tougher and do more damage, it adds more gameplay around the consequences for injury, damage and death. I feel this would work well because a lot of the basic plot lines for Star Trek over the various series' are around overcoming adversity when something's gone wrong.
For me, I'd like this to mean something like the following:
For me these types of things on an extra setting would really add to the immersion and RP of the game, and expand the doff lists to make them relevant to your ship rather than a bit random as they are now. I definitely wouldn't replace the existing difficulty settings though, this would be an optional experience for people who want to go a bit further.
Set a threshold of rifts closed/enemies destroyed/generators engaged each giving the player points then the devs set a minimum you need to reach in order to get the bonus marks for the event and make the bonus decent instead of like 10-15 like they normally do.
The system knows exactly what we are doing anyway so it has this information already, it just needs setting up then settings for each STF as per requirements. This will mean that people will not be going afk if they have to actually do something, though they would probably use a bot instead which is just as infuriating.
There were quite a few of us wondering what crack the guy was smoking... Help is help, period. If the players are being useful, then that allows myself and others to be useful elsewhere. At the very least, more things for me to nuke!
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
I lol'd and /facepalmed at the same time.
"Special DPS Channels Merger: MIA-AFK League!"
Fleet Defiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support | Fleet Manticore Kinetic Strike Ship | Tactical Command Kinetic Siege Refit | Fleet Defiant Quantum Phase Escort | Fleet Valiant Kinetic Heavy Fire Support
Turning the Galaxy-X into a Torpedo Dreadnought & torpedo tutorial, with written torpedo guide.
"A good weapon and a great strategy will win you many battles." - Marshall
I knew using Kinetics would be playing the game on hard mode, but what I didn't realize was how bad the deck is stacked against Kinetics.
Qualifications will be based on number of portals left open and Terran ships alive.
Sounds good!
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
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