Constructive Criticism of Skirmish Events
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After a few Skirmish events, here are my thoughts..yeah i know ANOTHER one..
Things I like:
The things that could be improved upon
Again, I like the Skirmish event idea, this isn't me whining and complaining on the internet. i think it is almost done exactly right, it just needs small tweaks. As it is right now it is just way too grindy.
Things I like:
- The format of the event. It's a nice change of pace, and uses an existing part of the game. Pretty much all the mechanics of the event I like.
- The rewards structure and new ships
- Gives us a good reason to seek out ship battles to earn intel (and holoemitters!) I love that we can earn more plays in the event by PLAYING THE GAME.
The things that could be improved upon
- It is WAAAAYYY too easy. Either add additional levels of difficulty, OR make the existing difficulties MUCH harder. As it is right now, you put one event crew on the borg cube and it beats every ship as soon as killy or some other heave hitter activates. You just rinse and repeat this over and over. You don't even have to fix it. Make the existing difficulties harder, or add new difficulties with higher rewards.
- There is no reason to use any bonus crew of any kind except for the one event crew that you already have FFFE. Event crew are supposed to mean something. Do list item one - make it harder. Then just do to the skirmish event type what you do the all the other events. Make bonus crew 2x better, and event crew 3x better. e.g. Kalifee Spock currently has a 6point attack boost at 12 seconds. make it 3x higher, 18point attack boost at 12 seconds. Give us a reason to use him. Same goes for the rest of the bonus and event crew.
- New ships have no use in the event. While i love new content like new ships, we have absolutely no use for them. Do list item one - make it harder. Then make the event ships 3x more powerful than regular ships. (heck make them 10x better). Give me a reason not just to immediately go to my max level borg cube. a level 2 or 3 event ship should be equal to a level 10 ship. Give me a reason to buy the schematics and not just wait for them to be added to the loot table in 6 months.
- Any other ideas forum?
Again, I like the Skirmish event idea, this isn't me whining and complaining on the internet. i think it is almost done exactly right, it just needs small tweaks. As it is right now it is just way too grindy.
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Comments
Is it your assertion that other events (such as shuttles) give newer players a better ability to compete than if skirmishes were made more difficult on the higher difficulties? I assume when you say "no chance at all" you mean to be competetive and not just to reach the thresholds.
Not sure what happend with DBs action to do something about.....Btw, i havn t seen the „U played too long already please tap...“ pop up, not anymore since weeks. Is it still working?
In general: Such events are meant to make revenue for DB, if they make it too hard(or not easy enough) majority will get frustrated and stop playing and spending on such events. Pretty simple.
If ur all up for a strategy game or games with harder difficulty, look for some other more suitable games. Plenty available.
Another approach that would not directly affect other players would be to add a difficulty slider (from too easy to absolutely impossible), so that people can challenge themselves (higher difficulty=higher VP).
This run is particularly easy for me anyway. I think my induction is 8 seconds then it's over in say 8.5 seconds for all 5 battles. I do have 4 big spikers (one is Spock).
If they were going to make it harder it likely would just become more tedious. If it is made harder they should compensate by requiring MUCH fewer battles.
That’s part of why I enjoy these. I can play at my leisure while I’m doing other things because of it. Making it harder along with it being tedious would be a really bad combination. I would definitely lose interest in it because I don’t want something that not only takes a lot of time but also takes all of your attention. Talk about sucking the life out of you for four days.
I mean to be competitive. I have just heard from newer people that they like skirmishes because they have scored higher than in the other event types.
I also think the intel bonus rewards are not realistic. Chron/honor/credit/VP bonus rewards are reasonable and I hear tell that people have gotten portal packs, but even the largest possible intel drop is a drop in the bucket compared to the max intel cost per Skirmish. Granted, intel can be gotten other ways...so why not get rid of it completely as a bonus reward if it’s too easy to get elsewhere?
Also, the new 5* ship is too ludicrously expensive to obtain through schematics packs, especially given that the bonus is really unnecessary if you have even just one good 10/10 5* ship already in your garage.
I find skirmishes to be the ship equivalent to expeditions, which are both better than galaxy events. My rationale is that you actually get to use your roster (crew/ships), make use of actual game play, and don't waste resources.
However, it still eventually gets dull due to the combination of it becoming repetitive yet time-consuming, and being able to clear thresholds so quickly and easily.
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I think it would be interesting to have to strategize using multiple ships with multiple crews, with pros/cons for different combinations and choices of which ship/crew to send into which battle.
