Not sure this was the right move, to remove Red Alerts in this way - still, it will be worth seeing if it helps repopulate the Queue's...
Another option would have been to just stick a 20-hour cooldown on each Red Alerts to allow us to do one of each in the day and then move to the queue's.
Whatever happened to the Na'Kuhl Red Alerts anyway?
Of course, this isn't going to make much difference on consoles as I only ever get a Tzen'kethi Red Alert - do the others even exist on console?
- - - - I n f e r i o r i t y - C o m p l e x - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
At times, I feel like the feedback given is instead used as a list of what NOT to do. Because that's generally what happens. Suggestions are given for things that can help the overall health of the queues and Cryptic ends up doing the exact opposite.
The vast majority of player suggestions for queue improvement basically boil down to "increase rewards across the board." That by itself is not a solution to getting people to play more than the 3 queues that they already play. Removing RA's is a good start to revitalizing the queues. Adding the random option WITH the bonus rewards that people are begging for is another great step IMO.
Ive seen more than that, but yeah - some of the queues DO need a normalization as far as payout vs. time invested. Its a genuine and fair concern.
This is like saying "well, my favorite coffee shop closed down. I think I'll get a burger."
If you'll excuse me for jumping on here, from my perspective what you're saying, Duncan, is, "Well, the McDonald's drive-through is closed, so I guess I'll make reservations for a three-course meal at Chateau L'Expensive." Sure it's good, but most days I just don't have time for it.
What I regret here is losing the quick, fun, reliable, jump-in-for-ten-minutes-and-blow-things-up content. The rewards are a factor, but not the critical one.
I need something to do when I only have 15-20 minutes to play, because that's how busy my life is on work days.
I've never been able to get more than 2k Dil per day with admiralty, save for the rare occasion when I level up a tree.
Quite simply sir, you are doing it wrong.
Then please enlighten me. How do I get the maximum amount of dilithium from admiralty as I can? (he says sounding like a courupt admiral)
Remember that I said Admiralty PLUS doffing. But focusing on admiralty, when you get 10/10 in Klingon once per 10 days, that gives you 32k dil to sit on. Ferengi also gives you 30k if I remember right.
This means that every 10 days, you get around 62k dil from 10/10's alone. That is enough to last you nearly for 8 whole days out of the 10 day cycle. You also earn ADDITIONAL smaller amounts of dilithium via admiralty and doffing since some missions grant 100, 1000 or even 2000 dilithium. That means that with your preexisting 62,000 dilithium earned over 10 days, you only need to generate 18,000 additional dilithium over that 10 day period to hit the 80,000 dilithium you need.
You do this over and over. Do it every day. Everything is a 10 day cycle.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
I've never been able to get more than 2k Dil per day with admiralty, save for the rare occasion when I level up a tree.
Quite simply sir, you are doing it wrong.
Then please enlighten me. How do I get the maximum amount of dilithium from admiralty as I can? (he says sounding like a courupt admiral)
Remember that I said Admiralty PLUS doffing. But focusing on admiralty, when you get 10/10 in Klingon once per 10 days, that gives you 32k dil to sit on. Ferengi also gives you 30k if I remember right.
This means that every 10 days, you get around 62k dil from 10/10's alone. That is enough to last you nearly for 8 whole days out of the 10 day cycle. You also earn ADDITIONAL smaller amounts of dilithium via admiralty and doffing since some missions grant 100, 1000 or even 2000 dilithium. That means that with your preexisting 62,000 dilithium earned over 10 days, you only need to generate 18,000 additional dilithium over that 10 day period to hit the 80,000 dilithium you need.
You do this over and over. Do it every day. Everything is a 10 day cycle.
I see what you mean. But what do you mean when you say "doffing?"
Nothing is impossible, merely extremely difficult.
People also need to consider the fact that with the new changes to the rep system, every character on your account becomes auto-sponsored after getting to T5, meaning you need half as many marks as you did before simply for having a main that's already at T5.
It's been this way for years though. Okay, sure, I had to get 100 marks of each rep to make a sponsorship token, but that's been easy enough to do. I haven't leveled a rep without sponsorship in a long time, aside from when new reps are added of course. And even then only on 1 alt.
