Basically, this change doesn't adress the issue at hand with red alerts, and killing queues even more during the weekends.
I liked the original red alerts, that you picked up randomly, rewarding only the appropriate marks. It was quite challenging, and sometimes undoable, when you found yourself with fellow lvl 10s. But it was fun.
Hey what about those Jem'Hadar Vanguard Recruits shooting for the 100 Queue Prize? Do these count now?
Are these Blue Moon Red Alerts awarding Gamma Marks in the Choice Box?
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
You've not only wholly misconstrued my position, but also created a false label to dismiss a whole category of "players like me."
Most of what you wrote is not applicable to me, nor is responsive to anything I wrote.
All games, especially long-lived ones, must grow and evolve as the player base changes. I applaud the effort that cryptic makes to introduce new elements to the game - some successful and well-received, some not. Whether they "get the market (they've) built" or built a game to reflect the market is open to debate.
I return to my previous position that the discussion in this thread appears to conflate two separate issues: 1) rewards; 2) content. The change in RAs seems to try to carry water on both shoulders, by eliminating easy access rewards AND reducing options for players with the seeming intent of driving them into playing other content, most notably the TFOs.
Would the TFOs be successful if the RAs were still available or is this an attempt to force players into that content - who knows. Will eliminating RAs in their current incarnation alienate more players than shift into other content - is it even possible?
What is clear is that no amount of channeling or new access mechanics will make some of the existing queues more enjoyable. Nor will any of the other ancillary frustrations with some of the queues be solved without additional changes being made - introducing TFOs without separating ground and space is a fundamentally flawed idea given the other game mechanics. You either need to have separate ground/space TFOs or need to be able to have completely independent ground/space setups. Miner Elite is fine if I'm set for ground, but try doing Hive Space Elite when set for ground.
The best part of this entire debate is the results of these, as well as all other in-game activities, are testable. Cryptic should easily be able to see how well all this works, as well as any unintended consequences, if they query the data appropriately.
Cryptic does not have to depend on opinions or observation bias or non-random sampling. They can look at the game data and decide for themselves whether any changes to the game achieve their goals they set for themselves.
Then they're not going to be added until AoD Reputation Tier 6 next week probably with the Assault on Starbase One TFO.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
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"
So? I didn't really need the bonuses for all of them now did I? Firstly, to me it balances out a bit. You can run the RA's on the weekend with no cooldown. There is no dumb 30 minute "here, we don't want you doing this now for 30, so do something else", you get to if you like the RA's do them until your bored of them. If I can do one of them for say an hour, thats a full hour of rewards I'm getting doing just an RA.
They probably leave the bonuses out because they don't want people getting to many marks in an hour. And to still encourage doing the other queues that guess what, we are going random queues coming up so those of us who want something that was ever ran before will be able to queue for that and let the randoms fill it in. I want my iconian probes in addition to the borg pieces, I still plan to do other queues I never could because no one was doing them.
Imo many of the queues and content that isn't the RA's tend to reward far far more, especially on advanced. I find gates of grethor to be the one I have most fun with, and yet often I have a small amount of diffficulty getting into one. Because people weren't queuing it. It wasn't the content itself thats hard, its that people don't queue it. And the fact that people don't queue it isn't necessarily the content itself, it's that you never get to do it in the first place. So you end up queuing the other stuff that appears funner simply cause people are doing it. Having a long wait before starting a mission can taint the experience of that mission such even if it was especially fun, with that long wait before it, it kills it.
If this really benefits anyone though, it helps those who have less characters. If you ended up doing all three RA's very quickly successfully and it was your only character, you were forced to wait for them to come out of cooldown. Forced wait periods kind of suck. Rep taking time to get experience is one thing, but cooldowns on missions to me is imo kind of annoying. It's a brute force tactic of trying to get people to do other things, instead they just alt to keep doing the same thing.
The upcoming random queues are being added specifically for people who are impatient like me. I now get a choice; do a queue I really want and queue that and take a cooldown, or queue random. Who knows maybe we'll get to queue random and queue what we specifically want. Random has no cooldown, doing specific things gives them a cooldown. Again, all balances out.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Ran a RA at around 3pm yesterday. Just did a RA (12:44 today) and only received 10 marks. If my math is right I should be outside the old 20 hour cool down?
