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Mark Choice Packages Decimating Queues

“Add the competitive war games marks to the Epohh store!”

“No one signs up for queues!”

“People follow the rewards: least amount of work for most amount of marks.”

All common refrains, yet people don’t seem to put two and two together; they don’t mind as the number of people playing queues declines each week, so long as they can get their marks.

Why does someone deserve a “reputation” for PvP if he or she isn’t willing to play competitive queues? Think it’s unfair to be forced to play competitive missions? I think it’s unfair that you get to run around with competitive traits and gear having never competed.

How is a person’s “reputation” for fighting Iconians/Undine/etc. enhanced by spamming Red Alerts or other missions with mark choice? No other missions will pop? Yeah, because they’re being skipped in favor of the easy stuff.

Why would someone trying to hit that 1200-1300 mark cap needed to get to tier 5 in a reputation play a mission that takes ten minutes when they can get the marks from gimmicks like the Terran event or Epohh’s?

This mark choice garbage is making it possible to bypass half of the game. No one is going to queue up for missions if there’s a path of least resistance. The water is spilling over the sides of the dam. Players, the water in this analogy, are maxing our their rep and then saying, “well, that was boring. Onto the next game.” It is boring to them precisely because it has been reduced to an effortless grind. There’s no feeling of accomplishment from turning in Epohhs. There’s no feeling of scarcity or prestige attached to reputations. Some people are able to take an easy track while those of us who go out of our way to play the different queues and experience years of work programming and designing are left scratching our heads, “why won’t anyone play this great content with us?”

Because they don’t have to. They’ve been conditioned to max out everything as quick as possible because, otherwise, they can’t compete. This is a complex problem of power creep, grind-core gaming, entitlement, and apathy.

So keep begging for every single reputation mark to made available to you without having to put in the work. I guess I will have to get used to Binary Circuit and Core Assault popping once a week now.

End rant.
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    leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,344 Arc User
    Rant appreciated and I totally agree. Choice packs ruined STF's et all.
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
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    davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,512 Arc User
    Some of those queues and battle zones (Tzenkethi) were broken or painful to play, and without fixes mark choice packages are (like Obi-wan) our only hope.
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    ichaerus1ichaerus1 Member Posts: 986 Arc User
    Agreed. I actually liked running the Core Assault STF.
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    nikephorusnikephorus Member Posts: 2,744 Arc User
    The queues have been decimated for a long time and the choose your marks boxes are not the cause.
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    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    valoreah wrote: »
    The lack of decent rewards and inequity of time/effort vs. reward is what is decimating the queues, more so than mark choice.
    Choice marks are the reason the queues don't have decent rewards anymore. If marks were only available from playing specific content as originally designed, the marks themselves would be decent rewards.
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    tirpider#8006 tirpider Member Posts: 38 Arc User
    I agree with the sentiment, but also totally take advantage of the choice of marks situation and would miss it if it changed. If the only way to get the flak cannon was to play competitive queues, I'd stop flying ships with the experimental slot.
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    sheldonlcoopersheldonlcooper Member Posts: 4,042 Arc User
    This winter I will gain some 25,000 competitive marks by winning the pvp race in Q's. This is done solely to satisfy my OCD so that I have over 5000 of each mark type on all characters. I plan to buy nothing.

    I hear what you're saying op. However, the game doesn't have enough players to fulfill all the different rep queues. We have many more queues and many less players. So if someone makes a new character it would be very difficult for them to get all these reps done without the choice of marks.
    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."

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    warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    Always funny to see people speculate on how many players the game has, based on absolutely nothing. :D

    We have plenty enough players to play the queues, if there were some reason to do so. Which there is not.
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    where2r1where2r1 Member Posts: 6,054 Arc User
    This just goes round and round and round....

    Started with people complaining Queues weren't popping and they could not get Rep completed...
    So, Cryptic added the Mark boxes to other things.

    Now, we have threads like this one.
    "Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK

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    djf021djf021 Member Posts: 1,379 Arc User
    I agree with the sentiment, but also totally take advantage of the choice of marks situation and would miss it if it changed. If the only way to get the flak cannon was to play competitive queues, I'd stop flying ships with the experimental slot.