So I will need the same amount as always (since sponsorship), I just don't need to make sponsorship tokens anymore.
Hello. My name is iamynaught and I am an altaholic.
I play STO for light, casual fun. RAs are a lot of what keeps me here during the long, dry spells between new story content because they're easily accessible: they pop all the time, they're fun and I can solo the whole encounter if my PUG needs that much help.
They also prevent other queues from popping by concentrating the population in a small set of highly reductive queues which fail to make use of STO gameplay mechanics to their full potential (they are way too uncomplicated). Folks like me have been asking Cryptic to nerf alerts for some time and I don't think it's fair to discussion to try to reframe this change as the community being maligned in any way.
Sorry it didn't break your way this time, but not every change made to a live video game will directly benefit your interest group.
I do not want a random queue system.
Then don't. The random queue system will match waiting players to any eligible queue you care to queue in for. It should be much easier after AOD to find immediate games even outside the narrow range of min-max grinding favorites. That said, you will have a new option for simple of choice-of-mark queuing with the Defense of Starbase One, shipping next week, and it seems likely (until there's a new reputation) that future DSC themed queues will also feature choice of marks (another one's been teased on Ten Forward Weekly.)
Yea, it's annoying when I wanna do, say days of doom, or the competitive stuff, and can't cause it's all alerts being done.
I get it. I hope this gives the results you think it will - but ultimately I fear the positive results of this change are going to be negated if not overshadowed by people just shifting to the next easiest option, and extremely casual players or those with limited time getting frustrated with the new roadblocks in the grind. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.
Personally I really enjoyed the RAs on alt characters that had sub-obtimal builds due to
A: lack of desire to invest too much time/effort/resources into a character I will likely never play regularly
B: a theme character (Rainbow turrets of multiple energy types!)
On these characters the low-time-investment (usually <5m) and low skill/gear requirements of the RA Queues meant I could still quickly grind out reputations in (what I feel) was a reasonable time frame without needing to invest so much time/effort that I was neglecting my mains.
Others have pointed out that the two marks that do not have good alternatives are Lukari and Competetive.
Gon'cra is a mess - compared to other battlezones the enemy recapture is messy and broken - in other battlezones you only need to stop the handful of enemies that are attempting to recapture. in Gon'cra - stopping the recapture takes just as long as just starting from scratch, and if the "stop them!" timer is one second larger than the "they are retaking!" timer, you loose - there is no point in trying. I have seen this zone completed ONCE in the last year+. Compare this to other zones where even a handful of disorganized players can manage to trigger the boss fight eventually.
I have no suggestions for Competetive - I've always relied on "choice of marks" for this one.
Ugh... I relied on Borg and Tholian Red Alerts to level up my reputations. Quick and easy, could fit in a couple even on busy work days, minimal lag, great experience... Most of the battlezones and queues take too long, are far too finicky, and reward far too little experience and rewards for time and effort, especially if you are a player like me who will never be all that optimal... Oh well, c'est la vie I guess.
Reminder: the Defense of Starbase One queue will offer choice of marks. You will have a direct alternative to alerts when AoD launches next week.
That only works if Defense of Starbase One is not itself finniky or lengthy. The long time is the main reason why I don't do Romulan Imperial Minefield, for example.
"This is how it was done on consoles all along"
Tuff , consoles got the shaft so now PC gets it too?
Random Queues? You cannot change specializations or traits once you enter the combat zone , what good is commando in gateway to greythor , or pilot in bug hunt? I use different set ups depending on the enemy i plan to face , some require a more defensive set up while others can be all out damage.
You cannot force people to play instances they do not want to play , i see a lot of AFK penalties in the future.
Borg and Tholian Red Alerts are stupidly simple and short because they weren't designed as TFOs they were designed as souped up DSEs that you had to fly to in person to join. Also they didn't have choice of marks boxes and were created before the daily bonus marks existed. Yeah, originally they gave 10 Omega marks and that was it for mark payout.
The borg and tholian alert used to reward double xp and used for unlocking ship mastery that still takes hours. Then they were turned into a source for all marks after devs thought it would be a good idea to never run CE event. Many of the queues reward zero xp for ship mastery, gateway to grethor, counterpoint, I am sure others reward none. I would much rather see something like a featured queue that rewards all marks each week.