I have 49 alts. It used to take me 4 hours to run all of them through a RA (need Fleet Marks) . So to get around 60 marks it will take 35+10+10+10 to get around the same marks as before or 16 hours. Is this correct? If so, at least I still get 8 hours to do all my honey do's and some sleep.
BTW Cryptic, can you increase the maximum number of alts from 52 to a small round number, like say 1000?
Ran a RA at around 3pm yesterday. Just did a RA (12:44 today) and only received 10 marks. If my math is right I should be outside the old 20 hour cool down?
I have 49 alts. It used to take me 4 hours to run all of them through a RA (need Fleet Marks) . So to get around 60 marks it will take 35+10+10+10 to get around the same marks as before or 16 hours. Is this correct? If so, at least I still get 8 hours to do all my honey do's and some sleep.
BTW Cryptic, can you increase the maximum number of alts from 52 to a small round number, like say 1000?
I was getting 35 for each run I made. I'll take a look at repeats for the same rep but I also notice my bonuses were all still available.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
These Blue Moon Red Alerts award 35 Marks per run.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Remember me please to poo anybody suggesting to turn ISA into a weekend event for the benefit of the other queues directly in the face.
Problem is we have a dev team acting here who might actualy give it a try.
Careful, Peter. Someone over on the other side of the fence might see your post, and take that as a challenge/dare. And if they do, I'll be looking at you, because you burped that fear out.
Oh, the sodium chloride I'm seeing pile up in a few threads about the RAs...All going to top my triple pepperoni pizza.
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.
Free players. Players. As in people who play the game. Not people who come in and and complain 10 minutes is too long they don't have time to play this gimme free stuff.
Cryptic should be focusing on the people who are willing to earn their rewards by playing the game, and the people willing to pay money to get their rewards without playing the game, rather than the ones not willing to do either.
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"?
A reward is a requisite part of enjoying any content for many people. Sometimes more important than the content itself. Most people don't want to just repeat the same content day in and day out for no reason. They want to gain something. They want to have something to gain.
It's no coincidence the top list of popular content is exactly everything with good and/or unique rewards and nothing else.
Rewards are fun.
(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')
Yes. That's exactly it. I also think people won't use golf clubs to hit golf balls into the holes on the golf course, if the rules of the game don't require that.
Who said anything about adding unique rewards? They already tried that with the Borg STFs back before the rep system and you had to play them for special tech to get the Task Force Omega gear, and it didn't work.
It worked most awesomely and if they hadn't removed the drops we wouldn't be talking about empty queues now.
I absolutely hate this update and it just shows how utterly disconnected the devs are from the Community...
Have to agree there. It's ridiculous.
I agree. Between this and random STF they are destroying the reasons I play the game.
I don't go that far myself (I'm still looking forward to Age of Discovery), but it's certainly annoying.
The reason I said that is between the changes with random STF and this I am now unable to play any fun queues I want to play. I used to log in almost daily for queues but I will be forced to stop that after the change I wont be able to get into any of the fun ones anymore.
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')
That or go back to the way things were before choice marks boxes were effectively free.
*multiple player's idea for fixing empty queues - remove unimark from RA and restore 5x XP, putting it back in a unique niche it lost when XP was removed*
*cryptic's idea - remove RA entirely aside from infrequent weekends and keep unimark in which solves NOTHING*
this is why you don't support cryptic - either loquaciously or monetarily...they are doing their damnedest to become serious competitors with EA for the title 'devil of the gaming world'
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
To say that I hate this change, is a gross understatement!
In no way am I doing red alerts 208 times over a weekend, just to match what my characters were getting previously by doing them daily.
I just deleted the 4 alts I got to max level, that were just about to start their reputations, as I can no longer get the marks for them.
This also means all my main characters will no longer be doing any queues of any kind outside of special events, as they each have around 40k marks in all but competitive and gamma, so should be okay for the foreseeable future.
To say that I hate this change, is a gross understatement!
In no way am I doing red alerts 208 times over a weekend, just to match what my characters were getting previously by doing them daily.
I just deleted the 4 alts I got to max level, that were just about to start their reputations, as I can no longer get the marks for them.
This also means all my main characters will no longer be doing any queues of any kind outside of special events, as they each have around 40k marks in all but competitive and gamma, so should be okay for the foreseeable future.
Cryptic really can be spiteful, sometimes....
I don't blame you, I was making a new alt as well that I have scrapped.. Rep grind is just too much.
