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Admiralty Needs A Nerf If Queues Are To Be Rejuvinated
e30ernest
Member Posts: 1,794 Arc User
Admiralty is currently over-rewarding. I am currently earning more than my daily Dilithium refinement cap just by doing Admiralty alone. I am proposing the following:
I know this will probably be unpopular, but I feel that we are being spoiled by all the Dil sources that rewards us while essentially doing nothing. We did fine before Admiralty. IMO Admiralty should be an effective means to supplement our Dilithium income, and not the main source.
Even with the above changes, the Dilithium rewards from Admiralty won't be useless. If the Dilithium rewards of the Tour of Duty completion is maintained, you'll only need to earn 2k Dilithium from other sources per day, or about 3 Advanced STFs or 2 Elite STFs. If those Dilithium rewards are halved, you still have the normal Admiralty missions (which reward up to several thousand by themselves).
There really needs to be a push towards the multiplayer aspect of the game (this is an MMO after all). Rewards should be skewed in favor of multi-player activity.
- Either keep Tour of Duty 10 Dilithium rewards for Klingon and Ferengi missions the same but remove all Dil rewards from the normal Admiralty missions OR halve the Tour of Duty 10 Dilithium rewards (down to 15k) and keep the Dil rewards from the normal missions.
- Remove Dilithium rewards from all other sources other than first time mission play-throughs (including Patrols), Mines, Battlezones and STFs.
- Increase mark rewards from Battlezones but reduce Dilithium rewards
- Award Dilithium in STFs only on first play-through for the day for that specific mark (reward them with daily bonus reward boxes). This should encourage playing multiple queue types (and not just farming ISA/Borg STFs or CCA for example)
- Remove choice-mark boxes from Red Alerts except for when Red Alert events are running (this would prevent simply farming Red Alerts for Dil)
- Add small Dilithium rewards for PvP kills and/or reward winning teams.
- Someone suggested this in Discord, would be nice if STFs also rewarded other things like random 1x use Admiralty card drops or Pass Tokens to help newer players with few ships in their roster.
I know this will probably be unpopular, but I feel that we are being spoiled by all the Dil sources that rewards us while essentially doing nothing. We did fine before Admiralty. IMO Admiralty should be an effective means to supplement our Dilithium income, and not the main source.
Even with the above changes, the Dilithium rewards from Admiralty won't be useless. If the Dilithium rewards of the Tour of Duty completion is maintained, you'll only need to earn 2k Dilithium from other sources per day, or about 3 Advanced STFs or 2 Elite STFs. If those Dilithium rewards are halved, you still have the normal Admiralty missions (which reward up to several thousand by themselves).
There really needs to be a push towards the multiplayer aspect of the game (this is an MMO after all). Rewards should be skewed in favor of multi-player activity.
Post edited by e30ernest on
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Now, as for "Add small Dilithium rewards for PvP kills and/or reward winning teams." Having ANY additional rewards for PvP would be great. Good start would be adding in Competitive marks like we were supposed to get with Season 13 4 months ago.
1) For most queues the effort reward balance just doesn't pay (hence why most people get their dilithium from running Admiralty, CCA or ISA).
2) There is very little point in running queues associated with a particular reputation once you've maxed the reputation and gotten all the gear unless you're wanting marks to convert to dilithium to supplement you're income which you've probably already maxed. Fundamentally I believe there needs to be a reason to keep farming the marks. For example look at the latest couple of reputations, everyone ran them like crazy for the first few weeks and once they'd gotten all the marks they needed the activity levels dropped off (granted we got into events session, but made it worse).
I do agree with you're comments re red alerts, changing those to queues with a choice of all marks and removing the XP bonus was a terrible idea in my book and has just made worse the problems with the queues.
Personally I think most of the mark rewarding sources need a buff anyway 10 marks for a patrol or capturing a battlezone point is rather poor (excluding daily bonus marks), I'd argue that the voth zone is about right but the rest could do with a slight buff even on dilithium as I reckon you earn less dilithium from a battlezone that you could in queues for the same time investment (particularly if you run ground queues or anything that doesn't have an artificial time gate).