Seems like all this does is make it harder to earn marks or ship mastery
Red alerts already give really low marks were only good for daily marks.
Gonna be interesting how this works out. Good to see Elachi and Na'Kuhl listed as well. But the question now is how often will we get these weekend events? Weekend Events in general have been somewhat sparse the last few months. Granted it was the Summer of Events, but still...
Another issue I see coming up is accessability to certain mark types. Competative might start getting harder unless people queue up for more than just Core Assault. And Lukari marks are going to be a bit rough too, especially since Gon'cra is still borked all to hell.
Seriously Cryptic... I love a good battlezone, and Gon'cra has potential... but its pretty much unplayable in its current state.
Omega Marks are never going to be a problem.
Romulan Marks are never going to be a problem.
Nukara Marks are never going to be a problem.
Dyson is doable thanks to the Dyson Battlezone, although I believe that battlezone needs a bug pass.
Undine Marks are doable thanks to the Undine Battlezone.
Delta Marks are never going to be a problem.
Iconian Marks are doable, but running Gateway to Gre'thor can get a bit dull.
Terran is doable thanks to the Badlands.
Temporal is doable thanks to the Badlands.
Lukari is going to struggle. Gon'cra is broken, and the STFs for it actually require some teamwork.
Competative is going to struggle. The STFs requires more than just shooting things, And I don't like the forced PvP element in Core Assault because the teams can be so unbalanced in skill that you get spawn camped FOR TEH LULZ at the final room, preventing your team from even getting out to do ANYTHING.
Gamma Marks is doable thanks to the Gamma Quadrant and Swarm STF.
i disagree with Omega marks. they are going to be a pain in the rear grinding defera for a lousy 5 marks per mission that take 10 minutes to do each
I find it extremely funny how some of the recent developments are a textbook example of the looter morality from Atlas Shrugged...
Random queues: Dead queues being "revitalized" not by improvements and increasing their desirability, but by artificially funneling random players towards them. Any traffic thus being just a result of an "equal opportunity bill" divorced from any actual virtues of such queues.
Red Alert change: Popular queues that rose to the top thanks to the simple principle of the survival of the fittest being now limited by a special directive in the interest of pushing the players towards the queues that are otherwise unable to attract and retain them.
I know that a narrative constructed to support a certain opinion is different from the effects of real life business practices, but still the similarities really make me wonder what piece of content will be "redistributed" next...
MI event was what got pretty much all my characters to the comp rep cap on LTS, F2p and PS4 because those queues were dead within a fortnight or so once the first flurry waned.
If admiralty's RNG doesn't offer the dil rewarding options then you can't earn from it whether or not you're doing it right. Also admiralty and doffing is non content, people should be earning dil by actually playing the game not taking a few minutes to queue up some timesinky facebook style nonsense.
I find it funny that some people assume that the players who were just doing RAs will just happily go do the queues they want now. What if your queues are still dead after tomorrow removals? Would you still count removing RAs as a success? Is the schadenfreude enough for you?
Personally, I too get tired of RAs and would like some variety of pew-pew. But I don't want to force people into it. The whole point of a F2P game is to make people want to do it. There is too much competition for people's time/money out there to do such overbearing tactics like this. Like that informal poll a few months ago showed; alot of people are here cause it's Trek, not because of any spectacular job Cryptic is doing. They need to keep that in mind as they annoy players.
Sometimes I think I play STO just to have something to complain about on the forums.
So this is how Cryptic is going to get FORCE people to use their new random queue system? By blackmailing players into doing it by taking away the BEST and FASTEST source of Rep Marks?
Can you AT LEAST FIX the bugs in the battlezones if you are going to take away the most popular, everyday queues?
Okay, so now I can do RA's only when they are a 'Weekend Event!'. Fine. Still not going to play the queues which are broken or have poor returns on time spent.
TFO means I'm grouped for a Ground Mission when I'm equipped for a Space Mission. Fine. Where possible I will avoid the TFO stuff.
If I don't like the mission, I'm not playing the mission. If there is a part of this the Marketing Team does not understand, I can type slower and use smaller words.
This is a game. I play this game for entertainment. My entertainment. Not that of the Marketing Team. You want me to play all of the Queues? That's easy.