If/when they fix this ridiculous change then I'll reconsider, until then.. I am done considering any alts and that includes Age of Discovery and any future recruiting events. I'll likely make an AOD recruit to see the 'new stuff' and then delete them after the tutorial.
This change is really the hardest on new players and those still doing the reputation grind. It has little effect on me outside of that, but I still recognize a bad change when I see one.
Some people are doing the math, for getting marks on one rep, you actually get far more from RA's now per hour than before.
The old system the most rep you could get for one rep in 10 runs was 155.....in FIVE hours. Remember, 30 minute cooldowns.
Even doing each of the three RA's your probably only going to cut that down to maybe 2 and a half, since again, 30 minute cooldowns.
Now you can pick the fastest one, say, borg RA, do it like 10 times in an hour and forty for 350 rep for one rep. Because, no cooldowns.
People are overlooking that you get far, far more rep in far less time. And I get the feeling from what I read, there will be at least one RA for every weekend. This weekend the event is all three will be available.
I really don't see how this is a nerf. It's more merely a change.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Comments
I liked the original red alerts, that you picked up randomly, rewarding only the appropriate marks. It was quite challenging, and sometimes undoable, when you found yourself with fellow lvl 10s. But it was fun.
Are these Blue Moon Red Alerts awarding Gamma Marks in the Choice Box?
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
yeah, to add insult to injury lol...
RAs killed.
No further hostiles inbound.
No, they don't give gamma marks. It's obvious they don't want people playing outside of what they demand you get the marks from.
You've not only wholly misconstrued my position, but also created a false label to dismiss a whole category of "players like me."
Most of what you wrote is not applicable to me, nor is responsive to anything I wrote.
All games, especially long-lived ones, must grow and evolve as the player base changes. I applaud the effort that cryptic makes to introduce new elements to the game - some successful and well-received, some not. Whether they "get the market (they've) built" or built a game to reflect the market is open to debate.
I return to my previous position that the discussion in this thread appears to conflate two separate issues: 1) rewards; 2) content. The change in RAs seems to try to carry water on both shoulders, by eliminating easy access rewards AND reducing options for players with the seeming intent of driving them into playing other content, most notably the TFOs.
Would the TFOs be successful if the RAs were still available or is this an attempt to force players into that content - who knows. Will eliminating RAs in their current incarnation alienate more players than shift into other content - is it even possible?
What is clear is that no amount of channeling or new access mechanics will make some of the existing queues more enjoyable. Nor will any of the other ancillary frustrations with some of the queues be solved without additional changes being made - introducing TFOs without separating ground and space is a fundamentally flawed idea given the other game mechanics. You either need to have separate ground/space TFOs or need to be able to have completely independent ground/space setups. Miner Elite is fine if I'm set for ground, but try doing Hive Space Elite when set for ground.
The best part of this entire debate is the results of these, as well as all other in-game activities, are testable. Cryptic should easily be able to see how well all this works, as well as any unintended consequences, if they query the data appropriately.
Cryptic does not have to depend on opinions or observation bias or non-random sampling. They can look at the game data and decide for themselves whether any changes to the game achieve their goals they set for themselves.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
So? I didn't really need the bonuses for all of them now did I? Firstly, to me it balances out a bit. You can run the RA's on the weekend with no cooldown. There is no dumb 30 minute "here, we don't want you doing this now for 30, so do something else", you get to if you like the RA's do them until your bored of them. If I can do one of them for say an hour, thats a full hour of rewards I'm getting doing just an RA.
They probably leave the bonuses out because they don't want people getting to many marks in an hour. And to still encourage doing the other queues that guess what, we are going random queues coming up so those of us who want something that was ever ran before will be able to queue for that and let the randoms fill it in. I want my iconian probes in addition to the borg pieces, I still plan to do other queues I never could because no one was doing them.
Imo many of the queues and content that isn't the RA's tend to reward far far more, especially on advanced. I find gates of grethor to be the one I have most fun with, and yet often I have a small amount of diffficulty getting into one. Because people weren't queuing it. It wasn't the content itself thats hard, its that people don't queue it. And the fact that people don't queue it isn't necessarily the content itself, it's that you never get to do it in the first place. So you end up queuing the other stuff that appears funner simply cause people are doing it. Having a long wait before starting a mission can taint the experience of that mission such even if it was especially fun, with that long wait before it, it kills it.
