The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
Because as soon as players are required to do anything more than show up and derp around for a few minutes for their rewards, the forums light up like a christmas tree full of whiners saying "too hard."
And because Cryptic is unwilling to respond to that with "too bad" and an offer to buy the reward for $$$.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
Right. Like in the current Pahvo event, I would totally have made the mission FAIL when the time runs out, instead of auto-win. But no, that would be "too hard."
Still, at least the current trend is a slight improvement over the previous SOP. Even though playing through the crystal capture phase of Pahvo isn't actually required, it does make the mission go faster if you do. So it's at least better than, for example, Mirror Incursion where the entire first phase is just a wait no matter what you do.
Yeah sadly There's too vocal a minority who just whine like crazy when it gets remotely hard.
At least the mission can be sped up by playing well though, so a good team will always finish before a group of lazy afk'ers.
But what would make that even better would be if a faster run actually rewarded you better.
I could get behind a reward system which awarded extras for getting things done faster. Or with fewer players if someone bugs out. As long as it is not DPS based. But this ship sailed long ago. I'd like very much for that player who was throwing heals at me every five seconds during a Hive Advanced PUG to be rewarded for doing so. Instead of being hit with an AFK Penalty for not doing enough damage. But putting such an effort into this game would require too much from the same old crowd. It would also upset the rate at which PWE/Cryptic thinks we should be rewarded without spending gobs of cash on STO.
There are some good ideas in this thread. Proposed by people who continually come up with good ideas.
Too bad no one at PWE/Cryptic ever listens to them.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
CC is a good example of a TFO that measures more than just DPS yes, but it can be fudged because you can heal yourself with a macro I imagine and not actually be of any use to the rest of the team(s) in that run.
But the idea is a sensible one in principle.
They'd just need the balls to actually implement such a system, though slightly improved across the board or in new content at the least.
Send 50% of your heals to other players - extra marks.
Partake in x% of interacts in with objectives in the mission - extra marks.
Stuff like that but spread across the spectrum of different inputs people make to team missions so that it's not just DPS being awarded and also so that if you chose to sit AFK then you WILL miss out on some extra rewards.
They have already said no on that, several times, specifically because they aren't going to split people up.
This is 100% correct. There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs a solution. The random button works just fine as it is. If you want a specific queue and don't want to go random, then choose that specific queue.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
They have already said no on that, several times, specifically because they aren't going to split people up.
This is 100% correct. There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs a solution. The random button works just fine as it is. If you want a specific queue and don't want to go random, then choose that specific queue.
CC is a good example of a TFO that measures more than just DPS yes, but it can be fudged because you can heal yourself with a macro I imagine and not actually be of any use to the rest of the team(s) in that run.
But the idea is a sensible one in principle.
They'd just need the balls to actually implement such a system, though slightly improved across the board or in new content at the least.
Send 50% of your heals to other players - extra marks.
Partake in x% of interacts in with objectives in the mission - extra marks.
Stuff like that but spread across the spectrum of different inputs people make to team missions so that it's not just DPS being awarded and also so that if you chose to sit AFK then you WILL miss out on some extra rewards.
1: the game does already separately track healing others vs healing self
2: it doesn't track "overheal". IE if I activate a power that would heal for 5k, I only get score credit for healing 5k if the target was missing at least 5k health. Otherwise credit is given for the amount actually healed.
3: Making mark/dil rewards scale based on amount of participation credit has a major problem. It would take a ridiculous amount of time to tweak the balance on the score system to avoid creating situations where specific types of build have a drastically different score than others. And I'm not talking about people being bad or good players, but about people min-maxing builds to exploit the score system.
One thing I would like to see added to RTFO's is if someone leaves during a TFO to add a new player(s) to the group to fill out the roster (WoW does this).
I was in a borg ground TFO and 2 people left and the 3 of us carried on only to be stopped because 2 people (3rd had to drop the shields elsewhere) just didn't produce enough dps to destroy the thingy. If the TFO code brought in 2 more people we could of finished it. Instead the 3 of us wasted a lot of time, which as you know is frustrating.
You want a penalty, bust the Characters on the Account to a maximum of Tier 4 (Captain) for 40 hours. No use of ships above Tier IV and no equipment above Mk VIII.
'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.'
#3: People are already min/maxing a specific build to exploit the existing score system. What's the difference if they're min.maxing healboats, versus the present min/maxing for DPS, except possibly that it's significantly easier to min/max DPS?
As someone who has "made an effort" to get the first place trophy in CC on every character, I don't think it'd be good for the game overall if that applied to the actual TFO rewards.
I ummm know the reason for this problem. It comes from the complexities of trying to teach 2 people to press F at the same time I do. You would think that this would be relatively easy to get players to do but its like asking them to solve quantum physics problems. So being this is way too hard for them they avoid these type of TFO's and run away to another game or another character.
Especially the borg STF's there needs to be a tribble or some kind of function that says I am smarter than the average person I can press 3 buttons at the same time. Its the only thing missing from my setups to carry a whole team and need it badly. The other thing is the whole adapting thing where that trait comes in handy but having to feel the need to use it on ever single TFO is bothersome.
Also that temporal gornish type one people don't get their are 2 entrance/exit points as well as 2 gates to the area you need to go too. This means you have to split up and not have one person work extra hard just to have to solo one side all by themselves. That is the end of my ranting about this but if I can replace stupid ppl with a device or function I'll carry teams i'm on and just get over it since i've been doing this for almost a decade.
