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Does anyone enjoy Endgame more than the episodes?
archer01
Member Posts: 99 Arc User
Just out of pure curiosity, does anyone enjoy the endgame content more than the episodes? For me, the episodes are my favorite part of the game by far. As a whole, I like them ten times more than the endgame content, and that may not be an exaggeration. Something about going on a story driven adventure in the Star Trek universe really really appeals to me. I genuinely feel a big rush playing some of them. That said, I don't usually like to replay them.
The endgame grind of repeating the same STFs over and over, each time possibly with better gear does not even remotely come close to the joy I get from the episodes. For some of the queues, it can feel like being forced (not literally) to play an episode over and over. Even with my favorite episodes, I wouldn't want to play them dozens of times. That would feel like torture. I do like the battlezones a lot more because they feel more like repeatable content (hopefully that makes sense). If one agrees with me, feel free to comment too of course.
The endgame grind of repeating the same STFs over and over, each time possibly with better gear does not even remotely come close to the joy I get from the episodes. For some of the queues, it can feel like being forced (not literally) to play an episode over and over. Even with my favorite episodes, I wouldn't want to play them dozens of times. That would feel like torture. I do like the battlezones a lot more because they feel more like repeatable content (hopefully that makes sense). If one agrees with me, feel free to comment too of course.
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Why choose between them?
Mission Queues, special events, Battle Zones, Episode Replay, Foundry Missions, Red Alerts.. it's all part of 'end game content.'
I do it all, sometimes I want to run queues with my fleet, sometimes I want to pick a cool mission or an entire arc and play through it.. sometimes battle zones, etc.
Generally, my favorite things are the queues with fleet or Battle Zones, but I do all of it.
The only things I don't really get into are the special events. I do the Winter Race and the Flying High events for the ships, but I don't take part in anything else in the Wonderland or Risa. None of it interests me, but I have other things to do so it's all good.
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The queues all put out more or less the same generic currencies, most of them in amounts that are nowhere near being even in the same ballpark with the top two. Battlezones are the same.
Episodes have their unique gear sets, but since those are guaranteed and pick-what-you-want, they are worth only 3-4 playtimes at best. If and only if you want the set for some reason in the first place (they aren't actually needed for anything).
And then there's That One Patrol everyone likes to must grind ship XP on...well, everyone who has ships that need XP to grind.
The main problem with the queues is rather simple. Mot of them are dead, because why bother running more than Borg, Tholian and Tzemkethi Red Alerts for what ever mark you need.
The choice marks are what really kills the end game here. They make all the other queues complete and utterly pointless. Sure, you can run Adv for the elite marks, to speed up getting any gear you want. But, if you're not in that big of a hurry, meh, takes 5 days to get a piece of gear by trading in 100 marks on said Elite mark.
But, you're also right. There's no incentive to play queues, or even rerun episodes, after you have all the gear you want from it. You can ignore them, just like the endeavor system.
Which, the endeavor system, is a waste of time for any one to bother with. It's rewards are mediocre, at best. I can make more off a Tour the Galaxy than I can in 2 or 3 of these thing, which takes up to 6 day. Tour the Galaxy I can run daily, on all my character if i choose. Some could are the occassional dilithium reward is worth it. But, again, 2000 dil? Meh, 5 contraband gets me that a day. Meaning 4k dil on one character, I have like 10, so 20K dil, in the time one /might/ get 2K dil from an Endeavor. So this system only really exists to get people to go out and do stuff, just to pad Crypitcs numbers.
I know, right. The Endeavor system had such great potential, that they then had to completely squander by dumping in a little box of random generic currencies as the only reward. If it had anything at all that was unique and exclusive to it, even as a 1% drop, people would be jumping at the chance to do them.
CCA and ISA? Maybe if I'm bored. Which currently, when I'm in game, I have Risa event for. I actually don't bother that much with end game, or what people call end game, any more. No need for me to. Sure, i could level my alts reputations, but ehh, most of those are just dil farmers any how. Plus I can use the events, like Mirror Invansion, to farm what I need to there.
As far as dill goes, as long as I get the 2K per day, plus any other from doffing or admiralty, I'm good. I've already got a back stock of over 1 million refined dil. So, this isn't even a concern any more.
As far as gear from episodes go. There are a few good pieces out there, most of it is mediocre at best. Unless is something I'm after, the only time I rerun an episode is when there's a trait involved. Once I have those, I don't revisit said episode ever again. Aside from my Halloween mission, What Lies Beneath. Sorry, the Hearts and Minds one fails at being good for that.
Let's look at the difference here.
Before the introduction of the Reputation and Fleet systems, and gear all over the place. One had to work for it. Especially with the Mk X, XI, and XII trade up. Plus if you wanted any VR Mk XII gear outside of that. You were hitting episodes, running DSE's, and/or running queues like, Breaking the Planet or Starbase Blockade. This complied with the fact the Featured Episode, wasn't a "Please play this for this gear and either an upgrade token or specialization point." But a rotating series of weekly episodes, that had accolades attached to them. So you always had something to go do.
Flash forward to present.
