Have I missed something? RTFO gives you a mark box worth at least 50 marks that you can open for any rep.
The subject at hand is the availability of the ELITE marks that you get from Advanced queues or trading 100 marks for one elite. Its the Competitive Rep version of the Borg Neural Processor from advanced Borg TFOs.
and since there is the 1 elite mark per day via mark trade in already, there is really no need to actually change something at all. its just that some people want it faster without playing the queues / trying sto get the queues running. the ONLY reason why those queues actually start sometimes is because they reward you with those marks. dont take those away or remove those queues directly.
i mean at the end we could remove all the queues, place a ncp somewhere to claim all the stuff directly, would solve a lot of problems for most people i guess;)
As much as I see some of the DPS crews advertise those Competitive Engines I am honestly surprised you of all people don't see the issue here and wouldn't want to make it easier to get them. I'm also disappointed that a man of your caliber would resort to some of the outright flawed and baseless arguments you have. Simply because you personally do not believe there is a problem does not mean automatically there isn't one. Simply because one can trade in marks for elite marks also does not mean there isn't a problem. Nor does wanting a solution to said problem mean folks are just wanting everything handed to them or want those queues removed, it simply means they want an alternative to bring it in line with other reputations. More on this in a minute.
sitting there and waiting for the queue to pop without any form of promotion in dedicated pve channels (dps-bronze and so on as example) would lead to exactly what you see there.
promoting them (even add zonechat, reddit etc into it) and you will get a pop with a decent amount of time, for me it was the last time i've tried like maybe 15 minutes or so till it started.
=>
promote it, let people know you wanna play binary circuit elite (yes do that one, not the space ones and yes use elite) and here you go
It should not take players going through private channels or 3rd party stuff just to get a queue running. It's cool that those potential resources exist, but it should NEVER be left purely to a 3rd party channel before folks are able to experience content in this game or to get a queue rolling. If certain queues never pop, and they often don't, this tells me there is something wrong with the queue itself, either in terms of mechanics, bugs, and/or rewards not being properly balanced. I get that the less popular queues aren't going to pop as fast as the more popular ones, but if it's left purely to the 3rd party channels to get something running, that tells me there are more serious issues at play. Having those potential resources is cool, but it should not be up to them to drive the content.
no, thats the way to remove those queues directly from the game, because they dont solve any purpose anymore. actually a lot of queues are pertty much useless due to the all marks form the event we get 3 out of 4 weeks a month
and if the dedicated pve channels dont work (you should tell them to "queue up for bce please" as example), extend to the reddit chat, to your fleet chars, to the zone chat...
or just convert one mark once per day and wait.
because, you got 2 possiblities, slow and easy = convert the normal marks, fast and a bit more difficult = play the queue. you just want it fast and easy, thats all. its not blocked or anything.
Asking for an alternative is NOT and I repeat is NOT asking that the existing queues be removed. As it sits right now, there are only 2 reputations in game that do not have an alternative means of gaining their elite mark outside of TFOs. Those 2 reputations are Discovery and Competitive. Thankfully Discovery has queues that pop fairly quickly, so it can wait a bit longer on getting an alternative. Of course it was also the most recent rep to release as well. Competitive Wargames has been around since season 13 and has had quite a bit of time for an alternative means to get the elite marks. As it is right now, all other reputations can get their elite marks in a reasonable amount of time.
Assuming a person is going to pick up a a piece of gear from Competitive rep, you're looking at 100 hours per piece of gear without the discount, or 60 hours with the discount. For a full 4 piece set you're looking at 400 hours without discount or 240 hours with discount. To put that into perspective that's 16.6 days without the discount or 10 days with. For any other reputation it might take you up to 5 hours at most to get the elite marks for an entire 4 piece set of gear. That means it's going to take you anywhere from 48-80 times as long to get a full 4 piece set of Competitive rep gear or 12-20 times as long for just a single piece of Competitive gear, as it would to get a full set of any other reputation. I'm not sure what universe you consider that to be acceptable in, but I don't consider that acceptable at all. Every other reputation EXCEPT for this one can be farmed in a reasonable time constraint. Precedent was set with all other reps, including the Discovery reputation that came after it, yet for some reason this one needs to take an absurd amount of time longer? Why?
When you're talking a time difference of 12-80 times depending on how much one is trying to get compared to any other reputation, I call that wholly unreasonable. Yes there is a block, and that block is the fact there are no other alternatives to get the elite marks. No one is asking for the queues themselves to be changed, simply that an alternative method to acquiring the elite marks be given like all other reps in the game have. There is no reason this rep needs to be the oddball out, especially when there is no valid need for it. No one is asking for special treatment, no one is asking the Competitive rep be removed, or they be handed everything for free. What they're asking is that an alternative method be given to get the elite marks to bring it in line with the others. Instead of spending 200+ hours on it, they can finish that set off in 5 hours or less like every other rep in game.
Also the bit I put in bold in the quote is part of the exact reason why folks don't want to go into the 3rd party channels. If you've ever wondered why the DPS channels get a bad rep, look no further than that statement there. That statement is the epitome of elitism and arrogance all because someone dared say an arbitrary thing needs to change. If you think it's fine the way it is, you're entitled to that opinion, however if you want to know why others don't consider 3rd party solutions as valid, look no further than the statement above.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
@darkbladejk
what you're desribing seems to be mainly an optimization problem of getting the stuff.
in case i dont want to go the route with getting the queue started with help from friends/fleets/pve related channel/zone chat... i would do the following on a new toon, we're asuming you have a few toons already so the 5k bonus:
day1:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo right now => rewards you with 130+ competitive marks
turn in 30 marks for the daily project, turn in 100 marks for 1 token
day2-4:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo
turn in 30 marks for leveling project, turn in 100 marks for elite token.
day 5:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo, turn in 100 marks.
yay we got the 5 tokens we need for our competitive engine but hey, we're not yet there to actually buy it. so just let us play more random tfos or event queues till reaching the required rep tier.
seems difficult
time used to do this is like a total of 10 random tfos, even less if you play elite phavo ground (because that queue could reward you with a maximum of 270! marks of choice).
in addition, at t5 we usualy get another 5 elite marks on top, but til we reach t5 (20 days) we could've created a total of 20 elite marks. till t6 thats an additional 30 marks. so we could get a total of 55 elite tokens just while leveling the reputation, without touching the dedicated queues at all. on top of that there should be 8 (?) elite tokens of choice from the temporal agent, in case we finished that event back than.
for me, this doesnt seems to be that difficult at all to be honest.
and for the "queues could get removed".. that most likely not going to happen, but the result will be the same so we could forget they even exist. i mean its more or less the case already, because most people are just going the route i've described and this results in: the queues arent played frequently. adding other queues to the reward pool will just result in they will played even less frequently.
and no one said you need to use the dps channels itself, this was an example and it worked well for me in the past. you could use your friends/fleets/armadas, zone chat or whatever to get a few people to queue for it to get it poping faster.