If this really benefits anyone though, it helps those who have less characters. If you ended up doing all three RA's very quickly successfully and it was your only character, you were forced to wait for them to come out of cooldown. Forced wait periods kind of suck. Rep taking time to get experience is one thing, but cooldowns on missions to me is imo kind of annoying. It's a brute force tactic of trying to get people to do other things, instead they just alt to keep doing the same thing.
The upcoming random queues are being added specifically for people who are impatient like me. I now get a choice; do a queue I really want and queue that and take a cooldown, or queue random. Who knows maybe we'll get to queue random and queue what we specifically want. Random has no cooldown, doing specific things gives them a cooldown. Again, all balances out.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
Ran a RA at around 3pm yesterday. Just did a RA (12:44 today) and only received 10 marks. If my math is right I should be outside the old 20 hour cool down?
I have 49 alts. It used to take me 4 hours to run all of them through a RA (need Fleet Marks) . So to get around 60 marks it will take 35+10+10+10 to get around the same marks as before or 16 hours. Is this correct? If so, at least I still get 8 hours to do all my honey do's and some sleep.
BTW Cryptic, can you increase the maximum number of alts from 52 to a small round number, like say 1000?
I was getting 35 for each run I made. I'll take a look at repeats for the same rep but I also notice my bonuses were all still available.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Careful, Peter. Someone over on the other side of the fence might see your post, and take that as a challenge/dare. And if they do, I'll be looking at you, because you burped that fear out.
Oh, the sodium chloride I'm seeing pile up in a few threads about the RAs...All going to top my triple pepperoni pizza.
Cryptic should be focusing on the people who are willing to earn their rewards by playing the game, and the people willing to pay money to get their rewards without playing the game, rather than the ones not willing to do either.
A reward is a requisite part of enjoying any content for many people. Sometimes more important than the content itself. Most people don't want to just repeat the same content day in and day out for no reason. They want to gain something. They want to have something to gain.
It's no coincidence the top list of popular content is exactly everything with good and/or unique rewards and nothing else.
Rewards are fun.
Yes. That's exactly it. I also think people won't use golf clubs to hit golf balls into the holes on the golf course, if the rules of the game don't require that.
A game with no rules is no game at all.
It worked most awesomely and if they hadn't removed the drops we wouldn't be talking about empty queues now.
Have to agree there. It's ridiculous.
I don't go that far myself (I'm still looking forward to Age of Discovery), but it's certainly annoying.
The reason I said that is between the changes with random STF and this I am now unable to play any fun queues I want to play. I used to log in almost daily for queues but I will be forced to stop that after the change I wont be able to get into any of the fun ones anymore.
My character Tsin'xing
*cryptic's idea - remove RA entirely aside from infrequent weekends and keep unimark in which solves NOTHING*
this is why you don't support cryptic - either loquaciously or monetarily...they are doing their damnedest to become serious competitors with EA for the title 'devil of the gaming world'
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
In no way am I doing red alerts 208 times over a weekend, just to match what my characters were getting previously by doing them daily.
I just deleted the 4 alts I got to max level, that were just about to start their reputations, as I can no longer get the marks for them.
This also means all my main characters will no longer be doing any queues of any kind outside of special events, as they each have around 40k marks in all but competitive and gamma, so should be okay for the foreseeable future.
Cryptic really can be spiteful, sometimes....
I don't blame you, I was making a new alt as well that I have scrapped.. Rep grind is just too much.
If/when they fix this ridiculous change then I'll reconsider, until then.. I am done considering any alts and that includes Age of Discovery and any future recruiting events. I'll likely make an AOD recruit to see the 'new stuff' and then delete them after the tutorial.
This change is really the hardest on new players and those still doing the reputation grind. It has little effect on me outside of that, but I still recognize a bad change when I see one.
They removed the daily bonus.
i.imgur.com/LGpIGVB.png
FREE HONG KONG! *
Doesn't help for all the reps. Any way you slice it, this is a monumentally insane move.
The old system the most rep you could get for one rep in 10 runs was 155.....in FIVE hours. Remember, 30 minute cooldowns.
Even doing each of the three RA's your probably only going to cut that down to maybe 2 and a half, since again, 30 minute cooldowns.
Now you can pick the fastest one, say, borg RA, do it like 10 times in an hour and forty for 350 rep for one rep. Because, no cooldowns.
People are overlooking that you get far, far more rep in far less time. And I get the feeling from what I read, there will be at least one RA for every weekend. This weekend the event is all three will be available.
I really don't see how this is a nerf. It's more merely a change.
Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.