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Episodes Underpaid
polaronlover83
Member Posts: 24 Arc User
I apologize for the potentially redundant discussion, but since I've been busy I wasn't sure if anyone covered it, but are we or are we not underpaid for the episodes in the game?
Some episodes with one's imagination and the often interesting cutscenes can eat up 1 to 2 hours of my day, only to leave me with a measly 128 dilithium out of the total of 8,000 (to 9000) that can be refined daily. THE DAILY LIMIT OF REFINEMENT IS NOT AN ISSUE, but if you're going to set a loyalty motivation limit, don't insult me with low payouts from what I would assume would be your primary source of investment for players with the voice acting and cutscene coding.
Again, an episode rewards you with a measly 128 dilithum (reduced from a bare 720 after the first playthrough) every time you play the same mission. With credit to the unique equipment in some episodes, Right now I am so beyond uninterested in the game's episodes but badly missing them because it's easier to play a few advanced random TFOs for 100+ marks (1000+ dilithium) or get my daily 65+ marks (500+ dilithium) in a few advent. zones and call it a day (usually takes me at most 1-2 hours).
As we know, the random TFO system is pretty rewarding despite not knowing whether we'll hit our favorite TFOs or not, which I greatly appreciate. The adventure zones also reward us in each faction daily with 65 bonus marks each. We can also earn 3 of a rep. faction's special objects from "boss fights" at the right time.
1) It takes 50 reputation marks to buy 500 dilithium or 3 special reputation collectibles in a faction to get 1000 dilithium.
2) An episode replayed ranging from 10 minutes to 1.5 hours long (with dialogue and cutscenes) only pays 172 dilithium. Unique single-equip rewards aside, experience is virtually useless when players meet endgame status.
Am I wrong here? Did I miss something the Devs might have commented on this?
Life is short, so why are Devs not paying us more for playing seemingly the most important content within the game as it's their highest cost to produce and therefore what they would draw more people in for?
I won't name any competition, but a multitude of other MMORPGs pay generously for replays on campaigns and daily content. Why doesn't STO?
I'm not looking to be oppositional here, but for educational purposes, please provide me any feedback you can or would like to to help me understand the existence of episode reward mechanics the way they are here.
Some episodes with one's imagination and the often interesting cutscenes can eat up 1 to 2 hours of my day, only to leave me with a measly 128 dilithium out of the total of 8,000 (to 9000) that can be refined daily. THE DAILY LIMIT OF REFINEMENT IS NOT AN ISSUE, but if you're going to set a loyalty motivation limit, don't insult me with low payouts from what I would assume would be your primary source of investment for players with the voice acting and cutscene coding.
Again, an episode rewards you with a measly 128 dilithum (reduced from a bare 720 after the first playthrough) every time you play the same mission. With credit to the unique equipment in some episodes, Right now I am so beyond uninterested in the game's episodes but badly missing them because it's easier to play a few advanced random TFOs for 100+ marks (1000+ dilithium) or get my daily 65+ marks (500+ dilithium) in a few advent. zones and call it a day (usually takes me at most 1-2 hours).
As we know, the random TFO system is pretty rewarding despite not knowing whether we'll hit our favorite TFOs or not, which I greatly appreciate. The adventure zones also reward us in each faction daily with 65 bonus marks each. We can also earn 3 of a rep. faction's special objects from "boss fights" at the right time.
1) It takes 50 reputation marks to buy 500 dilithium or 3 special reputation collectibles in a faction to get 1000 dilithium.
2) An episode replayed ranging from 10 minutes to 1.5 hours long (with dialogue and cutscenes) only pays 172 dilithium. Unique single-equip rewards aside, experience is virtually useless when players meet endgame status.
Am I wrong here? Did I miss something the Devs might have commented on this?
Life is short, so why are Devs not paying us more for playing seemingly the most important content within the game as it's their highest cost to produce and therefore what they would draw more people in for?
I won't name any competition, but a multitude of other MMORPGs pay generously for replays on campaigns and daily content. Why doesn't STO?
I'm not looking to be oppositional here, but for educational purposes, please provide me any feedback you can or would like to to help me understand the existence of episode reward mechanics the way they are here.
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Replays have always rewarded less and they are not Endgame material, TFO's are. After 15 years, it's a bit late in the day to point this out. The Dev's already know that folk are not going to replay for the Dil, but for the equipment and other rewards. It's in the 'player's' nature to take the course of least resistance, especially when it comes to earning Dil. TFO's have always been the more efficient way of earning Dil because they are 2-15 minutes in duration, whereas episodes are around 30 minutes+. Countless times some players have complained about the length of of episodes, not the Dil rewards, so the Dev's are not in the wrong for rewarding TFO's better.
