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therealblackkaostherealblackkaos Member Posts: 121 Arc User
Anyone have a reason for the time lock on events? Why do we have to wait (I think 20 hours) between accruing credit for daily events? I’d rather play through at my own pace ( 3 times day 1, skip day 2 & 3, then 5 runs on day 4, etc.) than have to try to pattern a event around a steady schedule? I’m curious as to the “20 hour rule” and not the “go at your pace to the finish line” dynamic? Too me, there’s never enough time/desire to rerun the same mission over and over unless the prize is “worth it” (like the recent Summer/Winter Events). Just curious for other’s thoughts and opinions.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on

Comments

  • fred26291#2759 fred26291 Member Posts: 1,260 Arc User
    The only reason I can see is to force you to come onto the game once a day for x number of days even if you are someone without alot of time daily to play every day.
  • gaevsmangaevsman Member Posts: 3,190 Arc User
    I would like to have my own pace for this, work and RL is difficult to keep, let alone program for a daily play when sometimes, you can't, thou you can pay for the prize, it's not the same
    The forces of darkness are upon us!
  • eladonwarps#6040 eladonwarps Member Posts: 231 Arc User
    I recall all of the events save 1 since they switched to the new Event system (Fall 2019) having multiple choices: some combo of TFO, Patrols, episodes, etc, or in the Winter/Anniversary/Summer Ship events a choice of Event Activities. The only one I can remember where there wasn't an alternative was the 2nd time for Best Served Cold TFO (even the first BSC let you do an episode alternative).

    I bring this up because that 2nd BSC Featured TFO Event was the absolute worst time I've had doing an event due to the sheer number of people parking ships at a point and waiting for everyone else to finish it for them. The Operation itself was fine when people actually did it but it was like pulling teeth the other times. (One time I asked for help getting Transport ships, and my only reply was "I'm in a carrier, I can't chase, sweaty :)" despite the fact that you can swap ships during the queue, and also they were all in carriers.)

    And on hindsight, I know it was made worse because it was the only choice for that event. The first time BSC came, there were new patrols and an episode for alternatives. And in another case, even for all of the hate that Synth Wave got, that event had an Episode people could do on their own time and turn in at the end of the cooldown for the same progress.

    Getting back to OP, I think if they didn't have the timegates, you'd have too many people grinding it to completion on Day 1. Then what do you do about the Bonus Dil reward after? And it would probably mess up the incentive to use the Buyout, and I'm sure that would affect revenue. Personally, I'm glad it's 20 hours and not 24 - sometimes I like to 'push' my daily time to earlier in the morning, and having some wiggle room helps.
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  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,973 Community Moderator
    Getting back to OP, I think if they didn't have the timegates, you'd have too many people grinding it to completion on Day 1. Then what do you do about the Bonus Dil reward after? And it would probably mess up the incentive to use the Buyout, and I'm sure that would affect revenue.

    It would also flood the Dilithium Market, and we'd be capped at 500/1 forever. We're already pushing 490/1, but I mostly attribute that to a combination of the usual Winter sales and Corona limiting game monies a bit. At least some players are fighting against that, which I appreciate. The economy needs more balance to be fair for all.

    And the reason its a 20 hour cooldown is because its a daily. Once a day. If you could just do all the runs in one day, what's that going to cause with the dilithium bonus runs? How often can you run that in one day? Until you're so full up on ore that you refine your cap til the end of time?
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
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  • foxrockssocksfoxrockssocks Member Posts: 2,482 Arc User
    What they should do is unlock progress every 20 hours, as opposed to 20 hour cooldowns.

    How I would have it is that if the event has been running for say 60 hours/3 days, then you can accrue 3 progress points. You either did them one per day as normal, or you could get 3 points on day 3 having done nothing day 1 and 2.

    As well, if you miss part of the event for whatever reason, you could still make it up at the end, even if you had to run the event back to back 20 times on the last day.

