I agree on the "fleet tax". Ridiculous idea because a healthy fleets provide a valuable service to STO as a whole.
A fleet builds community. Even if the content dropped off and the player population hated a game they would still have a fleet.
At the basest level a fleet is a wonderful sunk loss. In addition to in game assets a fleet is something a player who might be, "on the line" is going to feel badly about relinquishing.
Coupled with the cash/resource/time investment are friends. That's huge. Even when I have taken breaks because the content wasn't drawing me I checked in with my friends from the fleet to see how they were doing.
Healthy fleets draw new players. Coming into a game that has rolled on for better than a decade involves a lot of information and learning to get up to speed. When a new player engages with a fleet they are welcomed and supported taking their first steps. That network can become friends and orientation means better retention than wandering around clueless.
From a predatory, for profit perspective a fleet is a host of used car salesmen, working for STO for free. New players want to buy things and steering them toward their first ship that gives them a positive outcome can make or break their interest in the game.
There are hermit fleets in STO. There are less than "good" fleets that exploit their members, but most of the larger fleets in game are givers, not takers from the community, and overall health of the game. That's why they are large fleets.
how about offering the doff missions in LBs in a form of dil buy to get them done?
Sure, that works.. there are plenty of things like that which are locked behind gamble boxes that people would spend Dilithium for. Pretty much anything that is only obtainable by random chance has a strong value and if you offer it to people for a fixed Dilithium cost, they will jump on it.
The next thing I would do if I was Cryptic, I would have a 3-4 day run where I would take four or five universal consoles that are normally tied to a ship and offer them as a per character unlock for Dilithium. Give someone a chance to spend a few hundred thousand Dil on a DPRM and see how quick the Dilithium Exchange rebounds.
You serious about fixing this Cryptic? If so, offer highly desirable items and people will spend spend spend.
The Vanity Shields was the best idea they have had so far, they figured it out.. now they just need to apply it. You do flash sales on highly desirable, expensive items for Dilithium.. for a limited time only. People will stock pile Dilithium, they'll horde it like crazy in anticipation. There are PLENTY of super rare and expensive items in this game that can be used the exact same way that the Vanity Shields were used.
The Vanity Shield promo is the only thing so far that has moved the needle. It worked.. learn from what works.
Yep. And you know why? Because it adds something, instead of taking something away. Before I go any further, I want to express, once again, how miffed I am at Bort for pretending not to know the difference between a cool sink and a laziness-induced, blatant nerf. And that's the thing: if you want to introduce a nice sink, you gotten offer something nice in return. Simple as that. Otherwise you're just robbing the players. 'Money for nothing' and all that.
Also, I can't stress enough how much Bort has sabotaged the game this way. Was picking up Endeavors again, the other day, and suddenly realized all '5x crit' ships et al. are now utterly useless. After all, the whole purpose of critting was to get the pass token (reward was never higher on crit to begin with). So, apart from a few lame one-time ships you get on crits (pretty much meaningless if you have as many ships as I do), Bort simply, single-handedly wrecked Endeavors by de facto incapacitating the crit system within it. Great job!
I've been playing this game awhile. The Admiralty system for me is just a way to do projects. I use the pass tokens quite often to get to projects I want to do. I'm not buying pass tokens with my dilithium. I'll just keep doing the tasks but I won't replenish pass tokens for them with dilithium once I exhaust my supply. I commented on the patch notes when this came out. I consider this one of Cryptic's dumber ideas. You want us to burn dilithium on something like pass tokens or endeavor perks then you need to increase the refining limit beyond 8000 so we have dilithium to waste on stuff like pass tokens. That's one of the biggest reasons I won't pay for them because I'd rather use my dilithium to do upgrades or the dilithium store or buy Zen. Basically something useful. Pass tokens are useful only to the extent we get them as part of the admiralty system. Same for perk point reroll tokens. Find something else for a dilithium sink in my opinion. Such as the ability buy a lockbox ship straight out with dilithium. I'd backlog dilithium for that as long as it was and account wide unlock then drop a bunch in that. This change to pass and reroll tokens doesn't work for me. I can't speak for others nor will I but i think it's a stupid idea.
One of the problems the new system has is that there is no seed.
Both admiralty and endeavors start out with zero reroll/pass tokens so new players just starting those never have any tokens and so never get used to using them, and longer-time players are mostly offended by the change and refuse to buy any.
If they had changed the drop rate of tokens from one in four to about one in ten or one in twenty there would be the seed factor to get people to use them, and reduction rather than elimination would have been less offensive if the announcement was handled right.