And veiled 'blackmail' comparisons are not going to change their minds either. Other games reward players with compensation if the server even as much 'sneezes', Cryptic doesn't do that and rarely ever has. You have a massive free game to play, life is too short to sweat over Dil payouts.
Here are some links to posts about this issue.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1271851/taken-by-surprise-abnormally-low-or-diminishing-mission-rewards?sso=eyJuYW1lIjoiIiwicGhvdG91cmwiOiIiLCJjbGllbnRfaWQiOiIxNDQzOTY4OTgxIn0=+79d7943992a95e9206d7433cd371c20e6f4c9ddc+1730650332+hmacsha1
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1271762/episode-taken-by-surprise-low-xp-expertise-reward?sso=eyJuYW1lIjoiIiwicGhvdG91cmwiOiIiLCJjbGllbnRfaWQiOiIxNDQzOTY4OTgxIn0=+3372dd87b5c86c985966bf26b13dcb036acd8936+1730650338+hmacsha1
I'm not sure what you were intending to point out here, but it seems like you really just reiterated my point. I get what you're saying, but again, it seems like you just proved my point.
Yeah, players are playing what pays more for 15 minutes, but why does 15 minutes pay more when other invested time consuming content pays less? That was my question. The economics here simply doesn't make sense. You can accuse me of "veiled blackmail" and you can call life too "short to sweat over dil payouts", but when it's the primary resource that makes the game worth playing, it becomes an issue for players. It's not too short when that currency also buys things that the daily limit won't let you purchase in the same day.
I also want to confirm, for clarity, that you are basically saying the game is meant to be people playing the same TFO maps for the greater payout just back to back? That seems like quite a dull business model for the best scifi franchise ever created.
I appreciate your time and feedback, but in all honesty I expected a more in depth explanation rather than a reiteration more along the lines of my economic motivation as a customer to understand why I'm spending my time and hard earned US dollars on.
I'm sure you're correct, but I've never been able to understand the business model they use and why it always seems like it can do better.
Interesting. Thanks!
For anyone else reading, instances like this are why I ask specifically:
Why would I be motivated to play newer campaign content which Cryptic paid voice actors and devs to produce if there aren't hardly any rewards to do so?
That's my response too. 8,000 dil is 16 cents. If you are grinding as a job, you're earning slave wages. Play the parts of the game you enjoy, ignore the rest. Skip events if you don't care about the reward and it isn't part of the campaign (or you plan to play extra in other campaign events to make up the 14 days). Work an hour overtime at a regular job and earn much much more than 16 cents.
Dil = a peanut, $20 = a job, or just the value of your time:
The point I was trying to put forward is that a lot of players want a quick low-effort experience that paysout, not a drawn out episode to replay. Even if Dil was proportional to time, which it kind of is for the first play through of an episode, if it's taking more than 5 -10 minutes, they won't play a replay unless they are after more equipment. Also, even if Dil was proportional, players would find the most economical route, which will always be a TFO because shortcuts and DPS count for more in TFO's than Episodes.
Dil is not an issue for players; you only need to see the exchange for that. If you think STO's model is dull, never play Phantasy Star Online NGS.....it's easily a thousand times worse for payouts, and episode replays don't payout anything.
That is if you can get Phantasy Star Online to run in the first place. I tried it a few years ago, made a character, and it crashed on loading the character into the game the first time. Of course, when restarted the game the character was gone so I redid it, and the exact same thing happened. I decided not to give it a chance for a third strike, and from what I have heard since I didn't really miss anything.
Anyway, dil is good and all when it comes to upgrading and whatnot, but it is not a big deal and very easy to get if you play past the main prize with all the events there are nowadays. And while I don't play missions very often anymore it has nothing to do with the payout, it is the fact that for some reason for that last few years missions crash to login on every single map change and I got tired of that nonsense. So now I only run them if I need a particular set of gear or (rarely) just out of curiosity.
A great question. I will answer by reminding people that the fun behind a game comes from a reasonable pay while playing it in the form of playability. It's not as playable if it costs my limited lifetime to earn less rewards. I want Star Trek over just about anything in the world to succeed. However, after watching it crash so many times with continuity as well as a poor collaboration between the sound FX of Paramount and Cryptic, it gets concerning when there appears to be some simple solutions that I don't have any control over as one of its biggest fans. If you say it's not a job, you're 115% right. However, it's not a game either if you have to work too hard to achieve the entertainment. Sometimes, my passion gives me the strength to have a voice when something is out of place.