@darkbladejk
what you're desribing seems to be mainly an optimization problem of getting the stuff.
in case i dont want to go the route with getting the queue started with help from friends/fleets/pve related channel/zone chat... i would do the following on a new toon, we're asuming you have a few toons already so the 5k bonus:
day1:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo right now => rewards you with 130+ competitive marks
turn in 30 marks for the daily project, turn in 100 marks for 1 token
day2-4:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo
turn in 30 marks for leveling project, turn in 100 marks for elite token.
day 5:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo, turn in 100 marks.
yay we got the 5 tokens we need for our competitive engine but hey, we're not yet there to actually buy it. so just let us play more random tfos or event queues till reaching the required rep tier.
seems difficult
time used to do this is like a total of 10 random tfos, even less if you play elite phavo ground (because that queue could reward you with a maximum of 270! marks of choice).
in addition, at t5 we usualy get another 5 elite marks on top, but til we reach t5 (20 days) we could've created a total of 20 elite marks. till t6 thats an additional 30 marks. so we could get a total of 55 elite tokens just while leveling the reputation, without touching the dedicated queues at all. on top of that there should be 8 (?) elite tokens of choice from the temporal agent, in case we finished that event back than.
for me, this doesnt seems to be that difficult at all to be honest.
and for the "queues could get removed".. that most likely not going to happen, but the result will be the same so we could forget they even exist. i mean its more or less the case already, because most people are just going the route i've described and this results in: the queues arent played frequently. adding other queues to the reward pool will just result in they will played even less frequently.
and no one said you need to use the dps channels itself, this was an example and it worked well for me in the past. you could use your friends/fleets/armadas, zone chat or whatever to get a few people to queue for it to get it poping faster.
Getting the standard competitive marks is not now, nor has it ever been the problem for folks. The key issue is that it doesn't matter whether you only grab the 100 marks needed per day for the conversion, or stack it 10k marks deep, you're still looking at 60-400 hours of time depending on whether you have the discount or not and how much gear you're wanting to grab. The issue is also not leveling the reputation itself as one only needs the standard marks to do this and you do not need the stratagems for it. You acknowledged yourself how easy the standard marks can be obtained. Not everyone has access to the temporal agent rewards like you or I do.
Even if we assume the person has access to temporal agent rewards, and they claim the 8 stratagems, if their goal is a full 4 piece set, they're still going to come up short. If their goal is a full 4 piece set of gear and they have the discount, they need 4 more of them which is 60 hours of time required through conversion to get that final piece of gear. If the goal is a full 4 piece set and they do NOT yet have the discount, they need 12 more of them which means it will take them 220 hours of conversion time to get those final 2 pieces of gear. So even if we assume someone has access to temporal rewards you're looking at 60-220 hours for a full 4 piece set of gear with the leg up the temporal rewards give you. Hourly rewards are not a viable solution to this as it's a throw of the dice whether you will get one or not. One could get them fairly regularly, or one could go 40+ boxes and never see one. If the goal is only a single piece of gear such as Competitive Engines, the temporal rewards cover the cost of the stratagems. However if one does NOT have access to temporal rewards, as most folks today don't, they're still looking at 60-100 hours for that single piece of gear. If they're wanting more than one item of gear, the time required jumps dramatically. No other reputation has this issue.
In regards to the queues themselves, once again it should not take 3rd party channels or similar to get a queue running before folks are able to experience content or just generally play something in this game. Again it's cool that those potential resources exist, but it should NEVER be left to those channels to be the driving force of queues, or to fill in the gap for players. If that's the only way for it to work is through 3rd party venues, then that tells me there are serious problems with that queue, either mechanically, with it's rewards, and/or other issue. If it takes a 3rd party channel to get content going, you're essentially locking the content behind that 3rd party. Also what happens if a player is only able to play when that 3rd party channel is largely offline in non-peak hours? Overall it's just bad form and it should not be up to the players to fill in that gap in the queue system.
Next, the queues themselves already exist outside of the TFO system in part due to their nature of requiring 2 teams of 5, and also in part due to folks not wanting queues they associate with PVP as being part of the random TFO system. So if the concern is their play frequency going down, that ship has already sailed. Folks are not asking anything be done to the queues themselves, simply that an alternative be given for the elite marks that all other reps in the game have at the moment. Every other rep in the game has this with Competitive and Discovery being the exceptions. The only reason Discovery doesn't have one at the moment is purely for story reasons as last time I heard anything they hadn't found one that worked good for them. The advantage Discovery rep has is that its queues are quick AND are part of the random TFO system. Since folks can random into it and it only takes 5 people to start the queue, Discovery doesn't have that many issues getting the elite marks. Competitive does not have the luxuries that Discovery does and can't by its very nature. Point being, every other reputation has an alternative means to get their elite marks and/or is able to be part of the random system which allows for reasonable acquisition of the gear. Competitive is the sole exception at the moment and is the only rep where it takes a minimum of 60 hours on average to get one piece of gear. There is no need for it to take 10-80 times longer than the other queues to get a single piece of gear or full set of gear when all other reps can produce a full 4 piece set in about 5 hours at most.
The issue is that Competitive rep by nature is at a huge disadvantage compared to the other reps. No other reps have this issue.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
just out of curiosity, what did you think will happen to the existing queues and the possibility of them starting if you add another queue rewarding those elite marks?
and thanks for ignoring the "sync up leveling the rep and elite mark creation", since you would get the 4 piece set by reaching t5 (the point you could actually buy the 4 piece set) with those 25 marks you collected till than.
and its stil an mmo. you know multiplayer and stuff like that, social interaction. so yea i fully understand that asking your friends/fleet (you dont need the channels, they just INCREASE!! the playerpool you could draw from) is defnitly not an option to get something running fast
all i'm showing are for now 2 ways to get what you want to solve the problem with the given resources we have right now.
but if you want, i could proof to you with a stream or something like that to get competitive marks as fast as other elite marks
guess the timeframe is 5 hours for 20 tokens?
and thanks for ignoring the "sync up leveling the rep and elite mark creation", since you would get the 4 piece set by reaching t5 (the point you could actually buy the 4 piece set) with those 25 marks you collected till than.
I don't get why people don't understand this part. Every time I create a new character, I max all of their reps. Part of my "grind schedule" is to allow for competitive elite mark conversion while I'm leveling from T1 to T6. I only bother getting 10 of them, because that's all I need, but if I needed more, then I'd grind for more and it wouldn't cost me anything, since I'm already waiting 20 days to hit T5 and 50 days to hit T6.
Post edited by salazarraze on
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
just out of curiosity, what did you think will happen to the existing queues and the possibility of them starting if you add another queue rewarding those elite marks?
Show me where I asked for another queue specifically, because that's not what I said. I asked for an alternative in addition to what is already there. Thus I am asking for more content or availability of the mark, I never said that alternative had to be in the form of another queue. You are trying to put words in my mouth on that one. Adding an alternative for the elite marks will have a negligible effect on the already mostly dead Competitive queues. Below is a list of alternative locations for every elite mark in the game that already exist.
Discovery does not yet have an alternative due to story reasons at the moment. However its queues can be part of the random system so the crunch on those is not as severe. Competitive queues by their nature could not be part of the system due to technical reasons, and also their association with pvp, be it deserved or otherwise. The moment folks get put into those queues you would see folks leave instantly meaning it would never get done, and you would have a massive load of people complaining for a number of reasons. First, that it put them into what they view as a pvp queue when they have no desire for pvp, even if it's just one of the racing ones. Second complaint would be the inevitable leaver penalty folks would get for dropping from the queue. That would leave quite a few angry that they're getting what they see as a punishment for not wanting to play pvp. So tell me, what makes Competitive Wargames so different from all the other reps that adding an alternative for stratagems would be this big catastrophe, when it wasn't for any of the other reps. What sets the Competitive Wargames rep apart from the others that it warrants it taking potentially 12-80 times longer to get the gear for it vs other reps? Every other rep has an alternative to get its elite marks, why should this one specifically be any different when precedent has already been set? I have yet to see a valid answer to why folks think it should be this big massive grind when it doesn't need to be, or any answer to that at all really.
and thanks for ignoring the "sync up leveling the rep and elite mark creation", since you would get the 4 piece set by reaching t5 (the point you could actually buy the 4 piece set) with those 25 marks you collected till than.
