Recent Gameplay Changes Squeezing Out The Little Guys?
![[GoT] Gunboat Diplomat](https://us.v-cdn.net/6030345/uploads/defaultavatar/nL5515UJH9DYJ.jpg)
I started STT as a free-to-play player. After a few months of playing, I decided to move up to the monthly card. Over the next two years, I purchased a pack here and there, and I recently achieved VIP 13.
I have adapted to the various changes in game play during this time, and with the help of a fantastic fleet, I have been able to achieve some modest successes despite keeping my spending in a range that my budget will allow. I have amassed a reasonably strong crew. I consistently land in the top 10 in gauntlet (and even 1st place when timing and RNG align). My personal best in an event - which I achieved through a combination of preparation, patience, good timing, fleet support, and sheer audacity - is 15th place. Top 1000 in a faction event has been challenging for the last year or so (and quite rightly), but it has been achievable if I was willing to invest the time and boosts into making it happen. Until now.
I have stuck around for this long, and spent a small, but consistent amount on this game because it was enjoyable to me. Much of this enjoyment (beyond the social aspect of being part of an awesome fleet) came from being able to achieve goals and attain rewards through effort, meticulous planning, and appropriate sacrifices to the RNG Gods. For over two years, I have watched DB make additions and changes to the game with greater or lesser success. In addition to the improvements (the Honor mechanic was a welcome addition, as was being able to purchase crew with merits in the Time Portal) I have witnessed many stupid - but honest - errors and screw ups on the part of the developers, as well as amateurish break downs in communication, but people are human, so never before have I felt the need to speak out about an alteration to the fundamental balance of our beloved Timelines. Until now.
The recent addition of the Legendary Reward Multiplier boost and Extra Shuttles move the scales too far in favour of pay to win. Combined with the fact that my time zone is not conducive to rapid starts or mad rushes at the end of events, these new features will permanently rule out faction events as a viable option for me if they are allowed to stay. As a case in point, I was placed strongly in this last event after having spent considerable time over the four days as well as somewhere north of 60 time boosts. However, due to my inability (despite my best effort) to stay awake until 2:30am to collect my final set of shuttles, I dropped 300 places to just outside the top 1k.
The primary appeal of this game for me has always been the care that DB took to maintain the balance between F2P and P2W. Whilst paying for bonuses and crew has always been an option - as it should be - the ability to purchase benefits has never ruled out the option of investing time and effort and still being competitive. I feel that this is no longer the case and my enjoyment has taken a precipitous dive as a result (I’m not sure how much disruption to life and sleep patterns the game designers think is acceptable when someone can simply outspend you at the last minute). I urge DB to restore this essential balance if it wants to keep players like me around.
Whether it does that by removing (or nerfing) the recent additions, or by putting a rolling start time for events to ensure worldwide equality, or by expanding the Legendary rank reward to the top 1500 or 2000 players, or by some other means, there are plenty of options for DB to demonstrate that it is committed to keeping the large community of engaged, non-whale players that it has accrued. Assuming that is something it is interested in doing.
I’ll be watching, in the hopes that it is. But only for so long.
I have adapted to the various changes in game play during this time, and with the help of a fantastic fleet, I have been able to achieve some modest successes despite keeping my spending in a range that my budget will allow. I have amassed a reasonably strong crew. I consistently land in the top 10 in gauntlet (and even 1st place when timing and RNG align). My personal best in an event - which I achieved through a combination of preparation, patience, good timing, fleet support, and sheer audacity - is 15th place. Top 1000 in a faction event has been challenging for the last year or so (and quite rightly), but it has been achievable if I was willing to invest the time and boosts into making it happen. Until now.
I have stuck around for this long, and spent a small, but consistent amount on this game because it was enjoyable to me. Much of this enjoyment (beyond the social aspect of being part of an awesome fleet) came from being able to achieve goals and attain rewards through effort, meticulous planning, and appropriate sacrifices to the RNG Gods. For over two years, I have watched DB make additions and changes to the game with greater or lesser success. In addition to the improvements (the Honor mechanic was a welcome addition, as was being able to purchase crew with merits in the Time Portal) I have witnessed many stupid - but honest - errors and screw ups on the part of the developers, as well as amateurish break downs in communication, but people are human, so never before have I felt the need to speak out about an alteration to the fundamental balance of our beloved Timelines. Until now.
The recent addition of the Legendary Reward Multiplier boost and Extra Shuttles move the scales too far in favour of pay to win. Combined with the fact that my time zone is not conducive to rapid starts or mad rushes at the end of events, these new features will permanently rule out faction events as a viable option for me if they are allowed to stay. As a case in point, I was placed strongly in this last event after having spent considerable time over the four days as well as somewhere north of 60 time boosts. However, due to my inability (despite my best effort) to stay awake until 2:30am to collect my final set of shuttles, I dropped 300 places to just outside the top 1k.