With a little luck, fleet actions might pick up again with the new holding, assuming it demands enough fleet marks to make significant farming of them a requirement. I also wonder if needing an input of reputation marks to those projects might help, at least in the short to medium term until the holding is completed.
However, I'm not fully convinced what you propose would actually get people back to queues. To me it seems that people are fed up with either "fun adjustment" and/or new Queue UI that both came with S13. You yourself have said that plenty of people (like you or me) don't do queues for rewards. Some do (or did before admirality), obviously, but I know I don't care about rewards in queues too much anymore. I just want to have some fun and preferrably get my Salvaged Tech.
If other players don't find doing queues fun anymore, cause their builds got wrecked, or just find the process of starting a queue PITA, or just hate a map because excessive timegates/repetitiveness, just reducing the rewards won't be the course of action that will bring too many players back.
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I can tell you: since Admiralty started, I haven't bothered with the events, either. The 50,000DL used to draw me out...but not any more. So, I would have to agree....the Tour of Duty reward of 30,000DL in Admiralty is a bit high.
Now, will that get ME back in the queues?? No, because I was never in them.
How many of the players that are still playing STO daily are players like me (never interested in the group queues) and how many of the players were ones that gave up group queues because of "nerfs" or "queue UI sucks" or "rewards structure are bad" or "takes too much time"?
That would be the big question to find the answer to...
I have my doubts your proposal will work. Because I believe the players who used to run the queues regularly are just gone...no longer play daily at all.
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I think they still are logging in and relying on Admiralty for their Dil caps just based on the reactions I got from floating this idea first in Discord. I for example barely queue up anymore as well since the Ferengi Admiralty missions went out. My alts (which used to cycle several STFs each) are now parked in front of an exchange console.
I'm gambling on a numbers game here. If there are 5 or so people in my own circle of friends that used to queue but don't like this idea because it means they cannot just do Admiralty and get all their dailies, then in a game of thousands of players, there would be a substantial number doing the same thing. Even if 10% of the players are convinced to queue up to gather rewards, well get a pretty active STF system based on the number of players we see in the game.
As you said, this will unlikely change players that never queued at all, but with new players coming in every day, they should be incentivized to actually play the multiplayer aspects for the long-term benefit of the entire game.
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I do agree.... Admiralty Tour of Duty award is a bit on the high side.
I am not sure polling on Discord is very accurate....but I agree if you are getting positive response it may be worth looking at.
I do agree.... finding a way to get the people who know the STFs and queues, would help to make a better game experience for the new players.
Edit: BUT...if people really are not speaking the truth to you in your poll...there will be backlash to deal with if as they will see it as a "nerf" to DL rewards. Again. And they feel "forced" to go back into the queues.
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If you really want to save the ques, you need to kill off ALL choice mark boxes in the game. Or leave it at fleet marks or the rep marks for the que only. Then if you want the rep done you HAVE to play the que.
I have toons that have full combat sets that have never played a single que in this game, Why would I when I can farm birds and get what I want from that. The incentive of getting the marks should be what gets people into the ques.
Yes I started playing when having a full set of Omega armor meant something as it showed that you had paid the price by running the que to get that prototype drop. Now? Having the armor means nothing as you can get it without playing any stf at all.
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When they changed the Sompek event, we've seen what happens when players are used to receiving certain rewards and then receive less of them. Most people are just doing suicide runs on alts. For queues, this won't give rewards of course, so I'm afraid that most people will just not bother with the queues at all and stop playing rather than play different ones and do more effort to get the same amount of dilithium.
Some battlezones could also do with less dilithium rewards; to be fair, I'm still surprised that they ever released the Dyson zone with its high rewards. One run plus the daily missions for almost reaching the daily refinement (and if you're lucky, you don't even have to convert marks and Implants to reach that - meaning you can even build up some extra supply) is a bit crazy if you ask me. Even if they cut those rewards in half, rewards there would still be very generous. If needed, they could then also increase rewards for stuff that takes longer to complete like the Breach.