    This is my exact concern right now. When competitive was new, I used my Tac Rommie in a Faeht to advance through it, and had no trouble getting all the marks I wanted, including for the flak cannon. But my newest Tac character is trying to get the cannon, and it's almost impossible to get the competitive ques to pop.
    While I agree something needs to be done about empty ques, I'm glad the competitive marks were added today.
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    echattyechatty Member Posts: 5,914 Arc User
    The old adage of you can't please everyone all the time. One group will always hate this or that and another group will always hate something else.
    Now a LTS and loving it.
    Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
    I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything. :D
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    tigerariestigeraries Member Posts: 3,492 Arc User
    edited December 2017
    woops wrong thead...

    but choice marks are best since I can skip the ques I dont want to play.
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    kodachikunokodachikuno Member Posts: 6,020 Arc User1
    only reason I bothered completing the last few reps, especially competitive, was because I could get the marks from a quick RA. Many of the Queues are not fun, or just too long for the rewards they pass out.
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    protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,985 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    Player population is just fine, stable as it ever has been from any actual source of real data we have. There has been no big exodus, no "players leaving in droves", its all hyperbolic nonsense.

    Things aren't exactly very lively either, so not nonsense, but based upon observations from an ever increasing number of players who are concerned enough to post about it in these forums or even make a video about the state of the game.

    I actually agree with the OP but at the same time things have gotten to the point where certain marks would be very difficult to get as others have mentioned without "choice of marks".

    There ain't nothing wrong about about a player who enjoys spirited team play getting frustrated and posting about it at this point.

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    orangenee#2931 orangenee Member Posts: 837 Arc User
    I'm a relatively new player and my choice of queues are the RAs, maybe fed/gorn minefield, ISA and that's about it. I don't do ground queues, just battlezones so don't keep an eye on them. Badlands, fun. Dyson, can be fun if people turn up. Kobali needs a drastic reduction in spawn rate due to the very last mission being nigh impossible with the stupid get hit can't operate stuff mechanic (like MI).

    I've not dabbled in eppohs as I have enough grind thanks. Cryptic can't make people queue but they can provide alternatives, which they have. Can't please everybody
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    salazarrazesalazarraze Member Posts: 3,794 Arc User
    I've been saying this for a long long time, OP.
    When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
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    protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,985 Arc User
    azrael605 wrote: »
    > @protoneous said:
    > azrael605 wrote: »
    >
    > Player population is just fine, stable as it ever has been from any actual source of real data we have. There has been no big exodus, no "players leaving in droves", its all hyperbolic nonsense.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    > Things aren't exactly very lively either, so not nonsense, but based upon observations from an ever increasing number of players who are concerned enough to post about it in these forums or even make a video about the state of the game.
    >
    > I actually agree with the OP but at the same time things have gotten to the point where certain marks would be very difficult to get as others have mentioned without "choice of marks".
    >
    > There ain't nothing wrong about about a player who enjoys spirited team play getting frustrated and posting about it at this point.

    Except that the only empirical evidence says that the player population is almost exactly the same as it was last year at this time, the year before that, and the year before that. There are some minor fluctuations up and down but on average its rock steady.

    I hear ya, and hope the only empirical evidence is accurate as I'm quite fond of this game and very much want to see it have good long term health and a positive appeal to new players. You can also try and come to some conclusions based upon observation, but in the end without either accurate EE or enough observations to come to a reasonable conclusion all we're left with is opinions.

    From some aspects though, queue population being one of them, the only conclusion I can personally come to without risking overstatement is perhaps we could have had a better year.

    Just came away with 313 temporal marks and a bunch of other good stuff from an MIE on a 3 week old toon. I'd rather do things this way (even better with friends) but there are times when it just isn't reasonable given wait times. Would eliminating COM make it possible more often or eliminate an option that works for a good portion of the player base?

    "Choice of marks" really is a hot button topic.

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    spacehermitspacehermit Member Posts: 355 Arc User
    I can only speak for myself, but I avoid queues for the simple reason that I find them boring and repetitive.
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    peterconnorfirstpeterconnorfirst Member Posts: 6,225 Arc User
    edited December 2017
    I agree with the OP completely but I gave up hope we ever see a change.

    Even though parts of me would love to force peeps more into queues to really earn their rewards I don’t think this is the way to go anymore. Not with this player base. If they made reputation marks for respective queues exclusive again players would simply choose not to do reputations. It’s only natural as none of it is needed for the 90% of non-engaging content this game consists of. Perhaps some would be upset over the missing costume options but that would be it.
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