Yes good idea to get back on topic, some of us got a bit carried away there!
Anyhoo.....to add in some ideas for restoring some "faith" and numbers in the queue system:
I've posted this stuff many times before and others have had similar ideas too i think.
Idea 1
Create an algorithum that looks at all queues each week and looks at the 10 least played. It then selects at least two of those (1 ground, 1 space) to "boost".
The boosted maps are chosen randomly from the least populated of the past week because other maps with bigger player numbers don't need any help (ISA and CCA presumably).
Said maps get massively increased rewards for the duration of the week OR they get some unique repeatable event reward added (like an Endeavor box or similar, perhaps tech upgrades, consumable cosmetics etc).
Hopefully the boosted queues get a massive influx of players and they are less dead for that week.
At the end of the week the game picks another set of queues to boost, the conditions are the same as previously but also cannot include the boosted maps from the week that just past. This avoids duplicate weeks or popular queues getting boosted too much.
The end result is unpopular queues become something that give and incentive to play again.
Idea 2
Every week the game randomly selects any queues to boost as mentioned above with a reward boost that is significantly better than any other queue in play at the time.
The game cannot select the top 5 most popular queues of the past week, so it cannot boost the inevitable ISA, CCA combo (these are always gonna be popular).
It selects at least a ground and space queue to keep everyone happy.
It could also pick multiple difficulties to cater to all abilities.
Idea 3
Add in random loot drops that are enticing enough that all players want them and are also unique to each queue.
Said items can be tricky to acquire like the old Borg rep gear but they can also be traded on the exchange for EC.
Items could be for example Epic level gear/weapons, costume unlocks, shield visuals, lobi crystal vouchers(?), ships, who knows...lots of things could be added to entice players.
Players can either grind for items which fills up the queues.
Or they can buy the items for EC if they so desire, creating a market for the item to be farmed by those willing to fill the queues.
Queues get filled either way, by people grinding their own gear or players farming said gear for those not willing to do the legwork.
That's just a few I've come up with over the years.
Let us disable an npc and have the same outcome, or cause them to flee in panic to let us win a fight. Not just constant killing things as fast as possible.
^^ This struck me as particularly poignant. It has always slightly irritated me that NPC's just sit there, until their hull reaches 0%. That mechanic really only rewards DPS. An improved A.I., which could actually cause an NPC to throw in the towel (on power shutdown, disables, etc) would not only make the game more realistic, but also give specialized builds (not just specialized in DPS) a fairer chance.
+ npc's use always the same skills; it is sad to see a sphrere trying to drain your shield when an other sphere has already done the job. give them an assimilation skill; when this skill succeeds, your ship is stuck for the rest of the duration of the stf. Of course we would have a way to avoid the assimilation, but this "skill" could fail.
To be fair, NPC Scimitar Warbirds tend to cloak - for example in Fleet Alert, when Romulans are the foe, and I.R.W. Falcata in the revamped Romulan Minefield PvE.
Donatra's assimilated Scimitar does too, in Khitomer, although I guess this one is questionable since it is technically a Borg ship.
Yes, they tend to cloak. And then teleport when they think you won't notice .
I went a step beyond this. I picked plasma over disruptors for my romulan ships because the plasma weapon icon looked prettier.
I approve. I am well aware that I miss out on at least two sets that would improve my EPG Nebula because I use phasers, but that's the way I want to characterize the ship.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Didn't we warn them back when they were talking about introducing Reputations with Legacy of Romulus what the possible outcomes of this were?
After reading over some of these posts. All one can say to Cryptic about this is, "You were warned and you did not listen." This is a result of that.
Season 7. And yes, though it isn't exactly the reputation system's fault. Without choice marks and the marks to gear tokens conversion we'd be in a much better place now.
They didn't have to remove the STF drops either, they could've created new gear to put in the rep. That would've been better to have both rep gear and unique drops. Best of both worlds as it were.
Anyone else not able to read the bottom of page 3 because of the quote overloading in the posts?
Thread becomes much less readable when entire essays and dissertations are repeated over and over.
If a queue had unique gear most folk didn't want it'd still be as dead as they are now. The way things are now though there's not going to be any way to fix it quickly or well. Random button might help but only if the time/reward metric is viewed as satisfactory.