Fix. The. Bloody. Broken. Queues.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I stopped joining RA after they changed them before.
I guess it will be nice to not see the ever Red Alert flashing during the weekdays. They turned it into a "boy cries wolf" situation where I no longer responded to them.
Why not go back to the when they showed up every hour or whatever time frame it was?
It sounds like the reputation system is going to be a major drag now.
I liked the RAs mainly because they are (relatively) realistic ship battles, not stupid game show schticks. Also, while the initial placement of the enemy is static it quickly changes in response to variations in player attack styles so it is the closest thing to a dynamic battlefied with emergent behavour that the game has. I really do not like "American Ninja Warrior" in space (or on the ground, the Voth ground battlezone gets toxic very quickly with its silly games for instance though I have forced myself to do it for the dil almost to the point of burnout), it is far too immersion breaking. Very disappointing.
STO is simply not set up in a way that makes complex ques anything but annoying since the map and waypoint system is rather poor and prompts during the ques are frankly useless, especially for those who have to have smaller, lower res screens and have to have their chat minimized to see the combat displays properly. It really needs work on basic systems before a lot of the ques become practical (or at least, sometimes massive, reworking of the que scenarios to make up for the limitations of the system).
On top of that the map transfers are often bugged and drop players who may have waited quite long for the que to fill out which either puts them behind when they get back in or they are unable to do that que without another wait, along with other unexplained team formation problems that just end up with "que cancelled" messages. It is especially bad for people in less populated time zones or who game at odd hours (and a few of those ques require a ridiculous number of people).
I will probably end up doing more missions and DSEs and less ques, and probably far less STO in general in the future.
Comments
Another option would have been to just stick a 20-hour cooldown on each Red Alerts to allow us to do one of each in the day and then move to the queue's.
Whatever happened to the Na'Kuhl Red Alerts anyway?
Of course, this isn't going to make much difference on consoles as I only ever get a Tzen'kethi Red Alert - do the others even exist on console?
Ive seen more than that, but yeah - some of the queues DO need a normalization as far as payout vs. time invested. Its a genuine and fair concern.
Then please enlighten me. How do I get the maximum amount of dilithium from admiralty as I can? (he says sounding like a courupt admiral)
If you'll excuse me for jumping on here, from my perspective what you're saying, Duncan, is, "Well, the McDonald's drive-through is closed, so I guess I'll make reservations for a three-course meal at Chateau L'Expensive." Sure it's good, but most days I just don't have time for it.
What I regret here is losing the quick, fun, reliable, jump-in-for-ten-minutes-and-blow-things-up content. The rewards are a factor, but not the critical one.
I need something to do when I only have 15-20 minutes to play, because that's how busy my life is on work days.
This means that every 10 days, you get around 62k dil from 10/10's alone. That is enough to last you nearly for 8 whole days out of the 10 day cycle. You also earn ADDITIONAL smaller amounts of dilithium via admiralty and doffing since some missions grant 100, 1000 or even 2000 dilithium. That means that with your preexisting 62,000 dilithium earned over 10 days, you only need to generate 18,000 additional dilithium over that 10 day period to hit the 80,000 dilithium you need.
You do this over and over. Do it every day. Everything is a 10 day cycle.
I see what you mean. But what do you mean when you say "doffing?"
It's been this way for years though. Okay, sure, I had to get 100 marks of each rep to make a sponsorship token, but that's been easy enough to do. I haven't leveled a rep without sponsorship in a long time, aside from when new reps are added of course. And even then only on 1 alt.
So I will need the same amount as always (since sponsorship), I just don't need to make sponsorship tokens anymore.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
Yea, it's annoying when I wanna do, say days of doom, or the competitive stuff, and can't cause it's all alerts being done.
I get it. I hope this gives the results you think it will - but ultimately I fear the positive results of this change are going to be negated if not overshadowed by people just shifting to the next easiest option, and extremely casual players or those with limited time getting frustrated with the new roadblocks in the grind. I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong.
Personally I really enjoyed the RAs on alt characters that had sub-obtimal builds due to
A: lack of desire to invest too much time/effort/resources into a character I will likely never play regularly
B: a theme character (Rainbow turrets of multiple energy types!)
