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Events and encouraging players to play every day
fleetcaptain5
Member Posts: 5,051 Arc User
It appears that maintaining a continuous stream of events and rewards is the new main strategy for the Devs.
Two things may be relevant to discuss here:
1. The sustainability of continuously pressuring people to log on every day and treat the game like a job (specifically: how long will this work, how long will it take for loyal players to simply collapse and just walk away?)
2. The (increased) monetisation of players' time. Things that could previously be gotten by spending some time on an event or getting it for some dilithium through a Phoenix box afterwards, appear increasingly only available by either playing the event (as it used to be) or spending what may be called ridiculously high sums of Zen.
Two things may be relevant to discuss here:
1. The sustainability of continuously pressuring people to log on every day and treat the game like a job (specifically: how long will this work, how long will it take for loyal players to simply collapse and just walk away?)
2. The (increased) monetisation of players' time. Things that could previously be gotten by spending some time on an event or getting it for some dilithium through a Phoenix box afterwards, appear increasingly only available by either playing the event (as it used to be) or spending what may be called ridiculously high sums of Zen.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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But I feel that it is getting too much, the idea of continuously being enticed to log on on a daily basis, to be given the choice of either playing NOW to get the next interesting reward - or to miss out on it forever if you're not willing to spend thousands of Zen on a console or a kit module in the future.
Of course, we've had events for a long time now. But there used to be much more time between them. And missing out on a previous event (other than a few ones that rewarded a ship) wasn't much of an issue after the Phoenix box was released. The positive impact of that excellent new feature has been muted already and I'm afraid it will be more so in the future if this strategy isn't changed.
An alternative way of doing things, one that I would favour, would be as follows:
Keep, if the devs feel it is necessary, the same amount of events. But give players more of a choice when they want to do what. Instead of:
Month 1: Play event A and do it 14 times, spread out over 21 days.
Month 2: Play event B and do it 25 times, spread out over 40 days.
Month 3: Play event C and do it 14 times, spread out over 21 days...
etc.
Do it as follows:
12 events, players get 12 months. Or even 6 events, 6 months to complete them. They cannot be all completed on the first day, but you can, for example, on day 30, do a max of thirty missions at once if you'd like (or, do 20 of them, and 11 on day 31 for example). On day 40, you can complete up to 40 missions.
Instead of forcing players to log on every day, you're giving them the opportunity to not play during the week for example, and then make up for it during the weekend. Or whenever they want - if needed, within a certain timeframe of say, six months or one year.
This would keep the calendar as crammed as it is - which is a choice I assume Cryptic has made for some specific reason, so they'll likely want to keep it like that - but it would help players to counter event fatigue by giving them more control over what they want to do, and when.
Players can postpone participation and then make up for it on a day when they have nothing else to do - freeing their minds from the game for a while until they're prepared to spend a lot of time on it. For the game's metrics, it wouldn't matter. The total amount of time spent on an event would remain the same. Players would still have to do the same amount of work for their rewards, but with reduced feelings of their spare time being filled in for them.
For me, a game is something I want to play on a rainy afternoon when I have nothing else to do. Perhaps more often than that. But it's not something I want to be expected to do every day when there's a dozen other things that need to be done, so many other responsibilities people have to meet.
Please consider this. I'm not the only one who is getting tired of the continuous stream of events. I know there are other players who really enjoy the game, but who feel overwhelmed by the way things are currently planned out.
Endeavors:
Universal - Gravity Kills TFO
Normal - Phaser Damage Ground
Advanced - do two Borg TFOs
Hard - do three Iconian TFOs
49 reroll Tokens. Hard won't reroll no matter what. Advanced won't reroll. Did Conduit Advanced. Qued for Khitomer, nothing, Hive, no takers. Tried Queuing for Iconian TFOs, no pops. I did Gravity Kills to kill time before I could run Conduit again. Went to Kobali to get Phaser Endeavor to finish up the time killer. Conduit Advanced again.
Times up. I usually always reroll any Endeavor that needs to run more than one TFO. Bugged system, prevented that. First time I let a Personal Endeavor go in many many months.
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 admit I am suffering a bit from Event Fatigue, and am enjoying the break between events (As I already have the winter event ship).
I'm actually rather picky on the Endeavors. Anything with "Kill X Hur'q" or "Kill X Tzenkethi" I tend to ignore. And I told the Universal to take a flying leap at a rolling donut as I don't particularly enjoy Gravity Kills.
There's a daily play routine for STO. This is all you need to do, unless you want to chase after the useless powercreep of endeavors, or choke on the mark farm and reputation timers of trying to get an alt to T5.