    Maybe the post event dilithium could still work as it does now, but progress for the main thing should be opened up to be less of a PITA for weekends or odd schedules.
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,973 Community Moderator
    That makes the faulty presumption that post completions would award dilithium ore.

    No one said anything about altering the post completion reward though. So theoretically that means that the post completion dilithium stands as is. The only thing being thrown around is the timer.

    So I fail to see how its "faulty". It is a legit point. I didn't assume every aspect would change. Just went with what was provided, which said nothing about the dilithium reward.
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,952 Arc User
    Anyone have a reason for the time lock on events?
    The reason the time lock was introduced was because people were running featured TFO events on multiple characters (alts) each day so that they could claim the reward (dil, spec point package, etc) multiple times. The time lock and other changes ended this practice as it's now 1x per day per account.
  • gaevsmangaevsman Member Posts: 3,190 Arc User
    protoneous wrote: »
    Anyone have a reason for the time lock on events?
    The reason the time lock was introduced was because people were running featured TFO events on multiple characters (alts) each day so that they could claim the reward (dil, spec point package, etc) multiple times. The time lock and other changes ended this practice as it's now 1x per day per account.

    Well, yeah, that makes sense, with my 30+ chars i did a lot of dill in the old times.. but it was tiresome.. so, i preffer the new method.
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  • echattyechatty Member Posts: 5,913 Arc User
    > @gaevsman said:
    > Well, yeah, that makes sense, with my 30+ chars i did a lot of dill in the old times.. but it was tiresome.. so, i preffer the new method.

    30+....dang.

    I have like 10 and I only play 2 of those on a regular basis. How y'all find time for that many?

    I swap between them on different days. Can't play them all in one day.
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  • therealblackkaostherealblackkaos Member Posts: 121 Arc User
    I get the problem with the dil issue and market imbalance. I think a simple solution would be to either reduce the post dil reward, eliminate it like a few of y’all stated, or change the reward. For example, instead of dil, how about Lobi crystals? Or marks? Or Phoenix vouchers? Combinations of all three? Giving players options can only be a plus in my opinion. Shoot, if they gave out 3 free dock slots for one character on the account that’s beneficial to me. I just think that the time gate doesn’t work for everyone. I’d also leave the option of full buyout for those that simply don’t want to do the event at all or miss days towards the end. I love the feedback from the community by the way.
  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    It’s about the games metrics.. pure and simple.

    One of the factors used to judge the success and popularity of a MMO is ‘unique daily logins.’ How many different players (not one guy playing 10 alts) log into the game per day. Events that entice players to log in every day even if it’s for a few minutes at a time helps this metric and makes the bottom line look better.

    It’s also done to space out rewards as said above. The bonus Dilithium days keep people logging in after the event is completed and the timer keeps people from snowballing huge rewards. It’s a common thing in most MMO’s and honestly, I wouldn’t expect it to change.
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  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,001 Arc User
    > @seaofsorrows said:
    > It’s about the games metrics.. pure and simple.
    >
    > One of the factors used to judge the success and popularity of a MMO is ‘unique daily logins.’ How many different players (not one guy playing 10 alts) log into the game per day. Events that entice players to log in every day even if it’s for a few minutes at a time helps this metric and makes the bottom line look better.
    >
    > It’s also done to space out rewards as said above. The bonus Dilithium days keep people logging in after the event is completed and the timer keeps people from snowballing huge rewards. It’s a common thing in most MMO’s and honestly, I wouldn’t expect it to change.

    This. It's also the reason other games reward you for simply logging in once a day. The more log-ins a MMO has, the more succesful it seems.
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  • gaevsmangaevsman Member Posts: 3,190 Arc User
    echatty wrote: »
    > @gaevsman said:
    > Well, yeah, that makes sense, with my 30+ chars i did a lot of dill in the old times.. but it was tiresome.. so, i preffer the new method.

    30+....dang.

    I have like 10 and I only play 2 of those on a regular basis. How y'all find time for that many?

    I swap between them on different days. Can't play them all in one day.