Leveling up the reputation again is NOT and I repeat is NOT the problem. Leveling up the rep has never been the problem, acquiring the basic marks is NOT the problem either. The chief issue is once again the conversions and the time it takes to do that. No matter what you do, you are limited to one conversion per day. If you assume 20 days to level said rep to tier 5 with the sponsorship (normally 40 days without) it still does not solve the issue. Since you provided the number of 25 stratagems that's the number I will use for calculation of this part. If the goal is only one piece of gear this more than takes care of the cost. This would be enough to cover 5 pieces of gear without the discount and 8 pieces with the discount. However it doesn't completely eliminate the issue and is only good for so much. What if said person decides they don't care for the particular set they picked out and want to change to one of the other 2? What if they want to use more equipment from said rep than just the 4 piece and the heavy weapon as an example? What of the person who wants to have a copy of everything from the rep for no other reason than they want to? You're now looking at again 60 to 100 hours conversion time for every additional piece of gear they're looking to acquire, even with your particular method you've outlined.
Your method only goes so far and does not eliminate the need for the additional stratagems it would take to acquire the extra gear. It also does not address what happens if folks used up their stratagems but needed more after the fact. Once again your method ignores the issue completely by turning a blind eye to it.
all i'm showing are for now 2 ways to get what you want to solve the problem with the given resources we have right now.
but if you want, i could proof to you with a stream or something like that to get competitive marks as fast as other elite marks
guess the timeframe is 5 hours for 20 tokens?
If you're telling me you can get 20 stratagems in 5 hours through mark conversion, I would very much love to see that because as things sit right now, that would be an exploit. Otherwise again, getting the basic normal marks is NOT the issue nor was it ever the issue.
and its stil an mmo. you know multiplayer and stuff like that, social interaction. so yea i fully understand that asking your friends/fleet (you dont need the channels, they just INCREASE!! the playerpool you could draw from) is defnitly not an option to get something running fast
Whether one gets the elite marks from the TFOs or through a battlezone type area, one is still playing the mmo, the only thing that changes is the venue inside the mmo itself and the method used to acquire the marks. Farming Lukari Protomatter cans through the Tzenkethi Battlezone for a Lukari weapon is just as legitimate as doing it through TFOs.
In regards to the 3rd party channels like the DPS league channel you advertised for, did you not see the part where others have said in here they asked for folks to queue and help them out with those Competitive queues only to be met with silence? If the queues won't pop, and no one is responding anywhere in the 3rd party channels, what is that player supposed to do then? As is right now they're basically up the creek without a paddle and unable to get the content running. Their only option at that point is to try again later or keep asking in a 3rd party channel hoping enough folks pity them and queue, thus locking that content behind a 3rd party channel that decides who gets to play that content and who doesn't. Yeah no, sorry, but no 3rd party anything is that important they should get to dictate to the rest of the game like that. I don't trust any 3rd party channel or application with that kind of power, not even for 5 minutes.
Also again, read what I said previously. I said it's cool that folks have access to those potential resources, but it is not and should not be incumbent on those 3rd party apps to fill in that gap that was created by the game itself. What is a person to do then when those 3rd party channels don't get things moving? That's twice you have attempted to put words in my mouth that I straight up did not say. Overall your proposed solutions ignore the actual problem people are talking about and attempt to downplay it in what basically amounts to a veiled "learn to play better ya noob" argument.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
so you asume the queues are already dead. so we could add something else or remove those elite marks directly and with them the queues because they dont serve any purpose anymore.
for the elite token trade in. if we asume you have all the normal marks (what you said is not a problem), we have a total playtime of roughly 10-15 seconds per elite mark. would guess my actual playtime in that case would be defnitly below 5h. even tho the overall playtime would be stretched do an actual 20 day length, but i guess we're talking about playtime here and not adding some other stuff like working, studying or sleeping to that "time we need to get stuff" counter. oh and when you reached tier 6 with your reputation you got a total of 55 tokens, thats 11 items. not sure what you wanna do there but thats with the discount propably all the items a store has to offer
in addition i said i would show you to get those marks, not that i'm doing it with the transfer. i would just get those queues running like i always did when i need those elite marks and forgot to do the trade in route (which is usualy the case)
Everyone forgets that the Competitive Reputation was a one-off being 'plopped' in just three months after the Lukari Rep. The normal pace was six months, the Temporal being six months before Lukari and Discovery six months after Competitive. (Of course we are now 19 months since the last Reputation, which is probably due both to keep focus on Discovery, and a rethinking the proliferation of Reps overall).
Unlike other Reputation Stores, this one has nothing worthwhile in it unless you were doing Competitive Queues (and debatable at that too).
When this released I played 'Binary Circuit' daily on Elite (the only TFO ever for me, after Delta Rising) on a Character to unlock the Rep. I ended up with 42 Strategems. 41 is the magic number to get the complete Space, Ground, and Ship Sets (though this has a possibility of multiple Sets). Other than a few exceptions, all others have used the conversion method. I've never had a problem getting a piece when I needed it, though not often.
The Tzen'kethi BZ, I do need to point out, is not a good alternate source for the Protomatter Containers as it seems still to be hit and miss with them being awarded, amongst other issues there.
'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.'
So unless i am mistaken you're arguing that there is nothing wrong with the duration of the mark conversion, but your never use it?
I wouldn't say that the competitive queues are dead, but due to their association with PVP and their exclusion from the RTFO system it is difficult to get a TFO running on advanced or Elite difficulty without having access to premade teams or Third party channels.
Preferably i would like to see the competitive queues added to the Random TFO system, but as mentioned previously it is not known if the mechanism behind the RFTO could support that.
With advanced/elite difficulty competitive queues rarely popping up without a premade/channel the only way to obtain astrogems is behind a 20 hour cooldown. This does not promote the competitive queue or encourage players to experiment with said gear if it takes 100-120 hours for conversions for a single piece of gear.
An increase in availability e.g. through Sompek or by reducing the cool down on the conversion of marks would benefit the reputation.
Post edited by questerius on
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I'm not saying that at all. I would wish quicker acquisition but I get what I need. I usually play one Character at a time, logging others in to advance the busy body work (Specializations, Reputation, Crafting to 20, Commendations). My current Character, is actually my first and original Main, but was not played much since Delta Rising. I run 'Pahvo Dissension' on Advanced and was taking Discovery Marks but now Competitive. I convert to Elite Marks every night in 6 or 7 Reputations.
That Character hadaa bunch of Mk XI or XII VR Rep equipment as it was bought before I unlocked Mk XIII UR with the Temporal Recruit. I have even rebought some Mk XII VR in the XIII UR variety as it's cheaper than trying to Upgrade it (the UR part for the most part).
What I have bought in Competitive is the Impulse Engines, and a Ground or Space weapon to complete a Tetryon Build or to have a Tetryon Pistol to fill out a Tetryon Ground Endeavor. Nothing I need very much of.
Still, I would rather get a Strategem directly than having to convert but with the T6 discount, Marks are not much of a problem.