I think they said last time that they haven't removed the "countermeasures". It could just be the messages have a better triggering system now.
I would say in my experience, they are very easy (T'ong: t'kuvma, k-spock, kung-fu sarek, and killy - battles don't tend to last very long). I know others in my fleet who struggle. This is a matter of crew and ships. But I agree I do like them, for the same reason. I can sit back, watch tv or youtube (thanks to new PiP feature in Android Oreo ... I can play STT and watch youtube at the same time on my phone).
Skirmishes feel like a good fit to the rest of the event types so far. The way I see it:
Factions: Requires good crew, minimal time investment due to sending shuttles out at regular intervals. No chron requirement.
Galaxy: Event crews help (better event item drop rate). Heavy chron, time investment, and item investment.
Expedition: (Still acknowledging these exist). Requires good crew and heavy time investment. No chron requirement.
Skirmish: Requires good ship crew and ships. Heavy time investment. Requires chron investment, but there is a return on investment in possibly both chrons and items.
There are definitely going to be events that some people are better at than others. I think Galaxy and Skirmish are probably the easiest for newer players to score some rank. They don't require the big crew as much, but the trade off there is time.
Good summary, although you called both Skirmish and Galaxy heavy time intensive. And there are differences. When I aim for the Top 1000 I usually do a focused "speed" run of 2 hours building stuff in Galaxies - boom, event done for me, one copy of the legendary in the bag. 2 hours in Skirmish events are not enough for that. So they are more time intensive, but as you said they have other benefits.
Shuttle events on the other hand need less time for doing things as you pointed out rightfully, but if you want to be competitive you have to live after a clock for 4 days in a row (which I don´t like).
Same as Skirmishes they give resources (instead of eating them up like the Galaxies), but this is the big downside for me with them. Hence I rarely attack a full Faction event. I like to play on my terms, my timetable.
But all in all the mix of events has something for all kinds of tastes and timeframes.
I get what you're saying on Galaxies (was going for in general). On average, I would say I do a steady grind throughout the Galaxy. Also more reflecting the more hands on approach the other events have over Factions.
Expeditions are just the same. Heck, I would again tend to put something on TV and just grind away even after clearing all the nodes, nickle and diming the lowest epic tier mission if I had the time and my crew wasn't exhausted.
I also tend to prefarm some (like right now during skirmishes), which does take time too, just not during the event.
They are also impossible to get the new 5* ship as the schematic drop rates are too low imho (opened 6 packs, zero 5* schematics).
I think the bonus ships need a buff for the event, mabye twice the damage, crit chance, or something. IF time can be saved with them then I would have more of an incentive to get the new ships.
Also, Id like to see a Ship Pack with like 1600 shems or something for 10$ - RNDjesus is too damn poor to make me gamble on something that has little use either in the event or voyages (as you need a level 8 ship to be better that free maxed out ones, which is nigh on impossible unless some serous dil is spent).
No. They tried to make the crew management unwieldy, intrusive and something that would drag progress down to a slow crawl. That's not interesting.
Fixing the UI and allowing you to preselect crew for each ship and remember the selection would be interesting.
I have. I even lost a couple. When you zone out/doze off for a second and snap back aware mid-battle or after it's over.
Currently it is almost self sufficient, do skirmishes, get chrons, do ship battles, end up with 80% of the initial intel. Add into this all the chrons from the voyages etc you get during the event and it becomes almost never ending grindfest.
And before some one says 'dont use all of the chrons lol'... well i need all the honour I can get. And I WILL get all I can! :DD
On principle, I can understand and agree with the concept of making us apply some strategy with choosing optimal crew for each battle. Heck, multiple people in recent weeks and months have been clamoring for events that were more strategy-based than click-based.
The problem is that DB has done nothing to improve the crew selection screen, which is in dire need of a complete overhaul...as it stands, having trait matches that require frequent crew changes for each battle is an onerous time sink that some solved by simply eating the loss in VP/rewards by not changing crew - completely antithetical to the idea of having to strategize for each battle.
Exactly. Once they fix the user interface, I agree with OP about making the crew selection more strategy driven. As is, if I had to search for different crew before each battle, I would sooner throw my phone against the wall, walk outside and take up tennis.
Not for everyone. New players won't have the extra chronitons to run many skirmishes at 2400 a run. It might make it less grindy for those of us who have 100,000+ Intel after running a bunch of ship missions, but for players who don't have that luxury, it would cut the time they could play in half.