I didn't really expect this idea to be emphasized so much, but again I ask, why would Cryptic reward players the least for playing the content that should matter so much to fans and cost so much for Cryptic as a developer?
Okay. I'll meet you halfway. I believe what you say about players in general. I guess I'm honestly trying to see things from a "trekkie" perspective where I would like playing episodes I can appreciate to receive proportional time rewards to help unlock other features of being a Star Trek character.
With this in mind, I hope you can understand my view when I live in a part of the world that is for some reason repulsed by the idea of even trying a game like Star Trek online, let alone giving Star Trek a single watch. I believe this to be because Cryptic focuses too much on marketing rather than the masterpiece they've worked hard to produce. We see people constantly calling them out for only allowing ships via the lottery system. I also believe my concerns root from us all being victims of the financial crises in the real world.
I'm not sure we agree on whether Dil isn't an issue for players. I'm beyond glad I discovered the exchange for Dil, but I'm sure you know the Devs have frequently addressed the inflation of it. I would say that means there's an issue. Part of that could easily be that they aren't properly rewarding the true fans of the franchise.
I love what the Devs did, however, by adding the dilithium as an option for DOFF donations to fleets. That was epic. I'm not sure how much it helped, but I still appreciate them looking into the issues with the dil economics.
Would you mind clarifying the "Phantasy Star Trek Online NGS"? I appreciate your warning, but I'm not familiar with what you refer to.
Cryptic wants us to spend time in STO so we buy things, which is why they give out the shinies. I can see the argument that if story episodes offered giant piles of loot then people would maybe spend more time in them, it would have to be mountains of loot to compare with TFOs and I'm not sure even that would work because the TFOs are the content focused on non-stop action and maximized replayability. Telling stories means a slower pace and pauses between any action bits.
I'm not seeing this "increasing content difficulty" you speak of in STO. Difficulty has at best remained the same when it hasn't decreased while at the same time the power of top-end gear has steadily increased.
You now see one player vaporizing a Borg Unimatrix in seconds when it used to take a team of 5 minutes to DPS it down. A decade ago a Borg or Tholian red alert might actually fail because it wasn't completed within the time limit.
For this particular MMO, the only "job" is free-to-play players wanting free zen for Space Barbie, not something they actually need to play the game.
PSO:NGS is the latest addition of the long-running JRPG series of Phantasy Star. It is a beautifully constructed world, but the storylines take twice, even thrice as long as STO's to come out and the payout for each episode is abysmal, and non-existant for replays. Like STO its payouts are routed firmly in grinding....and grinding far worse than STO's. Just like STO, it's a 'barbie' game, but far worse in that they release new 'scratch tickets' every week which are all cosmetics bar some tickets which provide quickly outdated equipment boosts. The only way you can get rich in NGS is by selling items from tickets and hoping they are actually in demand, and if you are extremely lucky a decent equipment drop....odds far-far worse than STO's lockbox dynamics. However, being a japanese game, there are a fair number of perverts on there
In STO, there is a massive over-supply issue of Dil because as well as being quite generous in Dil rewards through Random TFO's and Admirality, on top of incremently rising rewards from Events, there are way fewer fleets building anymore and no other reliable funnels for that Dil. Earning that 8k (or 9.5k for LTS + Fleet tasks) a day is so easy via RTFO's and Events, on top of Rep and Admiralty.
The issue of Dil rewards was brought up in a livestream years back, and I'm pretty sure it was explained that the metrics determined where the rewards were focused, and as I mentioned earlier, players were not replaying episodes because they take too long. It used to be that there were 'feature' episode rerun events, which the main draw were unique rewards such as the Ophidian cane and that time-crystal thingymijig. Other complaints came through such as having to rerun episodes to earn all the unique rewards, meaning you're having to set-aside 2-3 hours just to get one set of equipment from one mission.
The rationale of why they reduce the Dil and XP rewards for re-runs of episodes was covered such a long time ago, I have actually forgotten exactly why, but I think it might have been because of bots for a certain episode. We have gone from 'not enough' to 'why can't I sell my Dil', so I don't think it is something they will look to change, especially given they have delayed new episode until next year due to the game moving over to DECA.
It would have to be worthwhile. But that is a discussion for another thread.
I do agree with @jonsills assessment, players get hooked on this game trying to amass more than 10yrs of content and in the process take all the fun out it. Be patient, keep playing, and you'll have all the neat things you want, without burning yourself out on it and trying to make some sort of speed run out of all of the content.
I'm not seeing this "increasing content difficulty" you speak of in STO. Difficulty has at best remained the same when it hasn't decreased while at the same time the power of top-end gear has steadily increased.