You want something that would be a real dil sink, instead of nonsense like this that hurts new players? A doff level buyout option. I'd do it in a heartbeat; diplomacy in particular takes a ridiculously long time to max out, even leaving aside the nonsensical mission failure rate.
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,594Community Moderator
Assuming you have the Fleet Credits to spend on it. On the other hand Diplomacy has at least two good regions where you can literally fill up on nothing but Diplomacy on good days. In my experience that's the path between Sol and Japori, and the four sectors around DS9.
I'm honestly surprised they didn't OFFER Basic T5 ships the option to upgrade to T5u, as it likely make for a good Dilithium sink (Long Term) as that could be a per character basis as well.
There's a lot of those ships, from the Mirror to several others that can't be upgraded...
I'm honestly surprised they didn't OFFER Basic T5 ships the option to upgrade to T5u, as it likely make for a good Dilithium sink (Long Term) as that could be a per character basis as well.
There's a lot of those ships, from the Mirror to several others that can't be upgraded...
I'm honestly surprised they didn't OFFER Basic T5 ships the option to upgrade to T5u, as it likely make for a good Dilithium sink (Long Term) as that could be a per character basis as well.
There's a lot of those ships, from the Mirror to several others that can't be upgraded...
He was specifically referring to the ships that can't use those requisitions. Of which there are a fair few, including all the T5 Mirror Universe ships.
I'm honestly surprised they didn't OFFER Basic T5 ships the option to upgrade to T5u, as it likely make for a good Dilithium sink (Long Term) as that could be a per character basis as well.
There's a lot of those ships, from the Mirror to several others that can't be upgraded...
He was specifically referring to the ships that can't use those requisitions. Of which there are a fair few, including all the T5 Mirror Universe ships.
They would not make these upgrades for dili, except these update would not make the ship stronger then the regular version of the jet upgradeable ships.
Think about an upgraded T5 mirror ship beeing cheaper and stronger than an non upgraded T5 rare or very rare ship.
I was wondering why my endeavors weren't rewarding tokens. I know they added buying them as a dilithium sink, but removing the free random ones in the process?
What the hell, Cryptic?
"We've learned that friendship isn't always easy. But there's no doubt it's worth fighting for."
I have been living with this change and I don't care for it, but maybe there can be something done for a middle ground. Now I am not exactly sure where to post this since the suggestion area doesn't seem to have a spot for endeavors. Just by going by my limited pool the majority of reroll tokens were used by myself and the people in my fleet for the TFO endeavors because they take too long to complete. Is there a way to look at the endeavors themselves and update the ones that people will generally skip now that there is a cost to the tokens. As an example would be to rework the existing TFO ones from being for a specific faction to a Random TFO. At least for me that would remove why I dislike the TFO ones for it cuts some of the wait out for you aren't spending time in the queue hoping people will join. For right now if I see a TFO its pretty much an automatic skip for it takes a system that might take 20min to complete to at least a hour.
I have been living with this change and I don't care for it, but maybe there can be something done for a middle ground. Now I am not exactly sure where to post this since the suggestion area doesn't seem to have a spot for endeavors. Just by going by my limited pool the majority of reroll tokens were used by myself and the people in my fleet for the TFO endeavors because they take too long to complete. Is there a way to look at the endeavors themselves and update the ones that people will generally skip now that there is a cost to the tokens. As an example would be to rework the existing TFO ones from being for a specific faction to a Random TFO. At least for me that would remove why I dislike the TFO ones for it cuts some of the wait out for you aren't spending time in the queue hoping people will join. For right now if I see a TFO its pretty much an automatic skip for it takes a system that might take 20min to complete to at least a hour.
I usually skip the randoms since I kept getting stuck into the worst, most annoying TFOs, and sometimes the character I am using at the time (I am a bit of an altaholic) is not set up well for both space and ground and inevitably I seem to get the one the character is worst at. RNG in this game seems to hate me.
They put the specific TFOs in there because they tend to be the dogs that very few que up for otherwise, same thing with the Gon'cra battlezone.
I usually skip the randoms since I kept getting stuck into the worst, most annoying TFOs, and sometimes the character I am using at the time (I am a bit of an altaholic) is not set up well for both space and ground and inevitably I seem to get the one the character is worst at. RNG in this game seems to hate me.
They put the specific TFOs in there because they tend to be the dogs that very few que up for otherwise, same thing with the Gon'cra battlezone.