'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.'
All of the queues which take other than 5 players are excluded. For example, Crystalline. I am guessing it's a technical issue with how the RTFO system works.
This was the stated reason. I recall one of the livestreams where the devs were asked about it, and one of them even said something along the lines of "If only you could see the question marks above my head on how that would even work" when asked about the TFOs that require more then 5 people being added to the RTFO system.
I think the issue is that its set up to build a team of 5, then pop. With the majority of TFOs being 5 man jobs, how the hell do you enable something for twice that many players? Its going to throw the first 5 people into something before you get 10 people gathered. We'd probably need a seperate system for 10 man TFOs. Problem is... there's pretty much just... um... 1 than I can think of?
So yea its a technical issue.
So, it sounds like the system queues up the players, then randomizes a map to stick them in (it may or may not pop the accept/decline message on players before this). Makes sense it could only deal with 5 person maps.
The solution would be to reverse the process. Randomize the map selection, then slot in people as they queue up. Once all slots are full (perhaps with a few extra in case some decline?), then pop the accept/decline message. That should be doable, I'd think.
Course, even doing this, I'm not sure if it helps much with the issue you're trying to solve. They'd have to put in separate queues for PvP vs PvE maps. I know many people (myself included) don't want to touch PUG PvP with a 10 foot pole. If they didn't, I can tell you I'd either never do RTFOs, or would automatically drop out of any PvP ones that I got slotted into. I don't care if they extended the penalty to a full day or even a week....
Oh, and I know I saw a couple posts about spawn camping. One solution (or helper towards a solution) is randomized spawn locations and/or multiple ways into the contested area that are far enough apart that the opposing team can't possibly cover them all.
@ltminns my last comment was not directed at you but it was a question aimed at felisean. Quoting from a phone can be a royal pain..
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
and thanks for ignoring the "sync up leveling the rep and elite mark creation", since you would get the 4 piece set by reaching t5 (the point you could actually buy the 4 piece set) with those 25 marks you collected till than.
I don't get why people don't understand this part. Every time I create a new character, I max all of their reps. Part of my "grind schedule" is to allow for competitive elite mark conversion while I'm leveling from T1 to T6. I only bother getting 10 of them, because that's all I need, but if I needed more, then I'd grind for more and it wouldn't cost me anything, since I'm already waiting 20 days to hit T5 and 50 days to hit T6.
Also the daily rep boxes can give them, not 100% sure they have the same rate.....
and thanks for ignoring the "sync up leveling the rep and elite mark creation", since you would get the 4 piece set by reaching t5 (the point you could actually buy the 4 piece set) with those 25 marks you collected till than.
I don't get why people don't understand this part. Every time I create a new character, I max all of their reps. Part of my "grind schedule" is to allow for competitive elite mark conversion while I'm leveling from T1 to T6. I only bother getting 10 of them, because that's all I need, but if I needed more, then I'd grind for more and it wouldn't cost me anything, since I'm already waiting 20 days to hit T5 and 50 days to hit T6.
Also the daily rep boxes can give them, not 100% sure they have the same rate.....
Yes, the daily rep boxes have a chance to give out elite marks on opening. Doesnt happen often but it does. One of my newest toons got two of them on her way to Tier 5 in the competitive rep.
Either drop rate is low or i have gotten very unlucky with it .
For the last 3 weeks i have done hourly whenever possible and i have yet to receive a single astrogem from them.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I just did a test and found 2 characters with a stack of around 25 of the rep boxes each and opened them all. Out of around 50 boxes I think I only got one.
When leveling my Discovery Character up in all Reputations from Tier V to VI last year, I got 6 Elite Marks overall for all the Reps combined. That's 6 for 330 rolls. I find the normal rate about 1-2 to get to Tier V.
What's worse is the amount of Rare drops of other equipment in many of the Reps past New Romulus. And that Rare is still the preponderance in drops in going from V to VI is just not right. I mean, I've already done a lot for those people, they could at least gift me some VR equipment already.
'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.'
so you asume the queues are already dead. so we could add something else or remove those elite marks directly and with them the queues because they dont serve any purpose anymore.
I said MOSTLY dead, meaning they have a chance to revive them with some changes. Also even if they were completely dead I am not for removing them as that takes content choices from folks if a bunch of folks suddenly decided they did want to play it. I have suggested some bits they could add to them such as a Stratajama game. Until something different is done, all that needs to be done is slapping the stratagems in another area.
in addition i said i would show you to get those marks, not that i'm doing it with the transfer. i would just get those queues running like i always did when i need those elite marks and forgot to do the trade in route (which is usualy the case)
Once again you ignore the problem and what is being said. If folks have access to those channels and are able to get them running by going there, that's great and cool. The question was, what does a person do if/when they are unable to get a queue running through those channels? What happens when the 3rd party channels fail to produce results? What is the person to do then in order to get into the queues? You keep talking about how folks can just ask in those areas and channels, but have ignored completely the question of what folks are supposed to do if/when those channels don't produce results. Also once again, it should not fall to the 3rd party channels to fill that gap.
for the elite token trade in. if we asume you have all the normal marks (what you said is not a problem), we have a total playtime of roughly 10-15 seconds per elite mark. would guess my actual playtime in that case would be defnitly below 5h. even tho the overall playtime would be stretched do an actual 20 day length, but i guess we're talking about playtime here and not adding some other stuff like working, studying or sleeping to that "time we need to get stuff" counter. oh and when you reached tier 6 with your reputation you got a total of 55 tokens, thats 11 items. not sure what you wanna do there but thats with the discount propably all the items a store has to offer
The 5 hours was the longest I could envision it taking to get enough elite marks for any of the other reps assuming one went through TFOs, taking into account cooldowns for TFOs that award the marks, slow potential battlezone etc.
Previously you used tier 5 for your calculations, however in now using tier 6, you have moved the goal post. However it still does not help your case in the way you think it does. In fact it actually exposes the issue myself and others have been talking about even more. Even if folks were to a mark conversion every day and end up at 55 of them by your numbers, you're still short by a fairly good amount of them to get everything from the rep. To get everything from the rep you need 64 stratagems with the discount and 112 without it. That means you're still 9-57 stratagems short depending on discount status. Another 5 of them is needed to unlock the discount itself. In total you're looking at between 180-1140 hours depending on discount status. So you're still going to end up short even with your new goal post of tier 6 reps. Even then most folks do not synchronize as you are saying they should do. By the time they know they can do this generally it's too late and they're going to be behind on those stratagems dramatically. The general attitude is to play the TFOs to get elite marks as most folks see it as a waste to do mark conversions.
Either way you go it still takes an unnecessary amount of time longer compared to the other reps to get all the gear from Competitive. Quite simply dude, the math is not on your side. Whether they need it or not, all other reps have alternative sources you can get their elite marks from. You have not demonstrated a valid reason as to why Competitive rep should be the exception to years of precedent. Also, have you stopped to consider that perhaps with more availability for the Competitive elite marks, perhaps more folks would actually try the gear out instead of only doing the bare minimum and drive more interest in what the rep itself has to offer? It worked for Lukari rep when the Tzenkethi BZ was brought in, no reason it couldn't here.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
so you asume the queues are already dead. so we could add something else or remove those elite marks directly and with them the queues because they dont serve any purpose anymore.