Play STO like you would Farmville on Facebook. Login, do your daily stuff, and move on until tomorrow. That's how Cryptic designed it, play it like they intended.
That's an Endgame Player problem. At least STO allows for replayability, unlike other MMOs where you finish a quest, it is DONE unless you start a new character.
And then it becomes the same problem for any new player that makes it to end game.
And the replayability of other MMOs actually offers something other than the same thing. You get to experience a new game play with class abilities. Do you have that here in STO? Not really, since you can setup any career with in the exact same manner as the other two carreers. The only real replayability in STO, is just making a character of each faction to experience their beginning story line. Beyond that, it's all the same.
Final Fantasy 14 doesn't require you to make a new charcter to try different classes. One character can unlock all classes. They just level independently of each other.
I skip some events, and I don't stress about earning extra dil on the ones I do play. Only having clicky consoles #1-19 instead of consoles #1-20 isn't going to keep me from playing the game.
Maybe you can, but no one is forcing you to.
There are unique story episodes for Rom, KDF, Jem'Hadar, Fed-2019, Fed-Discovery, Fed-TOS along with the different visual and sound effects.
There are 100+ different ships to fly, and different build types using the ship types.
There are different captain powers for tac, eng, sci though that does mostly matter on the ground with the different kit modules.
If you create every character the same and fly the same ship type for all of them, that's your own choice to limit your variety. The game lets you do much more.
Fixed that for you.
Seriously, though - "event burnout" is everywhere in games. From MMOs like STO & ESO, to "live service" games like Fortnite, to shooters like Borderlands 3 & CoD. Everybody wants you to keep paying attention to their game, and not move on to the Next New Thing.
(Constant events, daily login rewards, "daily chore" quests & tasks, etc. It's everywhere.)
I honestly don't know, I've never played other MMO's.
But the fact that other games are doing it, is no reason to repeat the practice here. As noted, an alternative set up could result in players spending the same amount of time in the game - but when it suits them best instead of when Cryptic wants them to.
So I doubt how much of an issue the 'competition'-argument (as one may call it) really is.
Besides, I imagine that it is Star Trek that's keeping players tied to the game. That name isn't going away when another, new thing is coming out.
It is true that nothing is really needed.
But players can't know in advance whether they'll ever use something or not. That means you'll either have to join the event when players are told to join it, or spend the large amounts of Zen afterwards.
Now, I don't mind the monetising of the event rewards per se. After 6 months or a year, or whichever time horizon is chosen to put all the events in, they could still add it to Mudd's store for example, and charge large amounts of Zen for a single item.
But it would be nice if the time horizon, the time when people can earn rewards by participating in events, were broadened. Either that, or give players the ability to complete it whenever they want within the currently used time periods (21 days for most events for instance), thereby not asking them to be occupied with a single event for multiple weeks, but giving them an option to complete it by intensively playing during two days for example.
That also wouldn't have any negative impact on overall activity. Players can complete it 14 times on the first day, or stretch it out - whatever strategy works best for them. Or, if deemed necessary by the Devs, add in the restriction as noted in my previous post above, with the amount of times an event mission can be run never being larger than the maximum amount of days it has been active.
There are indeed issues with rerolling.
But to be fair, I think the Endeavour system is already an improvement over the event planning. It comes closer to what I'm proposing here, as the rewards from Endeavours are not going anywhere.
Sure, you can't complete them four times on the fourth day if you missed the previous three. But the system is in place and can be used whenever the player wants. Some will feel tempted to do it every day, others might take three times as long as necessary - that's up to them.
That bit of freedom, of knowing the system will still be there the next day if I don't use it today, means that, for me at least, Endeavour fatigue isn't so much an issue, whereas event fatigue is.
The reward box rolls need adjusted so that if you open a box that rolls more than one "prize" if the first drop is credits, those worthless trash mats or whatever the subsequent rolls have a lesser chance of vomiting out more of the same. The crafting system needs something done to make the vast quantities of materials they flooded into the game actually useful (which might also help coax folk into the R&D idiotboxes)
And the powercreepy stat boosts are similarly not worth chasing as the difficulty curve is horizontal with a miniscule wibble when the bumsniffing hurq swarmers arrived.
STO's been on that bandwagon for years & years, though - it's not some new thing they're picking up. There were all sorts of daily and/or timed tasks, even back in the early 20-teens. DOFFing, hourly event bonuses, daily quests, daily Dil refining, etc. F2P just adds more motivation to keep your players coming back - they more they're here, they more chances they might spend some $.
