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Discovery marks in choice boxes
echatty
Member Posts: 5,914 Arc User
I've been playing on Tribble at the same time I've been playing Risa on Holodeck and ran into an upgrade patch on Tribble.
When I got there and was turning in some birds/monkeys I noticed that Discovery marks were in the choice boxes, also the choice boxes for endeavors.
So after maint tomorrow, hopefully the Disco marks will be in the choice boxes.
When I got there and was turning in some birds/monkeys I noticed that Discovery marks were in the choice boxes, also the choice boxes for endeavors.
So after maint tomorrow, hopefully the Disco marks will be in the choice boxes.
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. 
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1249890/trading-in-feather-monkeys/p1
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.'
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.'
Who said never? The newest marks always get added a bit later but not right away so as to not cripple their new queues.
And yes I would say they're bed. The thing is, s many maaany queues suffer from various design flaws or poor design choices. Let's look at the Borg queues. The space ones still do fairly well but you'll be hard pressed to find people running the ground ones now. Why? Because the adaptation mechanic is such a nuisance that it spoils the game play. Look at Brotherhood of the sword, it only give fleet and iconian Mark's, a much older rep, yet is one of the most played ground queues. Why? Because it's got a decent challenge and puzzles that don't ruin gameplay and its fast. Miner instabilities also used to be insanely popular years ago, before they buffed the sniper enemies in it too much, making it a slog to get through.
And there are many more queues like this where they're designed to either be too tedious to the point of, why would you play it instead of doing something else, to too hard, to the point of this isnt worth my time anymore. Most of the disco queues are kind of fine, they would never die off like some older ones have like the terrible lukari and competitive queues. Now look, I enjoy most of the queues in their own way, but the dev's never tweak any of the old ones(probably because they don't get played which is a catch 22) and hell they even rarely tweak new ones too. And that's a problem. If they retooled the adaptation mechanic or removed it, Borg ground queues would probably see more play. (Though to be honest some of those maps suck too since theyre 9 years old) if they nerfed the insanely OP snipers in Miner Instabilities it would probably see a big increase in players. Most of the time if a Queue dies off, it's just because it has something wrong with it, that makes it so the only reason anyone would ever run it would be the marks.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
It was always obvious they were going to spoil the discomarks just like they spoiled all the others. That doesn't mean I wouldn't have wanted them to do better.
Spoiling unique rewards always makes games worse.
Players like me want to get their marks from actively playing (and I mean playing here as playing, not afking) the respective maps. Preferably on elite as the rest is just an auto win scenario. The more alternate ways to get those marks are introduced (especially when they involve less effort) the lesser the chance I can find teams willing to play the respective maps on elite.
With the introduction of the Discovery reputation I knew I had a short time window (2-3 weeks, a month at most) to play for my marks on all chars actively before the pool of available enthusiasts would dry up.
If Disco hasn't been dead already it surely is dead now.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
That would be nice.
Gamma was 79 days after introduction before it was added to Choice Boxes with the initial release of the Discovery TFOs.
Discovery Reputation is 73 days between introduction and being added to Choice Boxes.
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.'
Considering how funky and clunky the Lukari mark TFOs are the fact that they got played less probably had little to do with the all marks boxes (in fact, they may have even helped populate the scenarios a bit as people went for the elite currency that is required in addition to the marks in Lukari projects). And they did get played, especially "Gravity Kills" even though it is one of the ones that people got spawnlocked in (they seem to have fixed that part though) or gets dragged out for a long time by afkers and leavers making the active team too small.
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
Disco marks were always in the RTFO reward box.
My character Tsin'xing
That's just not true in my experience. I play advanced random all the time and Infected ground comes up just as much as BOTSA and BHA. The adaptation mechanic is completely negated by the TR-116B, Tommy Gun and shotgun. You actually proved my point in saying you think it's bad just because the adaptation mechanic. It requires you to stop and actually think for a second and you can't just spam the spacebar on your normal energy weapons.
Again proving my point when talking about the speed of the queue and how that affects it being perceived as good or bad. "It's fast" does not mean it's good. Circa 2017 CCA was as fast as it gets but it was not in any way a good queue. I actually like Miner Instabilities and I would run it more if I actually needed temporal marks but I use almost nothing from that rep.
I'd like to see more tweaks but they will be few and far between because frankly the game has already moved on from older queues by the time we want them to be worked on. Usually they'll only get work when they're completely broken as tweaking them doesn't net a clear financial return. Still, I wouldn't say the devs never do it. Look at the omega queues and how they have been worked on a lot over the years. I have to ask. What is your problem with the adaptation mechanic? You can literally get a free gear piece from your personal replicator 24/7 even in the middle of a queue to counter it. And if you know what you're doing, you carry a shotgun, TR116-B or Tommy Gun that you can switch to and bypass adaptation completely. Seriously, your aversion to it makes no sense.