I said MOSTLY dead, meaning they have a chance to revive them with some changes. Also even if they were completely dead I am not for removing them as that takes content choices from folks if a bunch of folks suddenly decided they did want to play it. I have suggested some bits they could add to them such as a Stratajama game. Until something different is done, all that needs to be done is slapping the stratagems in another area.
in addition i said i would show you to get those marks, not that i'm doing it with the transfer. i would just get those queues running like i always did when i need those elite marks and forgot to do the trade in route (which is usualy the case)
Once again you ignore the problem and what is being said. If folks have access to those channels and are able to get them running by going there, that's great and cool. The question was, what does a person do if/when they are unable to get a queue running through those channels? What happens when the 3rd party channels fail to produce results? What is the person to do then in order to get into the queues? You keep talking about how folks can just ask in those areas and channels, but have ignored completely the question of what folks are supposed to do if/when those channels don't produce results. Also once again, it should not fall to the 3rd party channels to fill that gap.
for the elite token trade in. if we asume you have all the normal marks (what you said is not a problem), we have a total playtime of roughly 10-15 seconds per elite mark. would guess my actual playtime in that case would be defnitly below 5h. even tho the overall playtime would be stretched do an actual 20 day length, but i guess we're talking about playtime here and not adding some other stuff like working, studying or sleeping to that "time we need to get stuff" counter. oh and when you reached tier 6 with your reputation you got a total of 55 tokens, thats 11 items. not sure what you wanna do there but thats with the discount propably all the items a store has to offer
The 5 hours was the longest I could envision it taking to get enough elite marks for any of the other reps assuming one went through TFOs, taking into account cooldowns for TFOs that award the marks, slow potential battlezone etc.
Previously you used tier 5 for your calculations, however in now using tier 6, you have moved the goal post. However it still does not help your case in the way you think it does. In fact it actually exposes the issue myself and others have been talking about even more. Even if folks were to a mark conversion every day and end up at 55 of them by your numbers, you're still short by a fairly good amount of them to get everything from the rep. To get everything from the rep you need 64 stratagems with the discount and 112 without it. That means you're still 9-57 stratagems short depending on discount status. Another 5 of them is needed to unlock the discount itself. In total you're looking at between 180-1140 hours depending on discount status. So you're still going to end up short even with your new goal post of tier 6 reps. Even then most folks do not synchronize as you are saying they should do. By the time they know they can do this generally it's too late and they're going to be behind on those stratagems dramatically. The general attitude is to play the TFOs to get elite marks as most folks see it as a waste to do mark conversions.
Either way you go it still takes an unnecessary amount of time longer compared to the other reps to get all the gear from Competitive. Quite simply dude, the math is not on your side. Whether they need it or not, all other reps have alternative sources you can get their elite marks from. You have not demonstrated a valid reason as to why Competitive rep should be the exception to years of precedent. Also, have you stopped to consider that perhaps with more availability for the Competitive elite marks, perhaps more folks would actually try the gear out instead of only doing the bare minimum and drive more interest in what the rep itself has to offer? It worked for Lukari rep when the Tzenkethi BZ was brought in, no reason it couldn't here.
in case i dont want to go the route with getting the queue started with help from friends/fleets/pve related channel/zone chat... i would do the following on a new toon, we're asuming you have a few toons already so the 5k bonus:
day1:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo right now => rewards you with 130+ competitive marks
turn in 30 marks for the daily project, turn in 100 marks for 1 token
day2-4:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo
turn in 30 marks for leveling project, turn in 100 marks for elite token.
day 5:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo, turn in 100 marks.
yay we got the 5 tokens we need for our competitive engine but hey, we're not yet there to actually buy it. so just let us play more random tfos or event queues till reaching the required rep tier.
seems difficult
time used to do this is like a total of 10 random tfos, even less if you play elite phavo ground (because that queue could reward you with a maximum of 270! marks of choice). in addition, at t5 we usualy get another 5 elite marks on top, but til we reach t5 (20 days) we could've created a total of 20 elite marks. till t6 thats an additional 30 marks. so we could get a total of 55 elite tokens just while leveling the reputation, without touching the dedicated queues at all. on top of that there should be 8 (?) elite tokens of choice from the temporal agent, in case we finished that event back than.
...
highlighted for you what i wrote before. like you see i always said 20+5 for t5, 55 for t6 rep. nothing new added, nothing changed.
the failsave for "i'm not able to get the queues running by asking my friends/fleet/armada/zonechat/..." is to trade in 100 marks to get one elite mark. thats the failsave. its there. its just slow because you know its a failsave. and i showed you how you could ignore/avoid the slow part when leveling up a new one.
i mentioned the dps-chats only on top, because for ME it worked and, surprise i'm one of the admins there, so you know a bit of promotion is always good. since it seems you have a problem with the dps channels or other pve related channels ok, i dont care, but doesnt change the facts.
because there are 2 ways, there isnt something needed to change at all, since you have possibilities. you might not like those (and obviously you dont do) but hey, thats life.
and technically, if you get the queues running, the competitive queues are propably one of the faster reputations to get those marks, because you could get a maximum of 9 tokens per 30 minutes (again when doing it right, winning the queue, getting the queue started directly because you and your friends queue for it, doing the elite version of the queue and stuff like that). to get 9 tokens in 30 minutes would mean 4 1/2 queues to play in those 30 minutes from another reputation, should work with omega marks with a good team but i guess thats it.
the major problem seems, that its not possible to get it running for a few i guess. and because of that you wanna change everything. not 100% sure if thats a good way to balance/design stuff
Redesign the competitive maps for teams of 2x3 instead of 2x5. That way they would be more feasible to set up in this day and age.
In light of the paradox attitude of the player base to want high end items without the need to earn them in “high end content” I think this is an acceptable compromise.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
(Also, if you're one of the DPS channel admins, a suggestion: send mails to people when inviting them. I don't parse, but I keep getting invites and I don't know which character/build they are based on....)
Danfai made a good page where you can easily look stuff up without a log reader in case you are wondering. The tool does not include the old numbers league beacuse thier admins don't want to but its not as if anybody would give a poo about them anyway so one is well set with Danfai with all the relevant data.
Preferably i would like to see the competitive queues added to the Random TFO system, but as mentioned previously it is not known if the mechanism behind the RFTO could support that.
I think that is a good idea as well Questerius.
Of course the system can support it but sadly past experience has shown that any content that does not conclude on it's own is considered unsuitable for the RTFO system and gets removed the moment our comunity manager decides so in our name.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
why dont they just create a pvp server then?
all builds and toons stay on the server, no cross overs.
Not cost effective considering the cost of running (and updating) a separate server and the actual size of the PVP community.
But let us keep PVP discussion in their own topics, this is about the competitive reputation elite marks (astrogems).
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
beside the fact that just 1 out of 3 competitive queues (core assault) got a pvp part added to it. and ther eonly for the last room.
for the other queues you cant really interact with the enemy team at all, all you could do is to spawn a few more enemies or take control over a borg drone and engage the enemies as a borg drone
Though for a while, before Cryptic fixed it, some knuckleheads on the other Team used the Flare Mortor from this Rep to grief the other side while waiting for the TFO to start.
'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.'
Though for a while, before Cryptic fixed it, some knuckleheads on the other Team used the Flare Mortor from this Rep to grief the other side while waiting for the TFO to start.
As someone who uses the flare mortar, how do you grief anyone with something which does no damage whatsoever?
It is meant to hide/illuminate and that's it.
Post edited by questerius on
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
They shot it over the starting wall before the opening timerrran out and there was a blinding Flare effect.