The primary appeal of this game for me has always been the care that DB took to maintain the balance between F2P and P2W. Whilst paying for bonuses and crew has always been an option - as it should be - the ability to purchase benefits has never ruled out the option of investing time and effort and still being competitive. I feel that this is no longer the case and my enjoyment has taken a precipitous dive as a result (I’m not sure how much disruption to life and sleep patterns the game designers think is acceptable when someone can simply outspend you at the last minute). I urge DB to restore this essential balance if it wants to keep players like me around.
Whether it does that by removing (or nerfing) the recent additions, or by putting a rolling start time for events to ensure worldwide equality, or by expanding the Legendary rank reward to the top 1500 or 2000 players, or by some other means, there are plenty of options for DB to demonstrate that it is committed to keeping the large community of engaged, non-whale players that it has accrued. Assuming that is something it is interested in doing.
I’ll be watching, in the hopes that it is. But only for so long.
The Guardians of Tomorrow
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from itself
Chief Science Officer
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from itself
Chief Science Officer
39
Comments
I think its a good thing DB experiments with changes and I'm sure they'll look at both revenue and participation.
And finally, not all rewards need to be attainable for all players. The higher-levels need something to work for. Having said that, moving the rerun-legendary from ~150K VP to 400K VP was met with mostly negative response, so I hope they'll change that part back.
Thankfully the MEGA gives me chance to re-stock as their is a nice break from Faction events for a while, though admittedly everyone else can stock up too..
1) locked in events - requires consistent continual participation for next weeks event, skip an event the link is broken and it may well be harder to obtain that legendary card of interest.
2) being locked in to events means a drain on your resources stockpiled, higher threshold tiers added increases the drain on your resources.
Your options stockpile and skip (some) events (or some thresholds and out like before), and hope you have enough bonus crew for said event you are interested in or the second option consistently performing in events but expect to pay a lot more in terms of money/dilithium to keep the resources topped up.
Either way it's a squash and a squeeze.
I guess I'm just pointing out that rewards that were previously attainable for me, no longer are, which implies (to me at least) that there has been a shift in the game balance. I acknowledge that balance is an especially tricky needle to thread, and I applaud DB for maintaining it so well for so long, but the more of the game that moves out of my reach, the less value I am getting for my money and the less appealing it becomes for me.
That may or may not matter to DB. Time will tell.
As for this recent event, I'm sure that there are some F2P players who are simply better than me (or have better crews, or a better relationship with the RNG) and more power to them! I will point out, however, that I comfortably made the 400k VP threshold, and still fell outside of the top 1k.
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from itself
Chief Science Officer
I've been playing well over 2 years so I've got a decent crew, normally on a faction event i used to finished top 300 easy enough, but these last two since the boosts i have finished 950 and 769.
Considering I don't send out the 9 hour shuttles over night there isn't much more I can do to keep in the top 1000. I would be a bit gutted if it was unreachable with that crew and work.
I don't really want to spend money on boost packs to keep up!!
I'm VIP 13 as well and have 2 accounts and have been playing well over two years. I like the changes.
I think now in all events the last hour matters.
So this issue is now forced upon DB to resolve or start losing world wide participation.
Sure, there's nothing wrong with not being able to always get everything. But there needs to feel like there's some reward. Especially for all the extra dollars and hours and other efforts required. To get less than we did before.
I can think of a dozen other games that you can easily spend just as much on, but give far more fun and return on investment for far less.
Well, maybe with a destroyed will you will turn to one of these games now and save us from your 24/7 nonstop complaining. With constructive criticism apps can surely improve, but since for you everything about this game and DB is bad bad bad, the rewards **tsk tsk**/out of reach etc. no logical reason in your case to keep playing STT, right
Also we don´t get less than we did before, we got some further stuff in addition to what was before.
Absolutely correct. No one took away your rewards. They were added to for the possibility of you earning more. The tail end of these faction rewards were worth at or around 3,000 honor. I went out and got it cuz I wasn’t going to pass that up and I will go out and get it next time too
For about two years I have been a consistent top 1k Faction finisher without any direct spending on the event (and not spending on things like extra Thurs cadet tickets either). The time where that is a possibility (finishing top 1k in every Faction event) is probably coming to an end. We can argue over whether or not that is in the best interest of the future of the game but I don't think there would be much argument whether or not something has fundamentally changed.
To answer your question, 1) those who have been (and perhaps still are) using macros, and 2) those who are so far ahead in the game that adding more levels to the threshold doesn't really bother them.
The "Little Guys" and those that are just starting to play will have an extremely difficult time under these changes.
Sure, the new structure and tokens, and boosts etc, require more planning, and focused game play, but why is that bad?
People keep saying, that under rank 1k was easy to obtain, and now its not because of all the changes/additions.. Maybe that is good? I mean should getting a legendary be easy?
This game has always been about picking your battles, and focus, I think most of the hardcore F2P players can tell you that much, and I don't really see this as being changed.
And as said previously, by various posters, not all rewards should be easily attainable to everyone, otherwise what is the point? They need to grow and expand the rewards and the challanges or otherwise the more vetted players will get bored and leave.
so I for one am looking forward to the new reward system, something I think people have been asking for, for quite sometime.