No, most of the time a queue dies off because it just takes longer than another more profitable queue. On this I agree that I'd like to see queues take roughly the same amount of time but balancing all of it at this point is just a pipe dream. One of the easier ways to semi-counter it is to get rid of or severely limit choice marks. All queues should only have 1 specific rep mark and fleet marks as it's options IMO. During events, they could still have choice marks but I would limit how many. Instead of CCA which rewards 80 of any marks, I'd have it award 80 fleet or nukara marks + 5 fleet marks like it already does. Plus during the event give a choice of 35 marks of your choice and it doesn't qualify for the daily bonus. Just like fleet alert. Obviously the random system works really well for all involved as all the whiners have piped down and realized they were wrong. So choice marks should stay in place for RTFO.
It takes skill and practice to get good at using them, but they are highly effective.
My character Tsin'xing
The RTFO system is ok for a "do something different" mood, but otherwise is mostly irrelevant. It only becomes accessible very late in the game and by then people are often committed to reps they can get in earlier available ques (and battlezones) and are only doing the other reps for the traits or just for completeness. It cannot substitute for never-popping ques and non-or-barely-functional battlezones for the reps that are plagued with those problems.
Eliminating choice boxes will not drive people to the more odious of the ques just to get certain marks, if it is not fun it tends to drive them away to other reps or even other games. For example, I tend to play other games a lot more when there is no FTFO or other source of choice boxes currently running, or only do a SB1 run or two since I have a couple of characters who have that as their main rep. I am definitely not alone in that either if zone and fleet chat (and discord channel usage along with "X is playing Y" indicators) are anything to go by.
It's a great option for earning marks to level reps as you basically double your mark rewards. Especially when you're trying to level all of them as you can use it to acquire the marks that aren't as easy to come by especially for the queues that don't qualify for random.
Just like it did last year, it will drive them towards doing either the queue they need or more likely it will drive them to do random advanced TFO's. TBH, the system already works pretty well even with them giving us choice marks way too often. I'm good with it as it is but the devs can always improve the system.
Back to reality here. Of course removing spoilmarks would drive players back into relevant content. What a silly thing to suggest it wouldn't. Rewards are one of the main reasons to play any content and the more unique the rewards the more effective that incentive.
Although the effect would naturally work much better if they'd create some content where the rep gear is actually necessary, rather than just a bit more overkill on top of overkill.
Yes, fun, you might be surprised how much that concept influences what people do or don't do in a game.
And no, unlike what the old kneejerk response says, the "fun content" is not always the quickest and easiest with the best payout, not everyone has that kind of efficiency of grind mentality. Surprising as some may find it, many people have little interest in grinding their way up leaderboards or the equivalent, or even making the perfect unicorn ship, instead they may just want to unwind with some action, do space Barbie, RP, interact with the community, or other things they find fun.
By the time the RTFOs become available many people already have their main rep ground out already (or have enough marks to do so anyway), or have decided to go with fleet and/or the better of the mission gear sets, and the rest of the reps are no big hurry that can wait for FTFOs or the like to finish off.
It is not a huge deal, I doubt many (if any) rage quit over it, but I have seen the trends happening that I mentioned in my previous post. Trying to force players to do anything makes herding cats seem easy by comparison, you have to entice them instead.
You are right about the need for unique gear that plays to the style of the reputation, as it is now it is too much alike for the most part and when a rep gets too odious to grind it is so easy to just switch to a less annoying one or go fleet or whatever. The trick is in balancing that uniqueness and desirability with the mechanics of it or you just end up with tedious power creep where everyone runs more or less the same unicorn gear until the next one shows up then rinse and repeat.
Trying to force everyone into RTFOs to get marks they can do well enough without would not help much, if at all, with any of that, the very nature of random negates the traditional hyper-organized dungeon/raid play and requires the kind of flexible unstructured scenarios that work the best for PUG play. There really is no "relevant content" when leaving it all to RNG.
The mark choice boxes were set up for the same purpose as the RTFOs, concentrating the playerbase, and eliminating them would do little more than split the playerbase up again to hunt down the marks each person needs which in turn increases the wait time and fill-failure rate.
Sure, some players don't care about the rewards. I've even heard people say they run queues and intentionally leave before the reward pops, just so they can play it again without cooldown. But you don't see those people here arguing that changing the rewards would make things less fun. Because they're not in it for the rewards.
And in any case it's a bit too late for you to pretend to be one, since you already admitted you only play content that rewards something you immediately need in your previous post.
By "main rep," I take it you mean you choose a single rep that you intend to get gear from and skip the rest? That's fine, but don't assume everyone does the same. For example, I do all the reps just because I can and then skip the gear because I don't need it for anything (except the ground set for the costume unlock).
It's a videogame. It's physically incapable of forcing players to do anything against their will. You indeed do have to entice them...by giving them rewards they can't get anywhere else.
Quite the opposite. RTFO should not give allmarks any more than any other source. There is relevant content for each mark type, and nothing else should give them.
RTFO should reward marks of the type associated with the content actually played, or something entirely different.