'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.'
Comments
As much as I see some of the DPS crews advertise those Competitive Engines I am honestly surprised you of all people don't see the issue here and wouldn't want to make it easier to get them. I'm also disappointed that a man of your caliber would resort to some of the outright flawed and baseless arguments you have. Simply because you personally do not believe there is a problem does not mean automatically there isn't one. Simply because one can trade in marks for elite marks also does not mean there isn't a problem. Nor does wanting a solution to said problem mean folks are just wanting everything handed to them or want those queues removed, it simply means they want an alternative to bring it in line with other reputations. More on this in a minute.
It should not take players going through private channels or 3rd party stuff just to get a queue running. It's cool that those potential resources exist, but it should NEVER be left purely to a 3rd party channel before folks are able to experience content in this game or to get a queue rolling. If certain queues never pop, and they often don't, this tells me there is something wrong with the queue itself, either in terms of mechanics, bugs, and/or rewards not being properly balanced. I get that the less popular queues aren't going to pop as fast as the more popular ones, but if it's left purely to the 3rd party channels to get something running, that tells me there are more serious issues at play. Having those potential resources is cool, but it should not be up to them to drive the content.
Asking for an alternative is NOT and I repeat is NOT asking that the existing queues be removed. As it sits right now, there are only 2 reputations in game that do not have an alternative means of gaining their elite mark outside of TFOs. Those 2 reputations are Discovery and Competitive. Thankfully Discovery has queues that pop fairly quickly, so it can wait a bit longer on getting an alternative. Of course it was also the most recent rep to release as well. Competitive Wargames has been around since season 13 and has had quite a bit of time for an alternative means to get the elite marks. As it is right now, all other reputations can get their elite marks in a reasonable amount of time.
Assuming a person is going to pick up a a piece of gear from Competitive rep, you're looking at 100 hours per piece of gear without the discount, or 60 hours with the discount. For a full 4 piece set you're looking at 400 hours without discount or 240 hours with discount. To put that into perspective that's 16.6 days without the discount or 10 days with. For any other reputation it might take you up to 5 hours at most to get the elite marks for an entire 4 piece set of gear. That means it's going to take you anywhere from 48-80 times as long to get a full 4 piece set of Competitive rep gear or 12-20 times as long for just a single piece of Competitive gear, as it would to get a full set of any other reputation. I'm not sure what universe you consider that to be acceptable in, but I don't consider that acceptable at all. Every other reputation EXCEPT for this one can be farmed in a reasonable time constraint. Precedent was set with all other reps, including the Discovery reputation that came after it, yet for some reason this one needs to take an absurd amount of time longer? Why?
When you're talking a time difference of 12-80 times depending on how much one is trying to get compared to any other reputation, I call that wholly unreasonable. Yes there is a block, and that block is the fact there are no other alternatives to get the elite marks. No one is asking for the queues themselves to be changed, simply that an alternative method to acquiring the elite marks be given like all other reps in the game have. There is no reason this rep needs to be the oddball out, especially when there is no valid need for it. No one is asking for special treatment, no one is asking the Competitive rep be removed, or they be handed everything for free. What they're asking is that an alternative method be given to get the elite marks to bring it in line with the others. Instead of spending 200+ hours on it, they can finish that set off in 5 hours or less like every other rep in game.
Also the bit I put in bold in the quote is part of the exact reason why folks don't want to go into the 3rd party channels. If you've ever wondered why the DPS channels get a bad rep, look no further than that statement there. That statement is the epitome of elitism and arrogance all because someone dared say an arbitrary thing needs to change. If you think it's fine the way it is, you're entitled to that opinion, however if you want to know why others don't consider 3rd party solutions as valid, look no further than the statement above.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
what you're desribing seems to be mainly an optimization problem of getting the stuff.
in case i dont want to go the route with getting the queue started with help from friends/fleets/pve related channel/zone chat... i would do the following on a new toon, we're asuming you have a few toons already so the 5k bonus:
day1:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo right now => rewards you with 130+ competitive marks
turn in 30 marks for the daily project, turn in 100 marks for 1 token
day2-4:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo
turn in 30 marks for leveling project, turn in 100 marks for elite token.
day 5:
play 2 random tfo missions or 1 event tfo, turn in 100 marks.
yay we got the 5 tokens we need for our competitive engine but hey, we're not yet there to actually buy it. so just let us play more random tfos or event queues till reaching the required rep tier.
seems difficult
time used to do this is like a total of 10 random tfos, even less if you play elite phavo ground (because that queue could reward you with a maximum of 270! marks of choice).
in addition, at t5 we usualy get another 5 elite marks on top, but til we reach t5 (20 days) we could've created a total of 20 elite marks. till t6 thats an additional 30 marks. so we could get a total of 55 elite tokens just while leveling the reputation, without touching the dedicated queues at all. on top of that there should be 8 (?) elite tokens of choice from the temporal agent, in case we finished that event back than.
for me, this doesnt seems to be that difficult at all to be honest.
and for the "queues could get removed".. that most likely not going to happen, but the result will be the same so we could forget they even exist. i mean its more or less the case already, because most people are just going the route i've described and this results in: the queues arent played frequently. adding other queues to the reward pool will just result in they will played even less frequently.
and no one said you need to use the dps channels itself, this was an example and it worked well for me in the past. you could use your friends/fleets/armadas, zone chat or whatever to get a few people to queue for it to get it poping faster.
ingame: @Felisean
Getting the standard competitive marks is not now, nor has it ever been the problem for folks. The key issue is that it doesn't matter whether you only grab the 100 marks needed per day for the conversion, or stack it 10k marks deep, you're still looking at 60-400 hours of time depending on whether you have the discount or not and how much gear you're wanting to grab. The issue is also not leveling the reputation itself as one only needs the standard marks to do this and you do not need the stratagems for it. You acknowledged yourself how easy the standard marks can be obtained. Not everyone has access to the temporal agent rewards like you or I do.
Even if we assume the person has access to temporal agent rewards, and they claim the 8 stratagems, if their goal is a full 4 piece set, they're still going to come up short. If their goal is a full 4 piece set of gear and they have the discount, they need 4 more of them which is 60 hours of time required through conversion to get that final piece of gear. If the goal is a full 4 piece set and they do NOT yet have the discount, they need 12 more of them which means it will take them 220 hours of conversion time to get those final 2 pieces of gear. So even if we assume someone has access to temporal rewards you're looking at 60-220 hours for a full 4 piece set of gear with the leg up the temporal rewards give you. Hourly rewards are not a viable solution to this as it's a throw of the dice whether you will get one or not. One could get them fairly regularly, or one could go 40+ boxes and never see one. If the goal is only a single piece of gear such as Competitive Engines, the temporal rewards cover the cost of the stratagems. However if one does NOT have access to temporal rewards, as most folks today don't, they're still looking at 60-100 hours for that single piece of gear. If they're wanting more than one item of gear, the time required jumps dramatically. No other reputation has this issue.
In regards to the queues themselves, once again it should not take 3rd party channels or similar to get a queue running before folks are able to experience content or just generally play something in this game. Again it's cool that those potential resources exist, but it should NEVER be left to those channels to be the driving force of queues, or to fill in the gap for players. If that's the only way for it to work is through 3rd party venues, then that tells me there are serious problems with that queue, either mechanically, with it's rewards, and/or other issue. If it takes a 3rd party channel to get content going, you're essentially locking the content behind that 3rd party. Also what happens if a player is only able to play when that 3rd party channel is largely offline in non-peak hours? Overall it's just bad form and it should not be up to the players to fill in that gap in the queue system.
