As a casual player with a somewhat busy life I have no time or wish to grind rep marks in random queue which I can not adjust my gear/traits to help me complete the queue.
I was looking forward to starting a new DSC captain, have the traits/gear bought or crafted and ready to go. With this change, the opportunity to quickly do a RA for some rep marks has gone. That gear will be put on the exchange and the desire to grind out another alt. is zero. I'll stick with my main and probably log-in less frequently with the probablity of me actually spending real money reducing to zero.
Not that Cryptic actually cares about a single player.
The queues died off a long time before red alerts were really a thing, except for the usual borg ones and whichever ones were for the most recent rep. People do not enjoy most of the STFs.
Some are not bad, I do rather like Swarm and Counterpoint
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Time for my two cents. I play a lot of different queues, but if no one is on to play with from my fleet or friend list I automatically default to easier queues (like the ra's). There are some queues that are just not fun to play cause you don't know who you're going to get. While I play purely for fun and don't generally care about the reward i don't like playing with a team of morons that don't know what they are doing. That is one of the reasons the ra's are popular. Even if you've got a team of morons you can still finish it and get a decent reward. Sometimes it's fun to mindlessly blow stuff up. Not a huge fan of the change. I'll actually play less since those easy missions won't be there for me to do when no one is on to play with so I'll just log and play something else.
This is a good change, it may bring life back to the queues again
More likely to add to the killing of queues. Between the changes with Random STF and Red Alert a lot of people like myself that ran queues almost daily are just going to stop because we can no longer run the fun queues we want to run.
From where I stand, this change is a bad idea. In effect this is limiting a popular game play option, rarely a good choice. But good choices in STO have been far and few between anyway.
It's impact on me will be rather minor at this point. I don't do RA much, but recently used them extensively for the 100 queue unlock. It does mean that I won't bother with a similar unlock in the future.
My only conclusion is that they simply do not want me to buy ships anymore.
Hm, this may be a tangent, but... I have all the ships I can possibly need, except for a nice DSC-era vessel. I really wonder why anyone needs any more ships than a regular player must certainly already own. Yeah, I know, traits... that you don't need, because all people play are super-easy Red Alerts or even Advanced TFO's that just don't need that kind of super-traits.
Right. My purchases of ships have become quite infrequent because I have quite enough. If I see something that's interesting enough to buy, my decision first has to go through the "can I be bothered to actually level this?" filter and lately the answer is coming out "hellnaw".
The queues died off a long time before red alerts were really a thing, except for the usual borg ones and whichever ones were for the most recent rep. People do not enjoy most of the STFs.
Or is it that they simply don't like them enough to play them instead of things with rewards they want? for example: I like Bug hunt, if I wanted Delta marks I'd happily play it, IF I wanted more Delta marks.
If content is popular, one does not abandon it, one makes more like it. It is as simple as that.
Fun fact: Red Alerts used to be souped-up DSEs with very little in the way of rewards. They're overly popular as TFOs simply because you're getting TFO rewards for something that ISN'T built as a TFO. The same is true of the Crystal actually. It's quick and easy because it's a DSE with a unique boss.
Fun fact, I like the old red alerts more. If they wanna revert to the old way...that's great too as you can still have the quick pew pew fun. Even better, you can start that pew pew fun alone.
Also, as-is, accolade hunting the red alerts is problematic because you get dumped into a random one and have no control of which one.
This thread is hilarious. Has anyone summoned DOOM yet?
Frankly, I don't quite see how the game looses anything with players who ONLY play Red Alerts. They are unlikely to buy stuff, to participate in anything that would increase the enjoyment of the game for anyone else
Eh. I may not spend $ directly (beyond my initial purchase of a game disc and some sub, years ago), but 90%+ of the Dil I get is converted to Zen and spent in the store. That zen came from $ somewhere.
And part of the reason I avoid queues is to "increase the enjoyment of the game for other players" - i.e, I'd suck at them, and I have no desire to TRIBBLE up the game for four-to-nine other people. I'm not that selfish as to put my 'enjoyment' over theirs. I'd rather the last spot in their group goes to someone who'll actually be able to contribute.
(I don't do group dungeons in any of the other MMOs I've played, either)
I'll keep playing Space Barbie, collecting ships, and running all the story content. And just go back to what I did for the several years before I discovered Borg RA choice boxes - leveling all-T5 reps on 11+ alts, via the holiday pets. /shrug
My only conclusion is that they simply do not want me to buy ships anymore.
Hm, this may be a tangent, but... I have all the ships I can possibly need, except for a nice DSC-era vessel. I really wonder why anyone needs any more ships than a regular player must certainly already own. Yeah, I know, traits... that you don't need, because all people play are super-easy Red Alerts or even Advanced TFO's that just don't need that kind of super-traits.