In theory the endeavour system could have been used but thats a one off and if you miss the initial flurry then good luck getting a run on day two, even worse on PS4 where the queue system is not worth the time even joining up with how borked it is! IF they'd actually done the personal endeavour system teased for VIL then again that may have helped the queues but conspiracy theories would hint that a lot of the expansion was dropped because of the upcoming discovery stuff.
Cryptics approach does seem to be more if it aint broke poke it til it does and if it is broke then put out new content and hope noone notices its never going to be sorted. So chances are we're stuck with an ever increasing number of STF's on the list for a population that has taken a fair few hits to the active numbers.
Do we actually want them to try and make things better?
Oh I don't know... get a strong enough Gravity Well, or two, and she can cloak and evade all she wants. She'll just reappear RIGHT where she cloaked because HELLO MEGAWELL! lol
I stay away from the queues because cryptic has yet to find a solution to the AFK problem and player trolling and the worst in my opinion is when players join a high-level Q with no knowledge of how to do it, so they end up being more of a liability then an asset which makes the mission more frustrating then fun, because, all the player does is shoot at everything and accomplish nothing and always end up dying every 5 Seconds. Which can either end in a reduced reward or a complete failure of the mission, in which case the majority of the reward is lost.
I really don't like a system that punishes good players when bad players decide to sabotage the mission with their ignorance.
What I would like to see is an individual player reward reduction when they don't heal their injuries and get a reduced reward every time they die during the mission.
At least this way these lazy selfish greedy players will take a more proactive role when they join a high level queue.
9's not gonna happen simply because it's too much scripting work. It's easy in a single player game to make AIs that at least try to think. why because you are only running code for a handful of opponents, but MMOs have millions of AIs to run code for. a handful of simple decisions is about all you're gonna get really.
honestly, there's two main things that really take the biscuit though. 1: the number of people queueing (for example) Bug Hunt is the number of people who WANT to play Bug Hunt badly enough to actually queue for it. 2: if choice of marks is the EASY option then people will take it. Yes, really Borg Red Alerts are part of the problem. One of the easiest queues in the game and it gives any mark you want except Gamma. If all people want is marks why bother with other stuff?
IMO the unique R&D mat rewards were a good idea... that quickly got thrown away by making them easy to get elsewhere.
3 would be a bad idea, for those who don't have billions of ec. + we have already enough random stuff in sto. At least with the rep system, a player can choose which gear or piece of set, he/she wants and the way to grab these objects.
I stay away from the queues because cryptic has yet to find a solution to the AFK problem and player trolling and the worst in my opinion is when players join a high-level Q with no knowledge of how to do it, so they end up being more of a liability then an asset which makes the mission more frustrating then fun, because, all the player does is shoot at everything and accomplish nothing and always end up dying every 5 Seconds. Which can either end in a reduced reward or a complete failure of the mission, in which case the majority of the reward is lost.
I really don't like a system that punishes good players when bad players decide to sabotage the mission with their ignorance.
What I would like to see is an individual player reward reduction when they don't heal their injuries and get a reduced reward every time they die during the mission.
At least this way these lazy selfish greedy players will take a more proactive role when they join a high level queue.
Not saying people shouldn't heal their injuries as they occur. Not disagreeing with you entirely as sometimes it feels like I cleared over half the map in certain queues then look at my damage taken %/team and probably did... folks should always try their best. I am suggesting that your somewhat strong description of some players and the conclusions you've come to may stem from a different reason and be symptomatic of something else.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe they just need some practice with some particular queues that don't pop very often and the lack of a chance to properly learn a queue is a symptom in itself? I guess they could always search youtube for a video?
I can think of a couple queues I only played a few times or rarely play that I may be a bit rusty at and the normal and advanced versions of them where you learn or refresh yourself just aren't happening that often. There's a couple elite ground queues I do quite well at but it's only because I managed to learn them while they were new and still popular. The chance at learning them properly if I was a new player today would be a lot harder and at the very least the process would be a lot slower.
Injuries, as they exist now, are indeed just a waste of time and space. They should be made more severe and not instantly removable. I'd prefer some kind of maintenance minigame I could repair my own ships. Or leave it in drydock for 18 hours like the Admiralty ships.
Or just removed if they want to keep up with the easy mode.
Not saying people shouldn't heal their injuries as they occur.
