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Threshold for re-run of Faction Events.
Nero84
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
I am very surprised by Distributor Beam's decision to increase the faction threshold to 400K for re-run events. I know there has been a lot of people that have had issues lately but I have still tried to hold an opinion that they are trying to improve the game and keep things interesting...
But seriously... 400,000 VP for a faction event with limited bonus crew to get a legendary crew a few events ago wouldn't have even been the threshold reward. These characters still take up crew space and people need to make room for them if they don't have them. I am a spender and I completely believe in paying for a game that is enjoyable for people, but it seems like almost every decision lately has been to make events harder to rank without spending money.
If that is the way DB believes the best strategy to stay in business then great but I think it is going to backfire in the long run. Yesterday when Troi was offered for $9.99 purchase this peaked my interest but I held off because I am already a bit upset with the ways things are going. You saw little participation in phase 2 of the last event because the community didn't care at all about it and that is a first for me.
Faction events now in my opinion is a joke because it does require a big time commitment and a prayer that your 80% success shuttle won't fail 75% of the time. Many people don't like Galaxy Events and DB tried to change Skirmish events until there was another backlash, but we know the change is coming.
Whatever I guess... I know a lot of the people at DB are trying hard (Shan) but these things really are starting to add up.
But seriously... 400,000 VP for a faction event with limited bonus crew to get a legendary crew a few events ago wouldn't have even been the threshold reward. These characters still take up crew space and people need to make room for them if they don't have them. I am a spender and I completely believe in paying for a game that is enjoyable for people, but it seems like almost every decision lately has been to make events harder to rank without spending money.
If that is the way DB believes the best strategy to stay in business then great but I think it is going to backfire in the long run. Yesterday when Troi was offered for $9.99 purchase this peaked my interest but I held off because I am already a bit upset with the ways things are going. You saw little participation in phase 2 of the last event because the community didn't care at all about it and that is a first for me.
Faction events now in my opinion is a joke because it does require a big time commitment and a prayer that your 80% success shuttle won't fail 75% of the time. Many people don't like Galaxy Events and DB tried to change Skirmish events until there was another backlash, but we know the change is coming.
Whatever I guess... I know a lot of the people at DB are trying hard (Shan) but these things really are starting to add up.
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Joined: 11/2017
VIP-Level: 14
Fleet: [GER]StarFleet
Immortals total: 437; 23 Legendaries; 257 Super Rare; 79 Rare; 51 Uncommon; 27 Common
Collections: Rare; Uncommen; Common; Live Long and Prosper; Do no Harm; Chain of Command; The neutral Zone; Valor in Combat; The Daystrom Award; The Eugenic Wars; Rules of Aquisition
Does not help that my first 12 match ups in the new Armus gauntlet had 2 Command and 10 Engineering sets (It is a command Gauntlet.) and that my unfatigued Kahless lost a match to Obsidian Order Garak in Comm/Dip one of the two times Command actually came up.
Its gotten too sketchy to spend any more money. I can see myself joining the ever swelling ranks of F2P or retired players.
So please DB: adjust threshold to 100K
On the event thread it seems like most players that can get to 400K don't actually want Troi so will airlock her....
So for longer term players is this the norm, have I just been playing through a golden age the last 3 months and now have nothing to look forward to?
PS I only pay for the monthly to support my voyage addiction and see the game play as using the game to put together a better crew.
Isn't 400,000 around rank 1500?
300,000 is plenty challenging enough for me as a day 1 player.
As someone who has been playing this game since launch, allow me to assure you -- you have plenty to look forward to.... if you like frustration and throwing good money after bad odds. At some point, you'll run out of crew to build and things to do in the game. It takes most folks about a year. You'll also have a lot of fully fused beholds and gauntlet bad beats waiting for you at that point. Then, all you'll have is events and the frustration inherent in those (as you're already expressing above).
Finally, my young caterpillar, your bitterness will swathe you like a newborn child and you will emerge from the cocoon as a salty old dog writing passive aggressive forum posts and responding to newer player questions in which they are searching for a glimmer of hope with nothing but the salt of your experience.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
I am thankful that DB's mistake at that time made it so I wasn't terribly interested in procuring a Lanya. Otherwise, i probably would have been tempted to do something similar this time around, pushing to get Lanya as an event reward then pulling packs until I fused either Troi or Lanya. And now that Troi is more difficult to obtain via thresholds, I have even less incentive to pull packs.
I doubt that my personal spending is reflective of the playerbase as a whole. I suspect DB does know what players spend money on, and they are relying on people spending money on shuttle boosts/rentals/speedups, but I just don't spend on those things, and it's increasingly clear that DB isn't interested in offering anything I'd value for my money.
https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/12150/what-score-is-1k-rank-now#latest
The 1000 VP cutoff was around 490k. That one had Captain Spock. Now we have mountaineer Spock.
Kind of funny, I like the artwork for Mountaineer Spock, but he looks like Herman Munster (For those who are old enough to remember the Munsters)
Edit: Munster Spock
I wish DB would have increased the rank needed for all the reward brackets. Would have taken some of the sting out of the 400k threshold.
Hey! I just realized . This is how they are welcoming new STT players from GOTA.
Edit2: DB could have left the legendary at 150,000 threshold. They would just have two things there Troi and Apollo's outfit.
I finished with 417.000 VP on the last faction event and had rank 1353. Given that it was the Captain Spock event and Mountaineer Spock seems less popular, this time around 400.000 could be even closer to rank 1000.