I played WoW back in the day - they were going whole-hog on "daily" quests & activities back in their early expansions, and that wasn't even f2p. But with all the f2p MMOs over the years, and now f2p Mobile games, the various companies have had lots of research done on the whole keeping-the-player-around thing. And not-free games that sell DLC want to keep people playing in the times between DLC releases, because studies have shown that once a player stops playing and uninstalls the game, the odds of them buying the next DLC drops sharply. Everybody wants to keep the eyeballs focused on them.)
edit: I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing. I'm just pointing out the reality that it's pretty omnipresent in modern gaming, especially at the AAA level.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
If you're flying a cruiser... Warp Plasma may be your friend. Either that or the Vorgon ship with the 3/5 loadout.
1. Eve Online. I quit because it became a job, and, not a game. I want to have fun (Please, do not read this as, "It's OK that I suck, I'm just having fun.) I play games to relax. If I have to work at it, well, why bother? I have a day job.
2. I have long said that STO needs some sort of other content. Episodic stories, as in a television show, where it's one, maybe two, episodes. Done and dusted. Since the Foundry is broken, fix it! The Foundry in STO was always a bit off. City of Heroes had a great system. Yes, it had a learning curve, but, you didn't need tutorial after tutorial. There were some awesome stories in the Foundry. How many more could there have been had it been easier to use?
3. I used to work retail. When your whole store starts being on sale every day, it's no longer a sale. When I started with that company, the sales would cycle between departments (It was a small box store), but, item A wasn't always on sale. When I left, Item A was always on sale. At that point, it's no longer a sale. I think that having the ability to clear out events by using cash is a lot like having a sale all the time. There's nothing to say that the person spending Zen actually purchased that Zen for real moneys. They might be a very successful Dilithium farmer, so, that really doesn't net you much.
4. I have to say that I love the way STO treats it's players. The economy here means that you don't have to spend real money if you choose not to. But, the game could do a much better job on the things it has monetized. For example, Bridge sets. The main difference between bridge sets is...Lighting? That, to me, reduces the value of those things. I don't think it's worth what they are asking to get lighting changes. If they would ask less, say 200, or, 300 (iffy), Zen for those things, I might be more inclined to spend moneys on them.
5. Someone above mentioned that the different "classes" in the game were essentially the same once you got past your origin arc. This is far too true. Again, we ought to have more content. I deeply appreciate the work that goes into making a story arc, but, not every arc has to continue the same story. Not every arc has to have item rewards. Not every arc has to be a dozen missions. Not every arc has to have voice acting (although, admittedly, this is a plus). Not every arc has to be "do X, or the galaxy dies!" Not every episode of Star Trek (any series) was about the end of creation. Most were about some local issue, which, while serious, wasn't going to eradicate everyone in the known Universe. The devs could make a real difference here by making Science, Tactical, and Engineering have meaningfully different elements to their stories, or, different stories altogether.
6. Another thing I have long criticized is the lack of content for Klingons and Romulans. I am very happy to see the Klingons finally getting some love. Adding content for those species, as well as, adding content for TOS, Enterprise, Discovery, and the other series timelines that have been folded in would be awesome. I was so hyped to have a TOS era Captain, until....I finished the opening arc and realized I would now be playing the same stuff every other character had played. To me, this defeats the purpose of any of these other eras being in the game.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and, have a great day! If you didn't, have a great day!
Eve
The problem is, Cryptic is going to push this until the breaking point. They're not going to stop until a massive amount of players leave(Like what happened with delta rising for example) they have a habit of sticking with something, even if its bad until the absolute last minute then trying to fix things.
I think I expressed it poorly, but, yes, that's exactly what I meant. If you are a Science Captain, I think there should be content that is for you, and, other Science Captains, etc.,...I would rather just see these missions give you, perhaps, rewards that are mission oriented: Dilithium, experience...But, that being said, I would like to see them be told from a different flavor, granting, again, perhaps, Science specific items for your ship, or, Captain. Just flinging ideas, but, in days of yore, City of Heroes had contacts that were different depending on your origin. Something like that, I think, could be implemented in this game, perhaps not easily, but, nothing good is ever easy.
I'm not tired of events, yet, at least... but now i don't know if i want some of the prizes for those events, not that interesting, for the new drones, those i like and i'll try to fullfil my quota, the thing that bothers me the most is the lag, sometimes is imposible to play because of it!. I'll do de events for the T6/lobi thing, but i dont think i'll do Risa this year, thats not the ship i like, only if there is a good trait and maybe a good console, i could be convinced to do it... it would be the first one i wont do.. in almost 9 years..