On these characters the low-time-investment (usually <5m) and low skill/gear requirements of the RA Queues meant I could still quickly grind out reputations in (what I feel) was a reasonable time frame without needing to invest so much time/effort that I was neglecting my mains.
Others have pointed out that the two marks that do not have good alternatives are Lukari and Competetive.
That only works if Defense of Starbase One is not itself finniky or lengthy. The long time is the main reason why I don't do Romulan Imperial Minefield, for example.
My character Tsin'xing
I would much rather see something like a featured queue that rewards all marks each week.
Seems like all this does is make it harder to earn marks or ship mastery
Red alerts already give really low marks were only good for daily marks.
i disagree with Omega marks. they are going to be a pain in the rear grinding defera for a lousy 5 marks per mission that take 10 minutes to do each
My character Tsin'xing
Random queues: Dead queues being "revitalized" not by improvements and increasing their desirability, but by artificially funneling random players towards them. Any traffic thus being just a result of an "equal opportunity bill" divorced from any actual virtues of such queues.
Red Alert change: Popular queues that rose to the top thanks to the simple principle of the survival of the fittest being now limited by a special directive in the interest of pushing the players towards the queues that are otherwise unable to attract and retain them.
I know that a narrative constructed to support a certain opinion is different from the effects of real life business practices, but still the similarities really make me wonder what piece of content will be "redistributed" next...
If admiralty's RNG doesn't offer the dil rewarding options then you can't earn from it whether or not you're doing it right. Also admiralty and doffing is non content, people should be earning dil by actually playing the game not taking a few minutes to queue up some timesinky facebook style nonsense.
Where have you been? o.o
I still been doing those.
I know I would rather be able to just discuss everything openly but it's pretty clear we're working at cross-purposes now.
Personally, I too get tired of RAs and would like some variety of pew-pew. But I don't want to force people into it. The whole point of a F2P game is to make people want to do it. There is too much competition for people's time/money out there to do such overbearing tactics like this. Like that informal poll a few months ago showed; alot of people are here cause it's Trek, not because of any spectacular job Cryptic is doing. They need to keep that in mind as they annoy players.
You know these are ground missions right ? Very few enjoy ground missions , most only tolerate them because they can't be skipped.
Can you AT LEAST FIX the bugs in the battlezones if you are going to take away the most popular, everyday queues?
TFO means I'm grouped for a Ground Mission when I'm equipped for a Space Mission. Fine. Where possible I will avoid the TFO stuff.
If I don't like the mission, I'm not playing the mission. If there is a part of this the Marketing Team does not understand, I can type slower and use smaller words.
This is a game. I play this game for entertainment. My entertainment. Not that of the Marketing Team. You want me to play all of the Queues? That's easy.
Fix. The. Bloody. Broken. Queues.
I guess it will be nice to not see the ever Red Alert flashing during the weekdays. They turned it into a "boy cries wolf" situation where I no longer responded to them.
Why not go back to the when they showed up every hour or whatever time frame it was?
I liked the RAs mainly because they are (relatively) realistic ship battles, not stupid game show schticks. Also, while the initial placement of the enemy is static it quickly changes in response to variations in player attack styles so it is the closest thing to a dynamic battlefied with emergent behavour that the game has. I really do not like "American Ninja Warrior" in space (or on the ground, the Voth ground battlezone gets toxic very quickly with its silly games for instance though I have forced myself to do it for the dil almost to the point of burnout), it is far too immersion breaking. Very disappointing.
STO is simply not set up in a way that makes complex ques anything but annoying since the map and waypoint system is rather poor and prompts during the ques are frankly useless, especially for those who have to have smaller, lower res screens and have to have their chat minimized to see the combat displays properly. It really needs work on basic systems before a lot of the ques become practical (or at least, sometimes massive, reworking of the que scenarios to make up for the limitations of the system).
On top of that the map transfers are often bugged and drop players who may have waited quite long for the que to fill out which either puts them behind when they get back in or they are unable to do that que without another wait, along with other unexplained team formation problems that just end up with "que cancelled" messages. It is especially bad for people in less populated time zones or who game at odd hours (and a few of those ques require a ridiculous number of people).
I will probably end up doing more missions and DSEs and less ques, and probably far less STO in general in the future.