It's reasonable to assume that game profitability is the primary objective for Cryptic, making player happiness a secondary goal only in so far as it furthers the primary goal.
I'd guess that player profitability follows and rising/plateau/falling pattern over time T since joining. If so, getting players to the profit plateau is a critical element to overall revenue and probably supports the majority of fixed costs. Attrition during the rising period of profit is probably highest where players become discouraged. Younger players who have fewer opportunities for generating dil would be disproportionately impacted. Their inability without dil to upgrade, buy rep or fleet equipment, or contribute to fleet holdings would likely add to their dissatisfaction (and early attrition).
Conversely, older players probably not that profitable either because they've bought most of what they plan to buy, including a lifetime sub with the 500 zen allowance. Whatever incremental purchases they want to make most likely could be covered by dil to zen conversion since after upgrading, what other use is there for dil since they're also most likely already in a mature fleet. Also, the need for marks is probably relatively lower than younger players.
Ultimately, it's not earning unrefined dil ore which is the issue. Once you pass a certain point, you begin stockpiling well above the 8K (+1K vet, +500 dil mine) refining limit.
Finally, rewards aren't necessarily the only reason people choose or don't choose queues. Anecdotally, many people I know don't do queues like Procyon because they're just not that fin, interesting and very long. The only reason I'd do Procyon is if an event were tied to it. Other people I know feel the same.
I'd argue that to rejuvenate the queues, Cryptic should make all queues choice of marks; identify a core group of 3-5 queues which are always available; and rotate 3-5 queus weekly with some form bonus rewards or marks for doing these.
The real flaw with the queue system at this stage of game maturity, and Reputation System maturity, is that the queues are tied to them instead of overall gameplay. While it might make sense to have dedicated queues for new Reputations, after a certain point that link ceases to have as much value as overall game mechanics.
I started playing when this was the case too, and yes, it did mean something then. I really think it was a mistake to change that.
If we could go back to that, it would ensure all the ques get played, and reduce long wait times for those actually wanting to play them. The only thing I would change would be to remove the randomness of that part you need dropping. The que should guarantee you get the part you need, but keep that particular part exclusive to that que. That way players know they can get what they need without running that que over and over, AND they are forced to actually play (and I would say experience) the other ques.
The game has its issues, but IMO the content and/or map devs work too hard for a new que to go dead in a matter of weeks.
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There should simply be more unique rewards for playing different content.
I started playing just before DR, only one toon, played through all the mission arcs and then DR hit. That toon got deleted in favor of starting Delta recruits for all faction for the rewards. Got all these neat marks boxes...with absolutely no clue what to do with them as the game doesn't teach you squat about what marks are and how they are used. Used bunches of them for Fleet marks sine their use was easy to figure out. Time to cut to the chase....
Trial and error and I learned what the various rep marks were for. Used up what was left of my DR reward boxes on various rep marks and then ....... the only way to earn more for most of them was to run specific STFs, STFs that even then were mostly dead as I had already missed the big flurry of activity as dedicated players stocked up on marks. As I had all "new" toons with some story missions left to do, I would cue up for every STF granting a specific mark and go off to my missions, a few hours later, with no time to play left for the day and a few more missions done with not a single cue popping, I would log off and try again the next day. I eventually just gave up on the rep system altogether. If I hadn't subscribed and gotten more toon slots to play around with different combinations of race/faction/class/ship, I probably would have just quit the game.
Thanks to finally finding good Fleets to run STFs with I got a few toons maxed in a few reps for the gear I wanted eventually, and then again, other than events, STFs were totally ignored as they were mostly dead. Having found good Fleets meant that the dead portions of the game could actually be played if wanted and I do love the game so I bought LTS.
When AoY hit, and Temporal toons got the account reward if they got all reps to tier5, bunches of STFs got really active for a very short time, then promptly died yet again. No worries for me, my Temporal toon was in a good fleet, a few STFs had choice marks that didn't actually have a choice of all marks, but still had a few choices so when I got my toon high enough it was relatively easy to, for the first time ever, get a toon to Tier5 in all reps and not just one or two. Even having a good and active Fleet however, having four other people online at the same time that I am that can/will, take the time to run some STFs with me so I can get specific marks isn't always possible. It is only the fact that there are now choice marks available in the only STFs guaranteed to pop no matter what day/time it is that allows me to get the marks I need for my other toons in any reasonable amount of time.