I buy ships for appearance, theme, and fun. T6-wise, I've got 9 c-store ships (6 individual, one 3-pack) that I bought with exchanged zen. It's a bit harder to tell with the lower tiers, since there's some free giveaway ships in there, too. I've bought a few lobi ships on the exchange (or from the lobi store). I've got all the event ships. A couple fleet versions. There's a couple ships I almost bought just for costume parts to apply to other ships I have, but it was hard to justify 2.4-3k zen just for a set of nacelles.
There are two separate, but related issues that are being conflated.
The first is whether there are sufficient and efficient ways for players, especially those with limited play time available, to generate various rewards (marks, dil, ec).
The second is how the availability of RAs impacts other queues, especially whether eliminating them would drive players into other content.
Two scenarios illustrate this point: 1) No matter what the reward is, if a player has limited time, he's not going to participate frequently (being the operative word) in a time consuming queue - like most of the time-gated queues; 2) Whether RAs are available or not, players will limit their participation in content that they find frustrating or boring - driven either by poor design or lack of community knowledge of game mechanics and/or effective strategies.
One way to acquire each reward is sufficient. Efficiency only becomes a question if there are excessive options. If rewards are appropriately differentiated, people will acquire each reward in whatever way they can and there is no need to discuss efficiency. If there is only one way to acquire a given reward, that way is by default the best way, regardless of what it is.
While having some generic rewards shared by everything is good (XP, EC, dilithium ore), most if not all content should also have unique incentive rewards that give players reasons to play that content in specific. Marks represent a middle ground, that areshould be given by content following a common theme of the reputation, but not completely unique. Creating content without accompanying reason to play it is a waste of development resources.
The normal response of F2P games in regards to people who don't have the time or patience to earn their rewards by playing the game is to sell them what they want for real money.
On the other hand, "players" who have neither time nor money to spend on the game should not be the focus of development efforts. The more they give for free, the less they have left to reward those who actually want to play the game and/or to sell.
Both lead to even greater frustration as incidents of AFK rise when rewards become desirable, but game play is not.
People AFK content that can be AFKed. When faced with timed-to-win content that requires no player effort to win, it's only logical for players to put no effort to winning it. If this leads to "frustration" on part of those who, voluntarily or through ignorance, put in more effort than would be necessary, that's their problem.
Eliminating RAs doesn't seem to address either problem.
Limiting the availability of RA's slightly reduces one source of game-killing allmarks. It is nowhere near enough, but it's better than nothing.
On the other hand, "players" who have neither time nor money to spend on the game should not be the focus of development efforts. The more they give for free, the less they have left to reward those who actually want to play the game and/or to sell.
Generally you want those people attracted enough to move into the column of paying, though - especially as the content needs to generally be the same for both groups - free players help ensure adequate population to keep your whales entertained.
Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
That would only work with the premise that the Queues are worth playing in the first place...
They are if you actually play games for fun and not to try to turn them into a job where you focus only on time/reward ratios.
But isn't the idea of "there need to be unique rewards in each <content> to encourage people to play them", acknowledging that you're trying to bribe people to do something they don't enjoy, because it's the only way to get that "unique reward"?
(i.e, "we need to get rid of choice marks, so people have to do <rep-specific-queue>" means that you think people won't play those queues without being forced to. i.e, not for 'fun')
For me, it's not so much that I need to be enticed into getting something ubermagicaleet to play. But if I want to outfit a ship with Lukari stuff, I shouldn't have to struggle and be punished because I'm not outfitting it with Nukara stuff which is dirt easy to get and not any lower on the totem poll. Rep gear should be a horizontal resource because that's how the reps are presented.
Cant believe people actually saying less choice is good. wow..
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
I dunno I just did the elachi RA about 5-6 times on my rom science fed, and I quickly got the daily rep contributions started for the day with no effort whatsoever.
It seems to me that having them be weekend only but ultra replayable during the weekend and actually rather rewarding is a GOOD thing. I ignored them after a point during the crystaline catastrophe and breach cause they were simply way less rewarding. And even after I was ignoring them and doing the real queues here and there.
I think they are actually better. Can't argue with 35 rep guaranteed and being able to re-do them immedietly with no cooldown.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
I've been in the game for just under a year (started early December 2017), but this is the first time I've seen something that really roused my ire. Honestly, I certainly agree the previous Red Alert system made things perhaps a little too easy, but this is a bad case of the cure being worse than the disease, given the nature of some of the other PVE missions. Besides, there are number of things in far greater need of fixing.
I dunno I just did the elachi RA about 5-6 times on my rom science fed, and I quickly got the daily rep contributions started for the day with no effort whatsoever.
It seems to me that having them be weekend only but ultra replayable during the weekend and actually rather rewarding is a GOOD thing. I ignored them after a point during the crystaline catastrophe and breach cause they were simply way less rewarding. And even after I was ignoring them and doing the real queues here and there.
I think they are actually better. Can't argue with 35 rep guaranteed and being able to re-do them immedietly with no cooldown.