It isn't really practical to do this. Most injury-healers are located in the most remote corners of the universe and it's pretty impractical to get there, ESPECIALLY in the middle of a mission. All other alternatives involve consumables, meaning, if I use them, I will no longer have them.
Never, in my entire existence in STO -- save for the first 2 weeks, maybe -- have I ever had the need to buy minor/major injury heals. Like I mean, ever. I just seem to always have them (apparently they drop from queues; I don't even notice any more).
Also, much like I never enter a public arena with a ship that isn't fully Mastered, likewise I never bring a ship with injuries to the field. I consider it a minimal form of politeness to my team mates.
Also, much like I never enter a public arena with a ship that isn't fully Mastered, likewise I never bring a ship with injuries to the field. I consider it a minimal form of politeness to my team mates.
I'm pretty much always flying a ship that isn't fully mastered. Because if I'm not collecting ship XP, I'm wasting it.
And lately I've come to leave the injuries there, too. They'll go away when it's time to switch to the next trait bait. They don't affect anything important.
1. Remove all reputation PVE content and revamp them as single-player missions integrating them into the appropriate campaign for example the Borg missions would go under the Borg campaign. I realize this would be a great deal of work but it would allow players to play this content solo and not have to completly throw them away.
I wouldn't get rid of the queues completely, instead I'd keep them for private queues instead, that should remove the bots and AFKers, and leave the trolls with less places to annoy people.
4. Revamp all battle zones and rewards to Dyson sphere standards. I'm mainly thinking of Defera and Kobali prime. Battle zone are to me the more popular content. Revamping old zones to conform to Dyson sphere standards would get people playing older content again. The reason I choose the Dyson zone as a standard is because it is still very popular even though its several seasons old now. (If it ain't broke dont fix it).
The reason the Dyson ground BZ is still popular is down to the fact the place is full of bots and dil farmers, there are certain times of the day when you can find that you are the only player in the instance that is actually at the keyboard.
What Cryptic should have done there was remove the V'Rex and replace them with a pile of Voth, the more players at a silo the more Voth show up, they should set the dil reward for the silo to the minimum and spread the rest of it around the capture points.
This game has a big problem with bots and AFK farmers, and places like Defera and Kobali suffer from them. Believe it or not but Defera and Nukara used to give out the exact same rewards, Cryptic has ran a couple of reward upgrades since then, Defera got 40 dil a mission, while Nukara got large mark and dil upgrades, it went from 5/7 marks to 15/25 marks, and if you do all 5 missions on the outside map and the same on the inside map, then you're pretty close to your 8k dil for the day.
Not saying people shouldn't heal their injuries as they occur.
It isn't really practical to do this. Most injury-healers are located in the most remote corners of the universe and it's pretty impractical to get there, ESPECIALLY in the middle of a mission. All other alternatives involve consumables, meaning, if I use them, I will no longer have them.
Honestly, injuries should just be abolished from the game. They really don't add anything positive to gameplay, and only serve to infuriate other players who grossly overestimate their relevance. And by "others", I mean "not the people who actually HAVE the injuries". I often don't bother to fix mine because they don't even pertain to anything on my ship! What difference does it make if I have minus-some-small-percentage to energy weapon damage if I have no energy weapons? What difference does it make if I lose torpedo damage if I have no torpedoes? Most of them don't pertain to anything I even have installed on my ship! Leaving them there at least takes up space in the injury bag, preventing other injuries to things I might actually care about.
Leaving injuries up "to take up space in your injury bag, preventing other injuries to things you might actually care about" is an advanced approach I somehow missed, but will adopt immediately.
This is a fine example of how knowledge sharing through the forums by people intimately familiar with the mechanics of the game can improve everybody's game play and efficiency. Thank you.
I know I'm somewhat new to posting here though I've played for quite a while on console so please forgive me for tossing in a few more cents.
As someone else pointed out...if only players who know what they're doing and have tuned their ships properly ever play a queue...how does one learn? My first ventures into the advanced queues were somewhat cautious as I didn't know if I was going to be able to handle them (turned out I was fine for advanced...haven't dipped into elite yet). Imagine some other new player who's trying advanced or elite queues for the first time...they don't know if they can handle it until they try. Maybe give some players a break while they learn what they can handle and how to find their place in more advanced queues.