Now to get geared you don't have to do much. Really, I'll list it.
Go play that episode for that set if you want.
Get it from a reputation, which you have to level.
Get it from a fleet.
And, to accomplish the last two, all you need to do is run the following:
Borg Red Alert
Tholian Red Alert
Tzenkethi Red Alert
For the extra fleet marks:
Crystalline Catastrophe Normal or Adv.
End game here is, maxing any new reputation they put out, while waiting for the next fleet holding to drop. Anyone that doesn't see this is either blind, or just trying to white knight. Neither of which are helpful to improving the game.
Now, does this mean, some of it isn't enjoyable. No, as I stated, I enjoy What Lies Beneath. Other thing I've enjoyed in the game, the temple on Kobali, the Power Distribution Problem on Drozana, and Tenebris Torquent, to name a few. As far as queues go, well look to the ones that never fill. You know the ones, that have mechanics and challenges to them, even in normal.
The problem here, other than the mediocre reward and lack of any incentive at all to do them, is rather simple. Everyone wants to get everything for doing nothing, and a great majority of the game is setup to allow that. The gamma bz actualy rewards you for doing nothing. Literally. go there, queue in, start it, and go get a drink or something, perhaps alt tab, and check back after a few minutes to get your reward. That's it. That's all you have to do for the gamma bz. Because the large reward here is based of number of participation's, not whether or not you do anything else or not.
You mean Space Barbie?
Sad, but true, and even it is screwed up. All the restrictions and clipping issues. Making the hardest challenge of this, building a custom outfit that doesn't clip to badly.
I would like to have some (even less) similar rewards (marks/crafting/dil) from story and even foundry missions. BUT that would mean less population in STFs, which seems to be The Metric That Rules Them All.
True, we haven't seen something like this since the old Borg Elites. Back when you needed tanks and healers. Or you built your group out of Zone chat. It's sad that these have been removed. Which, they have no excuse for any more. The problem with the one-shot has come back. So, whatever band-aid they slapped on this, finally fell off. Which is the old rendering problem, that made the borg elites to hard after fleets, and all the pewpew focused gear, came out.
I mean, far be it from me to say this, but the old Borg Elite were fun. When I played them, sure they were hard, and the one-shot was a problem. But, we didn't complain it was such, and we did it in much weaker ships than we have now. At best here a plain old T5 from promotion, or a lockbox ship. I personally did them in a patrol escort on my tac, and the MU Recon Sci vessel on my Science officer. Both of which were setup to tank Armek.
Yes, I've seen the one-shot problem in various different ways with ViL. For instance doing the Gamma BZ, Break the Circle, the tractor beam repulsors of the hur'q ignoring shields completely and doing direct damage to the hull of my ship. Literally, 100% shields, and down to 37% hull from this alone. I've also be hit with a one-shot in these as well.
You mean this would hurt the active queues, the Red Alerts and CCA. I'd say 90% of the other queues here are already dead. SO this really wouldn't hurt that. Again, this is mostly the fault of the choice mark you get from the Red Alerts.
It's one of the things we've asked for over the years, unique drops. Use to be able to get something like this pre-LoR and reputations. Use to be ale to get PvP gear as a drop. Use to have to try you luck at the Borg Elites in the hope of the MACO helmet dropping.
This could be done with outfit pieces, like Leeta's Belt, or Armek's Arm.
But this will never happen. All we'll ever get here is a new reputation, another mark, and another choice in marks in the Red alerts.
When it comes to things like this. Just set you expectation bar down near to "never." Because that's when Cryptic will go this route.
It take me already like 5-6 hours daily. It's enough time passed on an MMO, for me.
All in only purpose to get more Dilithium. I am almost done with all reputations and episodes rewards, on all my characters. So I don't care about that.
I prefere gather Dilithium from queued PvE, because I prefer play with people more than alone and also because they are more rewarding for the time passed.
I like the roleplay also, so episodes are interesting to run in coop but, the roleplay ing not suit greatly the farming (not all case in fact).
Something boring and need to be fixed is the unbalancing between queued.
For example alerts give in 5 min as much Lukari reputation than the advanced mission Gravity Kill witch one it's only for get Lukari reputation.
But did you done this queued? I did it 2-3 times for test it and every time it was catastophic. We not succeed at any optional objectives, but also die and die all the time, complete this mission took about 2 hours.
So, yes we were not opti and we surely took objectives from the wrong way. But it's extreme here.
Also I am agree about add more sandbox for the endgame. It would be great!
@sirsitsalot I was tempted to skip (or skim) your post because of it's length, but I'm glad I read the whole thing. You are seriously on to something, here. I love your story of the energy harvester and the rifleman. I wish we could do things like that here. It would give me a reason to get the endgame gear, as apposed to getting it just to have it. And don't even get me started about the concept of needing the endgame gear in order to complete the missions that will be finished once you've unlocked said gear.
TBH they need to add the "daily random queue" for choice of marks and dil. This works in NW.
And with that they can add "daily random episode", too.
A daily featured queue would be nice, but should reward something new and interesting not yet another load of same old, same old.