There won't be a perfect solution, but speaking for myself I don't have the time to play the game to complete the three TFOs on most week days. So you have the issue with ground and space, there are dead queues issues, but for me I don't have the time. That is why I think having the tokens being free was the best solution for I just used them to skip the endeavors that I didn't have time for, but now there is a cost associated with skipping them. There can always be another solution if mine isn't that great, but I don't think as they stand now is a good implementation just like when they first introduced endeavors and you had to do them on advanced or elite.
Comments
I agree on the "fleet tax". Ridiculous idea because a healthy fleets provide a valuable service to STO as a whole.
A fleet builds community. Even if the content dropped off and the player population hated a game they would still have a fleet.
At the basest level a fleet is a wonderful sunk loss. In addition to in game assets a fleet is something a player who might be, "on the line" is going to feel badly about relinquishing.
Coupled with the cash/resource/time investment are friends. That's huge. Even when I have taken breaks because the content wasn't drawing me I checked in with my friends from the fleet to see how they were doing.
Healthy fleets draw new players. Coming into a game that has rolled on for better than a decade involves a lot of information and learning to get up to speed. When a new player engages with a fleet they are welcomed and supported taking their first steps. That network can become friends and orientation means better retention than wandering around clueless.
From a predatory, for profit perspective a fleet is a host of used car salesmen, working for STO for free. New players want to buy things and steering them toward their first ship that gives them a positive outcome can make or break their interest in the game.
There are hermit fleets in STO. There are less than "good" fleets that exploit their members, but most of the larger fleets in game are givers, not takers from the community, and overall health of the game. That's why they are large fleets.
Sure, that works.. there are plenty of things like that which are locked behind gamble boxes that people would spend Dilithium for. Pretty much anything that is only obtainable by random chance has a strong value and if you offer it to people for a fixed Dilithium cost, they will jump on it.
The next thing I would do if I was Cryptic, I would have a 3-4 day run where I would take four or five universal consoles that are normally tied to a ship and offer them as a per character unlock for Dilithium. Give someone a chance to spend a few hundred thousand Dil on a DPRM and see how quick the Dilithium Exchange rebounds.
You serious about fixing this Cryptic? If so, offer highly desirable items and people will spend spend spend.
Yep. And you know why? Because it adds something, instead of taking something away. Before I go any further, I want to express, once again, how miffed I am at Bort for pretending not to know the difference between a cool sink and a laziness-induced, blatant nerf. And that's the thing: if you want to introduce a nice sink, you gotten offer something nice in return. Simple as that. Otherwise you're just robbing the players. 'Money for nothing' and all that.
Also, I can't stress enough how much Bort has sabotaged the game this way. Was picking up Endeavors again, the other day, and suddenly realized all '5x crit' ships et al. are now utterly useless. After all, the whole purpose of critting was to get the pass token (reward was never higher on crit to begin with). So, apart from a few lame one-time ships you get on crits (pretty much meaningless if you have as many ships as I do), Bort simply, single-handedly wrecked Endeavors by de facto incapacitating the crit system within it. Great job!
Both admiralty and endeavors start out with zero reroll/pass tokens so new players just starting those never have any tokens and so never get used to using them, and longer-time players are mostly offended by the change and refuse to buy any.
If they had changed the drop rate of tokens from one in four to about one in ten or one in twenty there would be the seed factor to get people to use them, and reduction rather than elimination would have been less offensive if the announcement was handled right.
There's a lot of those ships, from the Mirror to several others that can't be upgraded...
There are https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Starship_Upgrade_Requisition . They will not replace them with Dilithium.
He was specifically referring to the ships that can't use those requisitions. Of which there are a fair few, including all the T5 Mirror Universe ships.
They would not make these upgrades for dili, except these update would not make the ship stronger then the regular version of the jet upgradeable ships.
Think about an upgraded T5 mirror ship beeing cheaper and stronger than an non upgraded T5 rare or very rare ship.
What the hell, Cryptic?
I usually skip the randoms since I kept getting stuck into the worst, most annoying TFOs, and sometimes the character I am using at the time (I am a bit of an altaholic) is not set up well for both space and ground and inevitably I seem to get the one the character is worst at. RNG in this game seems to hate me.
They put the specific TFOs in there because they tend to be the dogs that very few que up for otherwise, same thing with the Gon'cra battlezone.
There won't be a perfect solution, but speaking for myself I don't have the time to play the game to complete the three TFOs on most week days. So you have the issue with ground and space, there are dead queues issues, but for me I don't have the time. That is why I think having the tokens being free was the best solution for I just used them to skip the endeavors that I didn't have time for, but now there is a cost associated with skipping them. There can always be another solution if mine isn't that great, but I don't think as they stand now is a good implementation just like when they first introduced endeavors and you had to do them on advanced or elite.