Next, the queues themselves already exist outside of the TFO system in part due to their nature of requiring 2 teams of 5, and also in part due to folks not wanting queues they associate with PVP as being part of the random TFO system. So if the concern is their play frequency going down, that ship has already sailed. Folks are not asking anything be done to the queues themselves, simply that an alternative be given for the elite marks that all other reps in the game have at the moment. Every other rep in the game has this with Competitive and Discovery being the exceptions. The only reason Discovery doesn't have one at the moment is purely for story reasons as last time I heard anything they hadn't found one that worked good for them. The advantage Discovery rep has is that its queues are quick AND are part of the random TFO system. Since folks can random into it and it only takes 5 people to start the queue, Discovery doesn't have that many issues getting the elite marks. Competitive does not have the luxuries that Discovery does and can't by its very nature. Point being, every other reputation has an alternative means to get their elite marks and/or is able to be part of the random system which allows for reasonable acquisition of the gear. Competitive is the sole exception at the moment and is the only rep where it takes a minimum of 60 hours on average to get one piece of gear. There is no need for it to take 10-80 times longer than the other queues to get a single piece of gear or full set of gear when all other reps can produce a full 4 piece set in about 5 hours at most.
The issue is that Competitive rep by nature is at a huge disadvantage compared to the other reps. No other reps have this issue.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
and thanks for ignoring the "sync up leveling the rep and elite mark creation", since you would get the 4 piece set by reaching t5 (the point you could actually buy the 4 piece set) with those 25 marks you collected till than.
and its stil an mmo. you know multiplayer and stuff like that, social interaction. so yea i fully understand that asking your friends/fleet (you dont need the channels, they just INCREASE!! the playerpool you could draw from) is defnitly not an option to get something running fast
all i'm showing are for now 2 ways to get what you want to solve the problem with the given resources we have right now.
but if you want, i could proof to you with a stream or something like that to get competitive marks as fast as other elite marks
guess the timeframe is 5 hours for 20 tokens?
ingame: @Felisean
Discovery does not yet have an alternative due to story reasons at the moment. However its queues can be part of the random system so the crunch on those is not as severe. Competitive queues by their nature could not be part of the system due to technical reasons, and also their association with pvp, be it deserved or otherwise. The moment folks get put into those queues you would see folks leave instantly meaning it would never get done, and you would have a massive load of people complaining for a number of reasons. First, that it put them into what they view as a pvp queue when they have no desire for pvp, even if it's just one of the racing ones. Second complaint would be the inevitable leaver penalty folks would get for dropping from the queue. That would leave quite a few angry that they're getting what they see as a punishment for not wanting to play pvp. So tell me, what makes Competitive Wargames so different from all the other reps that adding an alternative for stratagems would be this big catastrophe, when it wasn't for any of the other reps. What sets the Competitive Wargames rep apart from the others that it warrants it taking potentially 12-80 times longer to get the gear for it vs other reps? Every other rep has an alternative to get its elite marks, why should this one specifically be any different when precedent has already been set? I have yet to see a valid answer to why folks think it should be this big massive grind when it doesn't need to be, or any answer to that at all really.
Leveling up the reputation again is NOT and I repeat is NOT the problem. Leveling up the rep has never been the problem, acquiring the basic marks is NOT the problem either. The chief issue is once again the conversions and the time it takes to do that. No matter what you do, you are limited to one conversion per day. If you assume 20 days to level said rep to tier 5 with the sponsorship (normally 40 days without) it still does not solve the issue. Since you provided the number of 25 stratagems that's the number I will use for calculation of this part. If the goal is only one piece of gear this more than takes care of the cost. This would be enough to cover 5 pieces of gear without the discount and 8 pieces with the discount. However it doesn't completely eliminate the issue and is only good for so much. What if said person decides they don't care for the particular set they picked out and want to change to one of the other 2? What if they want to use more equipment from said rep than just the 4 piece and the heavy weapon as an example? What of the person who wants to have a copy of everything from the rep for no other reason than they want to? You're now looking at again 60 to 100 hours conversion time for every additional piece of gear they're looking to acquire, even with your particular method you've outlined.
Your method only goes so far and does not eliminate the need for the additional stratagems it would take to acquire the extra gear. It also does not address what happens if folks used up their stratagems but needed more after the fact. Once again your method ignores the issue completely by turning a blind eye to it.
If you're telling me you can get 20 stratagems in 5 hours through mark conversion, I would very much love to see that because as things sit right now, that would be an exploit. Otherwise again, getting the basic normal marks is NOT the issue nor was it ever the issue.
Whether one gets the elite marks from the TFOs or through a battlezone type area, one is still playing the mmo, the only thing that changes is the venue inside the mmo itself and the method used to acquire the marks. Farming Lukari Protomatter cans through the Tzenkethi Battlezone for a Lukari weapon is just as legitimate as doing it through TFOs.
In regards to the 3rd party channels like the DPS league channel you advertised for, did you not see the part where others have said in here they asked for folks to queue and help them out with those Competitive queues only to be met with silence? If the queues won't pop, and no one is responding anywhere in the 3rd party channels, what is that player supposed to do then? As is right now they're basically up the creek without a paddle and unable to get the content running. Their only option at that point is to try again later or keep asking in a 3rd party channel hoping enough folks pity them and queue, thus locking that content behind a 3rd party channel that decides who gets to play that content and who doesn't. Yeah no, sorry, but no 3rd party anything is that important they should get to dictate to the rest of the game like that. I don't trust any 3rd party channel or application with that kind of power, not even for 5 minutes.
Also again, read what I said previously. I said it's cool that folks have access to those potential resources, but it is not and should not be incumbent on those 3rd party apps to fill in that gap that was created by the game itself. What is a person to do then when those 3rd party channels don't get things moving? That's twice you have attempted to put words in my mouth that I straight up did not say. Overall your proposed solutions ignore the actual problem people are talking about and attempt to downplay it in what basically amounts to a veiled "learn to play better ya noob" argument.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
for the elite token trade in. if we asume you have all the normal marks (what you said is not a problem), we have a total playtime of roughly 10-15 seconds per elite mark. would guess my actual playtime in that case would be defnitly below 5h. even tho the overall playtime would be stretched do an actual 20 day length, but i guess we're talking about playtime here and not adding some other stuff like working, studying or sleeping to that "time we need to get stuff" counter. oh and when you reached tier 6 with your reputation you got a total of 55 tokens, thats 11 items. not sure what you wanna do there but thats with the discount propably all the items a store has to offer
in addition i said i would show you to get those marks, not that i'm doing it with the transfer. i would just get those queues running like i always did when i need those elite marks and forgot to do the trade in route (which is usualy the case)
ingame: @Felisean
Unlike other Reputation Stores, this one has nothing worthwhile in it unless you were doing Competitive Queues (and debatable at that too).
When this released I played 'Binary Circuit' daily on Elite (the only TFO ever for me, after Delta Rising) on a Character to unlock the Rep. I ended up with 42 Strategems. 41 is the magic number to get the complete Space, Ground, and Ship Sets (though this has a possibility of multiple Sets). Other than a few exceptions, all others have used the conversion method. I've never had a problem getting a piece when I needed it, though not often.