You now see one player vaporizing a Borg Unimatrix in seconds when it used to take a team of 5 minutes to DPS it down. A decade ago a Borg or Tholian red alert might actually fail because it wasn't completed within the time limit.
For this particular MMO, the only "job" is free-to-play players wanting free zen for Space Barbie, not something they actually need to play the game.[/quote]
For the record, I completely identify with you. For anyone wondering, you also just proved my point. Players have now resorted to playing TFOs and PvEs, which any other game outside of Star Trek can offer.
I want to see the game succeed for a long time, but it's starting to become a redundant series of multiplayer maps, and that's if you can get people to queue. The random queue was an epic idea, but it gets redundant and you end up playing the same over-popular TFOs back to back.
I play these for, say, 30 minutes and I've farmed my dil for one toon for one day. Now, maybe if I'm feeling like it, I'll play another toon for another 15-30 minutes. However, the next day I may not even be motivated to play at all. It's like playing a TikTok or YT short vid back to back that pays you wealthy then, with all other videos paying nothing, you're expected to continue appreciating the website for taking your time. I love YT and sometimes TikTok, but here they are good analogies.
All I'm saying is the economics here from a business graduates' perspective doesn't appear very healthy for a game based one an epic franchise built on a foundation of episodes and lore.
YES! You get it. You make some good points and I totally sympathize with the view as episodes. I would definitely like to emphasize, however, that I would say I don't expect equal payout based on time consumed as I would expect Cryptic to be interested in the moderation of player traffic as such.
However, an episode paying me 1000 dilithium for spending 1 hour playing it and watching and passionately roleplaying some unskippable cutscenes rather than a measly 172 dilithium would be reasonable, I feel. Compare this idea to warping in to the Badlands adventure zone and taking 5 minutes to blast a Terran boss base and immediately earning a payout of 2000 dilithium from the triple payout of Terran and Temporal reputation collectibles.
I've been playing since right before the game entered it's second year anniversary featuring the Odyssey Star Cruiser as a unique dreadnought you could earn. It does break my hear to know that so many memories have been deleted via episodes that they haven't brought back for seemingly bad reasons, such as promotion of the Paramount+ junk. It seems sellout-ish, despite them understandably needing to generate revenue.
I think I do remember the streams you talk about, but I honestly can't remember much about those either.
You mentioned something interesting. I've always found the TFOs to be quite wealthy of a payout despite some taking significantly less time to accomplish. With what you said about the episodes being too long, should the best course of action to be to switch the payouts so they correlate more with time consumption? Or would you say this could harm the game's traffic more?
When you say bots, do you mean people rigging the episodes to cheat for dilithium grinding?
I love that you mentioned this. Further to my point, I would be happy to grind for Cryptic if it meant getting to enjoy the episodic content Star Trek Online featured rather than feeling my time is better spent on PvEs with other players. I'd be fine earning less with TFOs and an event campaign featuring scaling dil rewards. I can honestly say I don't know why they were motivated to add that to the game if it's such a problem.
An analogy that comes to mind is if the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to ridiculous levels. Yeah, banks would raise savings account rates, but they would also charge more for you to borrow money through loans.
Whilst increased payouts may help, a significant amount of people won't tie themselves up in an episode repeatedly for 30+ minutes, they literally just take the path of least resistance; the payout on running RTFO's or even Infected Space repeatedly would still be far greater than a 'time accounted for' episode reward. You literally can not balance the reward to TFO payouts, because players will find the fastest and most convenient route. As I said, Cryptic themselves confirmed this a while back. Episodes are just 'grand events' and Cryptic is pretty reliant on its metrics to balance the game for the majority.
I can't quite remember and I'm pretty sure there's no-one left in Cryptic who could remember what was said about the reduced payouts on episode, but I'm sure it was a botting issue, but saying that, there's a few who bot TFO's, although Cryptic did crack down on this on SB1 TFO.
I can see there being a problem with bots. It's a similar idea to Google only limiting movies purchased on YouTube to only playing in 480p as the max quality when played on a PC, due to piracy, of course. I totally respect Cryptic's efforts to prohibit this.
However, I must admit I'm still struggling to imagine such statistics. I believe what you say, but I wish we could play a game where instead of me playing Infected on the "medium" difficulty for 500 dil plus what marks remain three times, I could play a 1.5 hour episode and receive a payout of say 1500 dil, rather than a measly 172 dil. You know, nothing crazy, but still better than that. Even the Emancipation mission to free the Deferi slaves pays 480 and you're just target practicing on some Breen.