New(er) players who have not yet found a good and active Fleet, and who can't play the game all day long, every day, have only one way to get most marks in any reasonable amount of time. The choice marks available in the only STFs that actually pop no matter the day/time.
Getting rid of the choice of marks will not serve to make the other STFs more active. Dedicated players with lots of play time available already have all the marks they need and still won't be playing them. New(er) players with only a few hours a day/week to play also still won't be playing them as the STFs will still be dead and they will give up on either rep marks or the entire game.
Once they made BRA and TRA actual cues, even they were mostly vacant until they added choice of marks to them. Unless they add another way to get rep marks, removing the choice of marks will accomplish nothing other than killing the few STFs that do actually pop other than MIA, CCA and ISA. And adding a different way to get the marks, like say, a battlezone for each rep, still won't make the STFs active.
Let's face it, Some STFs are fun, others not so fun. Doesn't matter, no content remains fun for all but a few after running it time after time after time after time. The only reason left to run STFs is for the rewards. Dedicated players max their rep marks in a very short time when each new rep starts and then they go back to playing whichever STF is giving out the max non-rep mark rewards in the shortest time, leaving the other STFs dead yet again, and leaving other players with no way to get rep marks in a reasonable time frame except for having choice of marks in a few STFs. Putting choice of marks in all STFs wouldn't make any of the others any more active either because the only STFs that will stay active are the ones giving the max rewards for the min time, whether it's rep marks or other.
But again if you have decent dps you can farm Romulan Patrols Japori 4/5 times before the 1st mark box timer runs out and puts that patrol on cd, means you can pick up 1960 to 2400 dil from that patrol, move on to Acamar and do the same and so forth so 25 mins of play doing Romulan Patrols and there's you 8k daily without touching the Queues.
There should be no dil rewards for doing feature episodes they should be the immersion and levelling experience from 1-60.
Admiralty isn't just the issue, dil is to easily and readily available from a variety of sources.
I really know at this point what would save the queues. I do know the Iconian and Terran STF's reward a pittance in terms of time taken for completion. So a increase in marks for those is well overdue.
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My main has over 1 million unrefined dil and it's constantly going up. Lowering dil from admiralty won't be any reason at all to make me play more queues. If STF's are fun and rewarding, I'll play them. How each individual defines "rewarding" is the key. Perhaps for the OP, STF's are a solid source of dil. If I'm running an STF, it's for marks and the elite mark tokens. This is my incentive. Nerfing admiralty will have no effect on my STF schedule at all. It will only serve to make me frustrated about the other aspects of the game that I currently enjoy.
There are tons of queues to join and only so many players to fill them. Of course some will fill slow or not at all. Many players will gravitate to the most rewarding queues and again, how players feel rewarded varies from person to person.
The queued content is just as repetitive as anything else in the game. Narrowing options by cutting rewards is not going to make the public queues more fun to play.
Like I said above, there are a lot of issues with queues right now, this is just one of them. I'd actually say that having rewards lumped so much into a single system actually narrows down options.
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Didn't we lose enough players with the last round of nerfs? The queues are dead because many of then are simply no fun to play and the rewards suck. You don't fix that by finding good sources of rewards and reducing/removing them. Take the content you want people to play and fix it. Start by giving us a UI that actually works, then look at the total number of queues. How many of these are really necessary? How many should just be cut completely? Compare them to queues that people actually run and make changes to make them more desirable.
Cryptic logic tells you that the way you get people to do something is by finding the thing they do instead and making that thing worthless. It's a philosophy that has never worked and done nothing but contribute to dwindling player counts. You encourage people to do content by making that content desirable. You don't kill off the alternative, it's a bad idea. All you do is leave people with no good options and then they play something else instead.