Also, there's a lot of talk about rewards/time ratio...what happened to playing because you enjoy it? I enjoy playing different queues because I enjoy playing the game, rewards are a nice bonus. I'd happily play a variety of the queues if they were up just to get the variety that's why I suggested a 'random' button. They could toss a little bit better rewards for those studying their reward/time ratios and it would allow players queuing for something specific to have a better chance of getting a queue to populate.
Don't come down too badly on some players who seem a little lost or struggling to pull their weight, they're not always greedy etc etc players some are just taking their first steps into a broader world.
Not saying people shouldn't heal their injuries as they occur.
It isn't really practical to do this. Most injury-healers are located in the most remote corners of the universe and it's pretty impractical to get there, ESPECIALLY in the middle of a mission. All other alternatives involve consumables, meaning, if I use them, I will no longer have them.
Honestly, injuries should just be abolished from the game. They really don't add anything positive to gameplay, and only serve to infuriate other players who grossly overestimate their relevance. And by "others", I mean "not the people who actually HAVE the injuries". I often don't bother to fix mine because they don't even pertain to anything on my ship! What difference does it make if I have minus-some-small-percentage to energy weapon damage if I have no energy weapons? What difference does it make if I lose torpedo damage if I have no torpedoes? Most of them don't pertain to anything I even have installed on my ship! Leaving them there at least takes up space in the injury bag, preventing other injuries to things I might actually care about.
Leaving injuries up "to take up space in your injury bag, preventing other injuries to things you might actually care about" is an advanced approach I somehow missed, but will adopt immediately.
This is a fine example of how knowledge sharing through the forums by people intimately familiar with the mechanics of the game can improve everybody's game play and efficiency. Thank you.
And now you're applauding him too. LOL. What a strange world we live in, where ppl cheer others for having so many ship injuries, they go to an injury overflow bag even, and leaving it all like that. More power to you both! But I'm not like that at all.
Neither am I. If I get a ship injury I'll heal it. Usually after I leave the queue at the end. Sometimes I don't even notice if I get an injury till after I leave. I also pick up tons of the various scraps I need to fix injuries, so no reason to buy any or head to a ship repair zone.
Then again, the only time I do any advanced queues is CCA, when I want to stock up on Radiogenic particles, or when CCA is active. During MI I only play the normal one. I don't do any of the other events like that, because I don't know how to do them, though I guess I could try, if the reward was something I wanted. And it would be a nice diversion.
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.
Comments
Anyhoo.....to add in some ideas for restoring some "faith" and numbers in the queue system:
I've posted this stuff many times before and others have had similar ideas too i think.
Idea 1
Idea 2
Idea 3
That's just a few I've come up with over the years.
^^ This struck me as particularly poignant. It has always slightly irritated me that NPC's just sit there, until their hull reaches 0%. That mechanic really only rewards DPS. An improved A.I., which could actually cause an NPC to throw in the towel (on power shutdown, disables, etc) would not only make the game more realistic, but also give specialized builds (not just specialized in DPS) a fairer chance.
I approve. I am well aware that I miss out on at least two sets that would improve my EPG Nebula because I use phasers, but that's the way I want to characterize the ship.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
After reading over some of these posts. All one can say to Cryptic about this is, "You were warned and you did not listen." This is a result of that.
They didn't have to remove the STF drops either, they could've created new gear to put in the rep. That would've been better to have both rep gear and unique drops. Best of both worlds as it were.
They could still make it like that.
Thread becomes much less readable when entire essays and dissertations are repeated over and over.
If a queue had unique gear most folk didn't want it'd still be as dead as they are now. The way things are now though there's not going to be any way to fix it quickly or well. Random button might help but only if the time/reward metric is viewed as satisfactory.
In theory the endeavour system could have been used but thats a one off and if you miss the initial flurry then good luck getting a run on day two, even worse on PS4 where the queue system is not worth the time even joining up with how borked it is! IF they'd actually done the personal endeavour system teased for VIL then again that may have helped the queues but conspiracy theories would hint that a lot of the expansion was dropped because of the upcoming discovery stuff.
Cryptics approach does seem to be more if it aint broke poke it til it does and if it is broke then put out new content and hope noone notices its never going to be sorted. So chances are we're stuck with an ever increasing number of STF's on the list for a population that has taken a fair few hits to the active numbers.
Do we actually want them to try and make things better?
I really don't like a system that punishes good players when bad players decide to sabotage the mission with their ignorance.