    This...
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  • foxrockssocksfoxrockssocks Member Posts: 2,482 Arc User
    It’s about the games metrics.. pure and simple.

    One of the factors used to judge the success and popularity of a MMO is ‘unique daily logins.’ How many different players (not one guy playing 10 alts) log into the game per day. Events that entice players to log in every day even if it’s for a few minutes at a time helps this metric and makes the bottom line look better.

    It’s also done to space out rewards as said above. The bonus Dilithium days keep people logging in after the event is completed and the timer keeps people from snowballing huge rewards. It’s a common thing in most MMO’s and honestly, I wouldn’t expect it to change.

    You're right but it also highly contributes to burnout. I might login every day, but I sure play less. It is a flawed way to measure a game's success and to build around in my personal experience.
  • kiralynkiralyn Member Posts: 1,576 Arc User
    edited January 2021
    Anyone have a reason for the time lock on events? Why do we have to wait (I think 20 hours) between accruing credit for daily events? I’d rather play through at my own pace ( 3 times day 1, skip day 2 & 3, then 5 runs on day 4, etc.) than have to try to pattern a event around a steady schedule?

    Because the devs (all the devs; I remember Daily Quests back when I was playing WoW in the early years) want you to log in regularly.

    Daily quests, limited events, login bonuses, daily currency limits. . . there's lots of mechanics games use to push this. And many of them use multiple ones these days.
    I’m curious as to the “20 hour rule” and not the “go at your pace to the finish line” dynamic? Too me, there’s never enough time/desire to rerun the same mission over and over unless the prize is “worth it” (like the recent Summer/Winter Events). Just curious for other’s thoughts and opinions.

    Just a random comment on the "20 hour" thing - it used to be 24 hours for lots of stuff (like pet-raising DOFF missions). But that means that your schedule continually slips forward (even if you obsessively make sure to log in exactly 24 hours later) and you had to skip a day at some point (either your login time slipped past the early morning & into work/school; or past late night and into "I need to sleep"). And it was even worse if something (internet outage, game being down, a random appointment) made you skip a few hours every so often.

    20 hours vs 24 makes it a lot harder to fall behind.

    Of course, just having daily things reset at a particular hour (3am, etc), gives even more freedom. Not sure why some games do the timer thing.

  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    It’s about the games metrics.. pure and simple.

    One of the factors used to judge the success and popularity of a MMO is ‘unique daily logins.’ How many different players (not one guy playing 10 alts) log into the game per day. Events that entice players to log in every day even if it’s for a few minutes at a time helps this metric and makes the bottom line look better.

    It’s also done to space out rewards as said above. The bonus Dilithium days keep people logging in after the event is completed and the timer keeps people from snowballing huge rewards. It’s a common thing in most MMO’s and honestly, I wouldn’t expect it to change.

    You're right but it also highly contributes to burnout. I might login every day, but I sure play less. It is a flawed way to measure a game's success and to build around in my personal experience.

    I could not agree more.
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    edited January 2021
    kiralyn wrote: »
    Anyone have a reason for the time lock on events? Why do we have to wait (I think 20 hours) between accruing credit for daily events? I’d rather play through at my own pace ( 3 times day 1, skip day 2 & 3, then 5 runs on day 4, etc.) than have to try to pattern a event around a steady schedule?

    Because the devs (all the devs; I remember Daily Quests back when I was playing WoW in the early years) want you to log in regularly.

    Daily quests, limited events, login bonuses, daily currency limits. . . there's lots of mechanics games use to push this. And many of them use multiple ones these days.
    I’m curious as to the “20 hour rule” and not the “go at your pace to the finish line” dynamic? Too me, there’s never enough time/desire to rerun the same mission over and over unless the prize is “worth it” (like the recent Summer/Winter Events). Just curious for other’s thoughts and opinions.

    Just a random comment on the "20 hour" thing - it used to be 24 hours for lots of stuff (like pet-raising DOFF missions). But that means that your schedule continually slips forward (even if you obsessively make sure to log in exactly 24 hours later) and you had to skip a day at some point (either your login time slipped past the early morning & into work/school; or past late night and into "I need to sleep"). And it was even worse if something (internet outage, game being down, a random appointment) made you skip a few hours every so often.