I used about 50 3* time reducers and 6 of the extra shuttles to get the last Spock. I don't know my final points, but the top scores were all about 20K from each other, so I was within 20K of whatever the mark was for Spock.
I play two different freemium games mostly. STT and Marvel Puzzle Quest. For quite awhile I preferred STT. I still might and I'm willing to spend a little bit of money on it. Recently I've noticed that I've been playing MPQ more without quite realizing it. And there's one main reason that I can think of: There's something more to do with a maxed character.
Both games use events. STT is more of a carnival than MPQ. You play a variety of ST related games that sort of work together. Its something to do with developed crew but a lot of it just sits idly. You also end up accumulating a lot of crap that doesn't do anything.
In MPQ they added Champion levels to a maxed out character. Every champion level gives you a reward. If you hit max Champion level you can delete the character for a big reward or start a duplicate. Either way its another opportunity to earn champion rewards. The Honour system in STT works like this but it really isn't that comparable. Collections were a nice improvement though.
I'm a long way away from having a strong 5* crew but I'm not that far away from max 4*'s. I suspect when I hit the latter, STT will probably be a little more tedious. I'm slated to get 3/4 Apollo's with some of his gear this week but there's little reason for me to do anything with it. If I got a reward for immortalizing a 2nd copy of Apollo though? That might drastically change how I play and appreciate the game. It might also change how I look at collecting 5*'s.
I don't plan on going for Troi this event. If I get there I'll probably delete her. I don't mind the threshold honestly. Its a lot of work for a marginal crew but at least it might compel people to play harder.
@Torias327 I had 417.000 on the last faction event. I was squadron leader (about 68.000 came from there) and I had lots of bonus crew (10 I think). I did a small kickstart (one that got me to 1800 or 2250VP shuttles) and used some 3* time boosts (maybe 14 or 16 over the entire event) especially at the beginning and at the end of the event. I used 9hrs boosts overnight and I made sure to log in every 3 hours during the day. I think I was also lucky, since my shuttles had a pretty good success rate, if compared to other events.
EDIT: By success rate, I mean the actual success rate. I usually have about 1/4 shuttles fail during events, no matter what percentage was displayed when I sent them out. On the last event, it didn't happen that often.
So with ads you can get 12 boost packs for free every thursday. Suppose a faction event is every two weeks, so 24 boost packs for each event. Those will on average give you about 28 3* boosts to use in a faction event.
Given that here is a sample table of what someone who can safely sustain 4k missions can do if they make all the shuttle turn arounds during the day and use overnights.
Anyone who achieves 350k will still get a decent reward for playing even if they don't get top 1,000.
@Paladin 27
You show 85% success rate on over nighters. That success rate is usually lower than the normal stat boosted shuttles. I gather you are saying your normal shuttles are not stat boosted?
Edit: got it. The over nighters should have a success rate at 80%. But this still will lead to 400k for the threshold reward.
I dont think that’s the assumption at all, the assumption or rather the fact is the reward structure used to be x but now DB have changed it to y.
Well those were just example percents and I don’t use overnights, but you are right they should be about 5% lower. Dropping to 80 takes maybe 5k of VP away so still right at 4K.
I agree this the missions have helped but your last sentence is the most important and concerning to me. I can sustain most missions at 4000 VP points in most events. This event will be interesting because over the past year of playing I really haven't gotten any legendary Kirks. I have a lot of Troi but I am questioning how easy it will be for me to stay at 4000 VP. Will be tough in my opinion.
So this is the first time a legendary crew is in threshold rewards with the new rewards.
I think we just want to slant DB to making the legendary threshold at the old or at least lower than their plan for the current event rerun.
Not at all... this is a major change in the reward structure of re-run events. As I have stated if this is how DB wants to handle these events so be it, it is their business. I agree that threshold should be challenging. But kind of like when DB starting changing the $9.99 offer for a legendary to $25.00 I think it is short sighted and will hurt them. Now they have changed it back and it wasn't probably because people complained it is because it lost them money.
Giving away a 5* with a lower threshold once a month still take away crew slots, plus it is a way to encourage people to keep playing and slowly build up crew. Doing this will just make it harder and will probably cause more people to pull back money.
This may be the straw that breaks the clasp on my wallet.
And to be clear, I'm not a F2P. I wouldn't even call myself a 'Casual Spender'. I'm ashamed to admit my VIP point amount. I'm not a Gormagander, but I'm at least a Pygmy Orca.
Faction reruns used to be actually a really nice thing for both F2Ps as well as newer players.
Since DB seems to be on a mission to alienate F2Ps, I'll leave them out of my thoughts. (Seriously, DB, you really make it seem like you don't care about them at all anymore.)
But for newer players (let's say, less than 3-6 months), Reruns used to be Awesome. You'd get an older 5*, but a 5* nevertheless. Because as it stands now, I feel like a newer player would have a better payout just dumping dil into packs than whatever you'd have to spend to make it to 400k VP.
IOW, DB's decision here seems to once again be to alienate a lot of lower $ spenders (i.e. those who might buy boosts, etc to get to 100k VP and get the rerun character,) in favor of the fewer people who spend more money.
And, after a certain point, one has to ask: Is DB doing this because the whales are actually buying in, and they no longer care about the rest of their player base? Or are they just desperate for cash to keep the ship afloat?
I think I'm at that point.
It does take some work to do this well in a faction event admittedly. However there are good rewards leading up to 400k now. You get some decent stuff for your effort. It would be really annoying if they did this to the old thresholds. We'll see what happens in other re-runs. They need to update the rewards for those anyways.