What I would like to see is an individual player reward reduction when they don't heal their injuries and get a reduced reward every time they die during the mission.
At least this way these lazy selfish greedy players will take a more proactive role when they join a high level queue.
honestly, there's two main things that really take the biscuit though. 1: the number of people queueing (for example) Bug Hunt is the number of people who WANT to play Bug Hunt badly enough to actually queue for it. 2: if choice of marks is the EASY option then people will take it. Yes, really Borg Red Alerts are part of the problem. One of the easiest queues in the game and it gives any mark you want except Gamma. If all people want is marks why bother with other stuff?
IMO the unique R&D mat rewards were a good idea... that quickly got thrown away by making them easy to get elsewhere.
My character Tsin'xing
Did it ever occur to you that maybe they just need some practice with some particular queues that don't pop very often and the lack of a chance to properly learn a queue is a symptom in itself? I guess they could always search youtube for a video?
I can think of a couple queues I only played a few times or rarely play that I may be a bit rusty at and the normal and advanced versions of them where you learn or refresh yourself just aren't happening that often. There's a couple elite ground queues I do quite well at but it's only because I managed to learn them while they were new and still popular. The chance at learning them properly if I was a new player today would be a lot harder and at the very least the process would be a lot slower.
#havepatiencewithnewandfellowplayers
Or just removed if they want to keep up with the easy mode.
Never, in my entire existence in STO -- save for the first 2 weeks, maybe -- have I ever had the need to buy minor/major injury heals. Like I mean, ever. I just seem to always have them (apparently they drop from queues; I don't even notice any more).
Also, much like I never enter a public arena with a ship that isn't fully Mastered, likewise I never bring a ship with injuries to the field. I consider it a minimal form of politeness to my team mates.
And lately I've come to leave the injuries there, too. They'll go away when it's time to switch to the next trait bait. They don't affect anything important.
The reason the Dyson ground BZ is still popular is down to the fact the place is full of bots and dil farmers, there are certain times of the day when you can find that you are the only player in the instance that is actually at the keyboard.
What Cryptic should have done there was remove the V'Rex and replace them with a pile of Voth, the more players at a silo the more Voth show up, they should set the dil reward for the silo to the minimum and spread the rest of it around the capture points.
This game has a big problem with bots and AFK farmers, and places like Defera and Kobali suffer from them. Believe it or not but Defera and Nukara used to give out the exact same rewards, Cryptic has ran a couple of reward upgrades since then, Defera got 40 dil a mission, while Nukara got large mark and dil upgrades, it went from 5/7 marks to 15/25 marks, and if you do all 5 missions on the outside map and the same on the inside map, then you're pretty close to your 8k dil for the day.
This is a fine example of how knowledge sharing through the forums by people intimately familiar with the mechanics of the game can improve everybody's game play and efficiency. Thank you.
As someone else pointed out...if only players who know what they're doing and have tuned their ships properly ever play a queue...how does one learn?
My first ventures into the advanced queues were somewhat cautious as I didn't know if I was going to be able to handle them (turned out I was fine for advanced...haven't dipped into elite yet). Imagine some other new player who's trying advanced or elite queues for the first time...they don't know if they can handle it until they try. Maybe give some players a break while they learn what they can handle and how to find their place in more advanced queues.
Also, there's a lot of talk about rewards/time ratio...what happened to playing because you enjoy it? I enjoy playing different queues because I enjoy playing the game, rewards are a nice bonus. I'd happily play a variety of the queues if they were up just to get the variety that's why I suggested a 'random' button. They could toss a little bit better rewards for those studying their reward/time ratios and it would allow players queuing for something specific to have a better chance of getting a queue to populate.
Don't come down too badly on some players who seem a little lost or struggling to pull their weight, they're not always greedy etc etc players some are just taking their first steps into a broader world.
And now you're applauding him too. LOL. What a strange world we live in, where ppl cheer others for having so many ship injuries, they go to an injury overflow bag even, and leaving it all like that. More power to you both! But I'm not like that at all.
Then again, the only time I do any advanced queues is CCA, when I want to stock up on Radiogenic particles, or when CCA is active. During MI I only play the normal one. I don't do any of the other events like that, because I don't know how to do them, though I guess I could try, if the reward was something I wanted. And it would be a nice diversion.