I don't have time to run queues every single day. As it is right now, I can use Admiralty during the week to keep pace and then on weekends when I have time, I run the queues that I enjoy because it's fun. Taking away Admiralty won't get me to run queues all week, it will just get me to stop logging in daily.
Or he's just thinking of solutions to a problem most of us (if not all of us) have to deal with. Feel free to launch your own ideas if you think you've got a better solution
There's really a finite number of times anyone can be expected to run the same unvarying content.
MMO's cannot produce content as fast as it is consumed. That's a given, so some repetition cannot be avoided. But instead of making repeating the same content more attractive (for instance, through more variation in the missions themselves) Cryptic's solution has always been to just add some interesting stuff to the queues through the reputation system.
And that's, I think, the core of the problem. Cause you're not making repeating the same content more attractive by actually changing something in the content itself, you're just slapping more rewards on it, hoping that people will find it more fun to play the same content over and over again. Well, we can all see how well that works in the new edition of Sompek. Just slapping rewards on content does not make the content more enjoyable. It might mean that people are more inclined to drag themselves through the content, but that's it really. Even well designed missions get boring after playing it 20 times for a reputation that you're playing to obtain better gear to... play the exact same content again for the 21st time I guess.
People might be motivated to go to work every day because there's some interesting reward at the end of the week/month. For a game that's supposed to be fun at all times, you'll have to use a different strategy though:
- Rewards should be easily obtained, especially in missions that take longer. No one plays CCA because it's so much fun to look at a snowflake for 30 seconds and then warp out again.
- Most of the newer missions like Gravity Kills are well designed and fun; but these are still too predictable. Some variation could solve that.
I've long felt that STO is becoming too much of a "non-game" for want of a better word as it seems to be more and more filled with clicky menus than actual skilled, multiplayer content.
The fact that someone can essentially never fly a starship at all and make enough resources to get anything they want seems wrong for a game that has the ship as essentially an extension of your character. And the fact you can do all this solo sitting on your backside in ESD, mostly whilst afk seems at odds with the very nature of an MMO.
Put simply the easy-mode clicky menu content is over rewarding and the actual skilled aspects of the game requiring multi-player flying has rewards that are mostly fubar.
So it's no wonder queues are dead and people never leave their spacedock.
There is plenty enough variation in the queue list, but most of them are "not fun"...because it makes you feel like a sucker to do a long mission for the same reward you could get from watching a snowflake for 30 seconds.
I wouldn't say the rep items count as rewards for the queues, any more than stuff you buy with dil. There are too many alternatives for getting marks. And you don't really need that gear for anything either. It's not unusually good in general or provide unique solutions to any specific challenges. It's just "options." I find it's enough to simply do the rep tiers and then ignore the gear, with the knowledge I could buy the gear anytime if the need arises...which it rarely does.
Compare that to when the sets were rare drops and everyone wanted to get them just to have them. All 6 of the original borg STFs were busy, because they all gave a unique reward that people wanted. The moment the rep system was launched and the rewards homogenized, all interest focused on ISE and to a lesser extent the other two space queues.
Likewise, even before Admiralty, I rarely queued up for things, unless that was the only way to earn marks/Elite marks. And even then, only to get what I wanted out of a given Reputation.
Otherwise, I'd rely on runs through the Voth Battlezone, event rewards, and the conversion of unused marks to get my daily allotment of dilithium.
Again, the actual reasons for the "dead" queues are a touch more complicated; one such reason being that many queues still don't feel like they reward as much as they should for the time and effort needed. Perhaps people should be coming up with ideas to incentivize players to partake in the queues that doesn't involve nerfing anything else that feels more rewarding. Otherwise, what you're likely going to get is, not only will people still not be playing the queues, but some might stop bothering to log in at all....
Yeah I think this should come back at some point. Preferably a consumable of sorts. It can be unique 1x Admiralty cards or token passes for example. Something useful enough that people would want them for various reasons that is uniquely rewarded for each queue. Rare enough to make them sought after, yet common enough not to be frustrating to acquire.
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I'd go with gear, clothes, etc.