    20 hours vs 24 makes it a lot harder to fall behind.

    Of course, just having daily things reset at a particular hour (3am, etc), gives even more freedom. Not sure why some games do the timer thing.

    Timers work better on a world-wide game since it does not reset when you are in the middle of doing the thing for the day the way pre-set scheduled resets can, which would be a problem in some parts of the world. I play at odd hours since I used to work nights and often run into that problem in games like Secret World Legends for example while doing their dailies.
  • drunkflux#5679 drunkflux Member Posts: 215 Arc User
    edited January 2021
    For the 20 hour thing, those who are saying it's because of the running multiple characters, it's actually technically been in there before that change. It was just per character(though the ship unlock ect was account wide, the dil reward was per character).

    The reason they do it is more or less to force people to log in every day, even if they can't afford to do so. It's a result of bad mandatory metrics that have been plaguing businesses lately. Simply put, many of them have the mindset they HAVE to get the player playing as much as humanly possible at all costs.

    This video kind of goes over this (and the costs of it).

    Edit: Actually this wasn't quite the video, I should have double checked this one, it does however go over what STO SHOULD be doing.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GArkyxP8-n0&t=1s


    Thinking of ideas from lots of games for, dunno how long now.
  • trillbuffettrillbuffet Member Posts: 861 Arc User
    Well queues and battlezones have this one aspect to them that makes them undesirable to play them that they have to dangle heavy rewards just to get people to log in and afk them. Those aspects are the long time standard of the industry of time gate timers and pressing F for the only means of interaction, So what happens is you have a player base that only logs in the game to afk events when they become all the same and boring to the point that it comes down to one player pressing F and then the rest just showing up. Not only that but then bugs and glitches on top of all that like Defera invasion zone for example besides those hard dailies no one plays that area for the fun of it because its got bugs and glitches there unfixed for the last 10 years almost.

    So being that this game is based off the combat portions of the Star Trek franchise where notably the content like they made of Starbase 24 and the episodes from DS9 like Sacrifice of Angels and Siege of AR-558 are the types of content that where the players combat is the interactive basis for having fun. So just for example the voth battlezone is a classic example of how with just npc's standing around and bosses that just spawn on the same exact spots every time its very very dull and boring gameplay. It needs some volatility to them so that you as the player character your actions are interacting with the overall success for the wanted outcome for those rewards. Best example of that it can be done is that ground pahvo TFO where you have terran empire npc's beaming in reinforcements. That aspect alone is way more volatility and interactive of gameplay that is way better than any of these battlezones are. So that is sort of why players just afk and hoping eventually the developers get the message that they are just doing this for the event curve to keep up to date with what is coming out but also hoping that they come out with interactive content.

    So my challenge to the devs in 2021 is to come out with at least one thing for space and one for ground that is interactive on this basis to show people that this game can become fun again and not just a bunch of people throwing resources for fleet projects and being bored to death from afking.
  • annemarie30annemarie30 Member Posts: 2,593 Arc User
    if they unlocked the timers, they would need to get rid of the dil payouts, BUT it might be nice if once you got the prize, you could earn points toward getting a ship you missed.
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  • therealblackkaostherealblackkaos Member Posts: 121 Arc User
    > @annemarie30 said:
    > if they unlocked the timers, they would need to get rid of the dil payouts, BUT it might be nice if once you got the prize, you could earn points toward getting a ship you missed.

    If the points could go towards a rewards pool of sorts I think that would work as well. Say you did one event and got the reward. Any points you accrue after could be placed towards the next one. Say, 10 play throughs after you receive your initial reward would count as 1 day of rewards points for the next event. So players can amass a bank of points to use just in case. It would encourage play even without the dil reward. It seems like everyone focused on the dil rewards that could unbalance the market even more. Would anyone object to reduced rewards along with/instead of the point system?
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