I think we need to give DB a chance, to make changes, and to adjust, and see what happens, before everyone acts like the sky is falling ;p
Yes, we should all agree that something FUNdamentally has changed. And this change is not for the betterment of all.
In the sense that once you had cleared the old thresholds there was practically very little rewards if you continued to push for rank and fell short. Now you get something more along the way.
I think 'consolation' is the perfect description for do the exact same thing that I have done for every faction event and instead of ending with an event 5*, I get a free portal pull, a voyage token, and a few other goodies.
I agree with this. A top-1k finish in faction events used to be all but guaranteed for me, as long as I started on-time (or close to it) and remembered to do my basic kickstart, and was able to get up at least once overnight to send shuttles.
These last two faction events have gotten to the point where even missing a single 3-hour window puts a top-1k finish in serious jeopardy, even with 4 shuttles at >88%. I feel like it will get to the point where finishing top-1k in a faction will absolutely require some use of extra shuttles and/or extra speed boosts (beyond the kickstart).
I always liked faction events the most because they didn't feel like a chore to play. Yes, you needed to login every 3 hours, but you only had to do so for 2 minutes. Now the faction events are starting to feel like a chore to play, similar to galaxy and skirmish events. The recent changes may not be squeezing out the little guy (I personally like extra threshold rewards for players to strive to, as it was for all new players until they could easily clear the old thresholds), but they are definitely squeezing out the casual player. While I understand that dedicated players should be rewarded, requiring 96 hours of obsessive game play spread across 5 straight days, is pushing the limits of what is fun & entertaining VS what feels like work (this is exactly why I so often choose to go threshold-and-out in galaxy, hybrid, and some skirmish events, despite having built up a reserve of 35k+ chrons).
EDIT: I can't help but think the expanded thresholds are not only meant as an added bonus to players, but also to discourage players like me from going threshold-and-out, since a more competitive event will likely lead to increased event-specific spending.
And I think there are really two conversations going on. Anytime there are more rewards, it is good. The additional rewards have been requested for years. The issue that was brought up was the addition of ways to pay to increase your score.
JeanLucKirk - myself and others have on numerous occasions provided DB with "constructive criticisms" and all we have gotten for it is more carrots dangled in front of those who want to bite. And I would be hard-pressed to say that is a return on the investment (well, for DB, it is).
I agree with Captain Who, all of these changes have caused my will to play. And I was playing and paying for three games.
And to prevent my "24/7 nonstop complaining" about the game, I am moving away from it. Those $200.00 per month per game, DB can kiss that bye-bye. And it is a shame because the only people that will be impacted by my decision is all of the good people in my fleet.
Absolutely. Tilting Point needs its $29M back. You bet there are going to be a lot more changes just like this.
I have certainly used more speed boosts in recent events just because I'm now able to get more of them than before. Just like every one else. With the ad doublers. A change like that is going to have an effect on events in which you can make good use of your now abundant extra buffs... Just like voyages made galaxy events goofier than ever before...
We get less for the same in some regards.
I took note that DB did NOT comment on Troi being 400k VP in the last event and player's consternation thereof.
I've also provided some feedback to DB on this: Keep Rerun 5* at 100-150k, and put one copy of THAT WEEK'S new 5* crew (i.e. the one in the event pack, not the rank reward) at 500-600k (or perhaps even higher)
That way new players aren't hosed, but veterans still have a carrot dangled in front of them.
The OP was talking about faction events which, if I'm not mistaken aren't widely abused by macro use.
If you are talking about people that are so far ahead of the game pushing out weaker players, they were perfectly capable of doing that before the changes. If they weren't doing that before then the changes have fixed that.
You haven't answered anything. You haven't read the OP.
If macroing wasn't an issue before in faction events, it will be soon enough. By increasing the thresholds to 400k, DB has incentivized people to macro faction events in the name of a good night's sleep.
These are:
The first thing to understand is that the 2x doublers and rental tokens are primarily a top 25 issue and not a top 1000 issue. While they are used minimally at top 1000, because of their cost they are less cost effective than 3* time boosts.
The second thing is that all of these actually are functionally reductions in cost of the existing pay to win aspect of the event type. From 2-25, the in event cost with rentals and 3* time boosts is much closer to the actual cash/dil cost for those extra gold stars than it used to be.
Similarly at top 1000, people have more 3* boosts due to the ad warps (decreased extra VP cost) and more motivation to get the gold (increased reward value) so of course you are going to get higher scores.
Around top 1000, the people who benefit the most from these changes are likely small spenders or even just monthly card spenders who are willing to use some dil on thursday boosts and grind out 12-18 ads every thursday for loads of cheap 3* boosts.
I tried Marvel Strike Force, and enjoyed it for about a month, but found it was lacking the numbers and planning I'd appreciate for the long-term. I tried Star Trek: Fleet Command for a week, and it was OK, but seemed to be a road to nowhere and with only the most tenuous Trek links.
Yes, you get more (seemingly), but at a greater strain and it is still the matter of the "little guys" who cannot enjoy the fruits of their labor.