You've missed the point. We have to go do something else, that most don't want to do, to get the daily bonuses. I got, as many others have too, a few of those daily bonus marks by running RAs. Example, I hate running competitive. I run RAs to get them. This is cryptic faking their metrics to appease their bosses so they don't get cuts in funding and manpower. "Oh look, people are running these again" is actually "Oh look, were forcing people to run what we want, when we want, hahaha, METRICS"
Comments
I was looking forward to starting a new DSC captain, have the traits/gear bought or crafted and ready to go. With this change, the opportunity to quickly do a RA for some rep marks has gone. That gear will be put on the exchange and the desire to grind out another alt. is zero. I'll stick with my main and probably log-in less frequently with the probablity of me actually spending real money reducing to zero.
Not that Cryptic actually cares about a single player.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
It's impact on me will be rather minor at this point. I don't do RA much, but recently used them extensively for the 100 queue unlock. It does mean that I won't bother with a similar unlock in the future.
Right. My purchases of ships have become quite infrequent because I have quite enough. If I see something that's interesting enough to buy, my decision first has to go through the "can I be bothered to actually level this?" filter and lately the answer is coming out "hellnaw".
My character Tsin'xing
Eh. I may not spend $ directly (beyond my initial purchase of a game disc and some sub, years ago), but 90%+ of the Dil I get is converted to Zen and spent in the store. That zen came from $ somewhere.
And part of the reason I avoid queues is to "increase the enjoyment of the game for other players" - i.e, I'd suck at them, and I have no desire to TRIBBLE up the game for four-to-nine other people. I'm not that selfish as to put my 'enjoyment' over theirs. I'd rather the last spot in their group goes to someone who'll actually be able to contribute.
(I don't do group dungeons in any of the other MMOs I've played, either)
I'll keep playing Space Barbie, collecting ships, and running all the story content. And just go back to what I did for the several years before I discovered Borg RA choice boxes - leveling all-T5 reps on 11+ alts, via the holiday pets. /shrug
I buy ships for appearance, theme, and fun. T6-wise, I've got 9 c-store ships (6 individual, one 3-pack) that I bought with exchanged zen. It's a bit harder to tell with the lower tiers, since there's some free giveaway ships in there, too. I've bought a few lobi ships on the exchange (or from the lobi store). I've got all the event ships. A couple fleet versions. There's a couple ships I almost bought just for costume parts to apply to other ships I have, but it was hard to justify 2.4-3k zen just for a set of nacelles.
While having some generic rewards shared by everything is good (XP, EC, dilithium ore), most if not all content should also have unique incentive rewards that give players reasons to play that content in specific. Marks represent a middle ground, that are should be given by content following a common theme of the reputation, but not completely unique. Creating content without accompanying reason to play it is a waste of development resources.
The normal response of F2P games in regards to people who don't have the time or patience to earn their rewards by playing the game is to sell them what they want for real money.
On the other hand, "players" who have neither time nor money to spend on the game should not be the focus of development efforts. The more they give for free, the less they have left to reward those who actually want to play the game and/or to sell.
People AFK content that can be AFKed. When faced with timed-to-win content that requires no player effort to win, it's only logical for players to put no effort to winning it. If this leads to "frustration" on part of those who, voluntarily or through ignorance, put in more effort than would be necessary, that's their problem.
Limiting the availability of RA's slightly reduces one source of game-killing allmarks. It is nowhere near enough, but it's better than nothing.
That would only work with the premise that the Queues are worth playing in the first place...
Generally you want those people attracted enough to move into the column of paying, though - especially as the content needs to generally be the same for both groups - free players help ensure adequate population to keep your whales entertained.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Your Fun is not my Fun... and in this case doubly so.
But isn't the idea of "there need to be unique rewards in each <content> to encourage people to play them", acknowledging that you're trying to bribe people to do something they don't enjoy, because it's the only way to get that "unique reward"?
(i.e, "we need to get rid of choice marks, so people have to do <rep-specific-queue>" means that you think people won't play those queues without being forced to. i.e, not for 'fun')
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
It seems to me that having them be weekend only but ultra replayable during the weekend and actually rather rewarding is a GOOD thing. I ignored them after a point during the crystaline catastrophe and breach cause they were simply way less rewarding. And even after I was ignoring them and doing the real queues here and there.
I think they are actually better. Can't argue with 35 rep guaranteed and being able to re-do them immedietly with no cooldown.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
That's Geko atm:
Well joking aside... uhm I can't put the joking aside this time. Sorry. They are useless to do even on weekend conditions now.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
no daily bonus for red alerts anymore.
Problem is we have a dev team acting here who might actualy give it a try.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
You've missed the point. We have to go do something else, that most don't want to do, to get the daily bonuses. I got, as many others have too, a few of those daily bonus marks by running RAs. Example, I hate running competitive. I run RAs to get them. This is cryptic faking their metrics to appease their bosses so they don't get cuts in funding and manpower. "Oh look, people are running these again" is actually "Oh look, were forcing people to run what we want, when we want, hahaha, METRICS"