Honestly, there's been times that I've 'Disco'd/Disconnected for those who thought I meant ST:D while waiting for the transition to the TFO maps. I didn't mean to abandon those, but I was called away from the keyboard, or someone needed me in Real Life.
Anyways, there may be more reasons that just trolling that happens in these situations.
i alt f4 when the team can't do any damage or stay alive, im not wasting my time anymore, last time i did that i was in a ISA for almost 40 mins, nope not again, if you don't like me bailing on a mission then build for the mission, TFO's are not for noobs, even normal ones, you get your story gear first then think about tfo's you got battlezones to grind up in so stay the hell out of TFO's.
'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 alt f4 when the team can't do any damage or stay alive, im not wasting my time anymore, last time i did that i was in a ISA for almost 40 mins, nope not again, if you don't like me bailing on a mission then build for the mission, TFO's are not for noobs, even normal ones, you get your story gear first then think about tfo's you got battlezones to grind up in so stay the hell out of TFO's.
Your calling other people "noobs" would have more weight behind it if you didn't first admit it takes you 40 minutes to solo ISA.
i alt f4 when the team can't do any damage or stay alive, im not wasting my time anymore, last time i did that i was in a ISA for almost 40 mins, nope not again, if you don't like me bailing on a mission then build for the mission, TFO's are not for noobs, even normal ones, you get your story gear first then think about tfo's you got battlezones to grind up in so stay the hell out of TFO's.
Your calling other people "noobs" would have more weight behind it if you didn't first admit it takes you 40 minutes to solo ISA.
I guess, he did not notice they are sliding in TFOs into and between the low level Episodes. So, he could potentially be playing with players of any level.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
#3: People are already min/maxing a specific build to exploit the existing score system. What's the difference if they're min.maxing healboats, versus the present min/maxing for DPS, except possibly that it's significantly easier to min/max DPS?
As someone who has "made an effort" to get the first place trophy in CC on every character, I don't think it'd be good for the game overall if that applied to the actual TFO rewards.
if there are more than one way to 'score' rewards, and they're spread out enough that no single person can rack them all up by him or her self, do get where I'm going with this? in such a system, the only way to lose, the only way to be a Loser, is not to play (aka turning AFK from a winning to a losing strategy).
that means shifting from "Showed up so got the same reward as the guy carrying the team" to a system that only rewards if you put forth the effort.
And you're forgetting that it's not about "effort" it's about gaming the scoreboard system. That requires you to tailor your build around it.
Comments
Yeah sadly There's too vocal a minority who just whine like crazy when it gets remotely hard.
At least the mission can be sped up by playing well though, so a good team will always finish before a group of lazy afk'ers.
But what would make that even better would be if a faster run actually rewarded you better.
There are some good ideas in this thread. Proposed by people who continually come up with good ideas.
Too bad no one at PWE/Cryptic ever listens to them.
But the idea is a sensible one in principle.
They'd just need the balls to actually implement such a system, though slightly improved across the board or in new content at the least.
Send 50% of your heals to other players - extra marks.
Partake in x% of interacts in with objectives in the mission - extra marks.
Stuff like that but spread across the spectrum of different inputs people make to team missions so that it's not just DPS being awarded and also so that if you chose to sit AFK then you WILL miss out on some extra rewards.
12Th Fleet Section 31 Fleet Captain
That will be the "solution" they come up with.
Unfortunately, that splits the players up, again.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Random
Random Space
Random Ground
But again that might split the players because people who are afraid of getting ground will skip Random because of the chance to get Ground.
This is 100% correct. There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs a solution. The random button works just fine as it is. If you want a specific queue and don't want to go random, then choose that specific queue.
I wanna like this post so bad.
2: it doesn't track "overheal". IE if I activate a power that would heal for 5k, I only get score credit for healing 5k if the target was missing at least 5k health. Otherwise credit is given for the amount actually healed.
3: Making mark/dil rewards scale based on amount of participation credit has a major problem. It would take a ridiculous amount of time to tweak the balance on the score system to avoid creating situations where specific types of build have a drastically different score than others. And I'm not talking about people being bad or good players, but about people min-maxing builds to exploit the score system.
My character Tsin'xing
Just because they said they would not do it.....does NOT mean it isn't part of the solution in this case.
Would I like to see them do it...no, because that splits up the players, again.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I was in a borg ground TFO and 2 people left and the 3 of us carried on only to be stopped because 2 people (3rd had to drop the shields elsewhere) just didn't produce enough dps to destroy the thingy. If the TFO code brought in 2 more people we could of finished it. Instead the 3 of us wasted a lot of time, which as you know is frustrating.
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.'
My character Tsin'xing
Especially the borg STF's there needs to be a tribble or some kind of function that says I am smarter than the average person I can press 3 buttons at the same time. Its the only thing missing from my setups to carry a whole team and need it badly. The other thing is the whole adapting thing where that trait comes in handy but having to feel the need to use it on ever single TFO is bothersome.
Also that temporal gornish type one people don't get their are 2 entrance/exit points as well as 2 gates to the area you need to go too. This means you have to split up and not have one person work extra hard just to have to solo one side all by themselves. That is the end of my ranting about this but if I can replace stupid ppl with a device or function I'll carry teams i'm on and just get over it since i've been doing this for almost a decade.
Anyways, there may be more reasons that just trolling that happens in these situations.
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.'
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
My character Tsin'xing