Shortened Red Alert Question

azrael · March 4

As this upcoming Red Alert is only going to be one week long and lack the usual experimental ship upgrade token, is there any plan on having another event (as in the Phoenix Prize event) alongside it, to compensate? There was no mention of this, and I've seen the Phoenix Prize event not be announced except by word of mouth (word of post?).

I can understand if no experimental token is planned, and I understand the reason behind the shortening of Red Alert durations (six campaign events instead of just five, each of which is a full month long, so the slack has to be cut somewhere). I was just inquiring as to how experimental ship tokens will be addressed in the future.

captainkoltar · March 4

There have been single week Red Alert events before. I don't know that this is a result of the increase in the number of the grand prize events.

azrael · March 4

Someone mentioned that there would be either fewer or shorter Red Alerts as a result of squeezing in another campaign event. This 7-day Red Alert might just be a one-time thing though, due to the possibility of another event coming so soon after this current campaign event. (Possible springtime "season" event? Not sure)

phoenixc · March 4

azrael#9500 wrote: »

Someone mentioned that there would be either fewer or shorter Red Alerts as a result of squeezing in another campaign event. This 7-day Red Alert might just be a one-time thing though, due to the possibility of another event coming so soon after this current campaign event. (Possible springtime "season" event? Not sure)

They don't actually have to squeeze another event in to make six campaign events, just make one of the otherwise non-campaign ones part of the campaign, and they have a number of those to choose from already. In recent years they have had a mix of one-week and two-week Red Alerts, so the longer campaign probably has nothing to do with this RA being a single week.

davefenestrator · March 5

Both 7- and 14-day red alerts are common, so there is nothing to compensate for.

leemwatson · March 5

azrael#9500 wrote: »

As this upcoming Red Alert is only going to be one week long and lack the usual experimental ship upgrade token, is there any plan on having another event (as in the Phoenix Prize event) alongside it, to compensate? There was no mention of this, and I've seen the Phoenix Prize event not be announced except by word of mouth (word of post?).

I can understand if no experimental token is planned, and I understand the reason behind the shortening of Red Alert durations (six campaign events instead of just five, each of which is a full month long, so the slack has to be cut somewhere). I was just inquiring as to how experimental ship tokens will be addressed in the future.

What do you mean 'to compensate'? There is nothing to compensate you for. Short Red Alerts have been a thing for years and usually alternate with the long version.

crypticarmsman · March 5

Nothing unusual - they have done 1 week Red Alert events a number of times previously.

foxman00 · March 5

crypticarmsman wrote: »

Nothing unusual - they have done 1 week Red Alert events a number of times previously.

Yeah, i am seeing no need to be compensated for anything. Its just a single week's event apart from a longer one.

azrael · March 6

Thanks for pointing that out. However, I don't really feel like I needed to get piled on and repeatedly reminded "no need to compensate".

baddmoonrizin · March 6

azrael#9500 wrote: »

Thanks for pointing that out. However, I don't really feel like I needed to get piled on and repeatedly reminded "no need to compensate".

It tends to happen when people start asking for compensation. No one seemed to have been belligerent about, though. Apologies, if you felt slighted. I'm sure that the community was only trying to be helpful and informative. 😊

azrael · March 6

The reason I asked about possible compensation is that I was under the impression Red Alerts were going to be shortened going forward. Maybe that's not going to be the case. The devs definitely know, and I would love to get some input on that front (hopefully this doesn't mean they have to spoil anything--nothing makes devs clam up faster!)

leemwatson · March 6

azrael#9500 wrote: »

The reason I asked about possible compensation is that I was under the impression Red Alerts were going to be shortened going forward. Maybe that's not going to be the case. The devs definitely know, and I would love to get some input on that front (hopefully this doesn't mean they have to spoil anything--nothing makes devs clam up faster!)

Short and Long Red Alerts have tended to alternate, depending on what the Event calendar is like, and have been around for many years now. There is no reason to think this is going to change. I saw a few comments on FB about 'being robbed', and this is from new players with little knowledge on the Red Alert versions.

azrael · March 6

Thanks for clarifying. It's just gonna be a denser schedule with six campaign events instead of five this year. "This just in: there will be no scheduled furlough for captains in Starfleet, KDF, the Dominion or the Romulan Republic. Remember, ad astra!" *collective groan*

captainkoltar · March 6

> @azrael#9500 said:
> Thanks for clarifying. It's just gonna be a denser schedule with six campaign events instead of five this year.