The Tzen'kethi BZ, I do need to point out, is not a good alternate source for the Protomatter Containers as it seems still to be hit and miss with them being awarded, amongst other issues there.
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 wouldn't say that the competitive queues are dead, but due to their association with PVP and their exclusion from the RTFO system it is difficult to get a TFO running on advanced or Elite difficulty without having access to premade teams or Third party channels.
Preferably i would like to see the competitive queues added to the Random TFO system, but as mentioned previously it is not known if the mechanism behind the RFTO could support that.
With advanced/elite difficulty competitive queues rarely popping up without a premade/channel the only way to obtain astrogems is behind a 20 hour cooldown. This does not promote the competitive queue or encourage players to experiment with said gear if it takes 100-120 hours for conversions for a single piece of gear.
An increase in availability e.g. through Sompek or by reducing the cool down on the conversion of marks would benefit the reputation.
That Character hadaa bunch of Mk XI or XII VR Rep equipment as it was bought before I unlocked Mk XIII UR with the Temporal Recruit. I have even rebought some Mk XII VR in the XIII UR variety as it's cheaper than trying to Upgrade it (the UR part for the most part).
What I have bought in Competitive is the Impulse Engines, and a Ground or Space weapon to complete a Tetryon Build or to have a Tetryon Pistol to fill out a Tetryon Ground Endeavor. Nothing I need very much of.
Still, I would rather get a Strategem directly than having to convert but with the T6 discount, Marks are not much of a problem.
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, it sounds like the system queues up the players, then randomizes a map to stick them in (it may or may not pop the accept/decline message on players before this). Makes sense it could only deal with 5 person maps.
The solution would be to reverse the process. Randomize the map selection, then slot in people as they queue up. Once all slots are full (perhaps with a few extra in case some decline?), then pop the accept/decline message. That should be doable, I'd think.
Course, even doing this, I'm not sure if it helps much with the issue you're trying to solve. They'd have to put in separate queues for PvP vs PvE maps. I know many people (myself included) don't want to touch PUG PvP with a 10 foot pole. If they didn't, I can tell you I'd either never do RTFOs, or would automatically drop out of any PvP ones that I got slotted into. I don't care if they extended the penalty to a full day or even a week....
Oh, and I know I saw a couple posts about spawn camping. One solution (or helper towards a solution) is randomized spawn locations and/or multiple ways into the contested area that are far enough apart that the opposing team can't possibly cover them all.
My character Tsin'xing
Yes, the daily rep boxes have a chance to give out elite marks on opening. Doesnt happen often but it does. One of my newest toons got two of them on her way to Tier 5 in the competitive rep.
For the last 3 weeks i have done hourly whenever possible and i have yet to receive a single astrogem from them.
My character Tsin'xing
What's worse is the amount of Rare drops of other equipment in many of the Reps past New Romulus. And that Rare is still the preponderance in drops in going from V to VI is just not right. I mean, I've already done a lot for those people, they could at least gift me some VR equipment already.
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.'
Once again you ignore the problem and what is being said. If folks have access to those channels and are able to get them running by going there, that's great and cool. The question was, what does a person do if/when they are unable to get a queue running through those channels? What happens when the 3rd party channels fail to produce results? What is the person to do then in order to get into the queues? You keep talking about how folks can just ask in those areas and channels, but have ignored completely the question of what folks are supposed to do if/when those channels don't produce results. Also once again, it should not fall to the 3rd party channels to fill that gap.
The 5 hours was the longest I could envision it taking to get enough elite marks for any of the other reps assuming one went through TFOs, taking into account cooldowns for TFOs that award the marks, slow potential battlezone etc.
Previously you used tier 5 for your calculations, however in now using tier 6, you have moved the goal post. However it still does not help your case in the way you think it does. In fact it actually exposes the issue myself and others have been talking about even more. Even if folks were to a mark conversion every day and end up at 55 of them by your numbers, you're still short by a fairly good amount of them to get everything from the rep. To get everything from the rep you need 64 stratagems with the discount and 112 without it. That means you're still 9-57 stratagems short depending on discount status. Another 5 of them is needed to unlock the discount itself. In total you're looking at between 180-1140 hours depending on discount status. So you're still going to end up short even with your new goal post of tier 6 reps. Even then most folks do not synchronize as you are saying they should do. By the time they know they can do this generally it's too late and they're going to be behind on those stratagems dramatically. The general attitude is to play the TFOs to get elite marks as most folks see it as a waste to do mark conversions.
Either way you go it still takes an unnecessary amount of time longer compared to the other reps to get all the gear from Competitive. Quite simply dude, the math is not on your side. Whether they need it or not, all other reps have alternative sources you can get their elite marks from. You have not demonstrated a valid reason as to why Competitive rep should be the exception to years of precedent. Also, have you stopped to consider that perhaps with more availability for the Competitive elite marks, perhaps more folks would actually try the gear out instead of only doing the bare minimum and drive more interest in what the rep itself has to offer? It worked for Lukari rep when the Tzenkethi BZ was brought in, no reason it couldn't here.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
let me quote myself:
highlighted for you what i wrote before. like you see i always said 20+5 for t5, 55 for t6 rep. nothing new added, nothing changed.
the failsave for "i'm not able to get the queues running by asking my friends/fleet/armada/zonechat/..." is to trade in 100 marks to get one elite mark. thats the failsave. its there. its just slow because you know its a failsave. and i showed you how you could ignore/avoid the slow part when leveling up a new one.
i mentioned the dps-chats only on top, because for ME it worked and, surprise i'm one of the admins there, so you know a bit of promotion is always good. since it seems you have a problem with the dps channels or other pve related channels ok, i dont care, but doesnt change the facts.
because there are 2 ways, there isnt something needed to change at all, since you have possibilities. you might not like those (and obviously you dont do) but hey, thats life.
and technically, if you get the queues running, the competitive queues are propably one of the faster reputations to get those marks, because you could get a maximum of 9 tokens per 30 minutes (again when doing it right, winning the queue, getting the queue started directly because you and your friends queue for it, doing the elite version of the queue and stuff like that). to get 9 tokens in 30 minutes would mean 4 1/2 queues to play in those 30 minutes from another reputation, should work with omega marks with a good team but i guess thats it.
the major problem seems, that its not possible to get it running for a few i guess. and because of that you wanna change everything. not 100% sure if thats a good way to balance/design stuff
ingame: @Felisean
In light of the paradox attitude of the player base to want high end items without the need to earn them in “high end content” I think this is an acceptable compromise.
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Danfai made a good page where you can easily look stuff up without a log reader in case you are wondering. The tool does not include the old numbers league beacuse thier admins don't want to but its not as if anybody would give a poo about them anyway so one is well set with Danfai with all the relevant data.
http://sto-dps.danfai.de/user.php?user=@westmetals
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I think that is a good idea as well Questerius.
Of course the system can support it but sadly past experience has shown that any content that does not conclude on it's own is considered unsuitable for the RTFO system and gets removed the moment our comunity manager decides so in our name.
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Not cost effective considering the cost of running (and updating) a separate server and the actual size of the PVP community.
But let us keep PVP discussion in their own topics, this is about the competitive reputation elite marks (astrogems).
for the other queues you cant really interact with the enemy team at all, all you could do is to spawn a few more enemies or take control over a borg drone and engage the enemies as a borg drone
ingame: @Felisean
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.'
As someone who uses the flare mortar, how do you grief anyone with something which does no damage whatsoever?
It is meant to hide/illuminate and that's it.
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.'