Possibly but not necessarily. There have been events in all previous years that haven't counted towards the grand prize. They could just include one of these in the six. Phoenix mentions this further up the thread.

azrael · March 6

This is true. It would be the easiest way to fit in a sixth event, to be honest. That way, an entire new event is not needed.

inferiority · March 6

Let's not be too short here - most of the recent Red Alert events have turned out to be two-weekers. We haven't had a one-week RA for a few months.
@azrael#9500 has a join date of July 2023 and may be quite new to the game. In which case, most of the Red Alerts experienced, if not all, have been the two-week version.

captainkoltar · March 6

Yep indeed. Here's a list on the wiki of Red Alert events.

https://stowiki.net/wiki/Galactic_Red_Alert

According to that, the last 1 week one was almost a year ago (there've been 3 two week ones since).

For the record, I didn't mean to come across as short. The last sentence may read as such - I meant to ensure that I credited phoenixc with the point, but it may have come across as 'read the thread!!!111'. Sorry if it did.

azrael · March 8

Actually, that's the date of my Arc account. My actual in-game account dates to October 2022.

And I have a now-defunct Steam account for this game that dates to around August 2022 or something of that nature, and then an even older XBox One account which (again) I haven't played in literal years.

I just get hung up on technicalities sometimes. I remember reading someone's post suggesting shorter Red Alerts to allow for more events. It seems that one-week Red Alerts are just less common, but might become more so due to another event being added to the campaign. Then again, there could be simply more events "counted" toward the campaign, as I remember non-seasonal events that didn't count toward the event campaign progress (the Protostar and Sompek events last year come to mind).

leemwatson · March 9

azrael#9500 wrote: »

Actually, that's the date of my Arc account. My actual in-game account dates to October 2022.

And I have a now-defunct Steam account for this game that dates to around August 2022 or something of that nature, and then an even older XBox One account which (again) I haven't played in literal years.

I just get hung up on technicalities sometimes. I remember reading someone's post suggesting shorter Red Alerts to allow for more events. It seems that one-week Red Alerts are just less common, but might become more so due to another event being added to the campaign. Then again, there could be simply more events "counted" toward the campaign, as I remember non-seasonal events that didn't count toward the event campaign progress (the Protostar and Sompek events last year come to mind).

There are 6 events to this year's campaign (1 more than last year), mainly because you can now collect all 3 choices. The prevalence of 1 or 2 week Red Alerts is irrelevant to this. There's no point dwelling on whether there will be more or less, especially as there really is no convention (rules) or pattern on the amount of and type of Feature TFO's we get for you to get hung up on the technicalities of. We get what we're given and have zero input on the choices

To address the 'compensation' argument:

'Compensation' is only 'given' when you have suffered some 'material' loss due to either the servers going down or programmer error. In the case of online games, this 'material loss' is usually playing time. However, Cryptic has rarely ever issued 'compensation', so calls for it will fall on deaf ears. AFAIK Cryptic has issued it 5 times in the 13 years I have been playing. This does not include any compensation due to an error with your account (such as Zen issues, which will be settled privately).

With regard to what you asked in the first instance:

Even if we had had no one-week RA's before, there would still be no 'compensation' because it's in the T.o.S. that Cryptic can alter the program as it see fit. In short, you have no standing, legal or otherwise' to ask for compensation for this, especially when you are already receiving sufficient reward for the activity. In other words, the rewards for a one-week RA are sufficient reward for your time. The fact it doesn't have an Upgrade does not contribute to any loss on the part of anyone, because you never had it in the first place. The addition of the Token to the two-week version is evidence enough that it satisfies a reasonable reward for the increased time it takes to complete the event. And before someone argues 'well why not have a 1 week RA with just that as a reward'; the value of the item is appropriate for the two-week, not the single-week event.

As Badmoon and others have said, this is not an attack by any means. Just don't get hung up on things. Ask us on these forums if something is normal or not. The majority of forumites will gladly help you out.

azrael · March 9

Thanks for the further clarification. Anyway, looking forward to the upcoming Tholian event. Kinda wish it included the ground TFOs as well, because those are actually pretty fun if you can get a good team together. But, at least we get the improved space TFOs (pleasantly surprising the devs decided to revisit them).

This thread can be closed per moderator discretion as the question has been thoroughly addressed and answered.

baddmoonrizin · March 9

Closed by OP request. /thread

Shortened Red Alert Question

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