I'll say this much: like my forum friend @DavideBooks has hinted at, a percentage of us who currently do not like expeditions do see that they could be better with a few changes. And since @Travis S McClain has drawn the comparison between them and skirmishes, let me explicitly connect the dots to hopefully strike terra firma on common ground.
Could you imagine how horrible skirmishes would be if we had to select all 4 battle stations before EVERY space battle? That perfectly encapsulates why I currently VERY MUCH dislike expeditions. I do not know what the solution is as apparently the thing that people like about expeditions is the need to sift through ALL your crew to use them all, but to those of us that dread expeditions, this is why. I fully expect the first time through to take forever as we encounter the missions for the first time and have to plan how best to get through them, but with no way to lock in choices for the future like we can with skirmishes, I know I am having to re-invent the wheel EVERY time I replay, so that is why I am not a fan.
It's not "the need to sift through ALL your crew to use them all" that's appealing. No one likes the crew selection process. As @AviTrek will attest, DB has diluted Expeditions by capitulating too much to court the anti- crowd at times. Improved crew selection, however, is one feature request that we've all pleaded for, time and again over the last two years.
I apologize for my apparent poor word choice. I had hoped you could have sifted through to find the meaning I was trying to communicate, that being that many of us who currently dislike this event type would probably join you in enjoying them if we could improve the crew selection process with regard to having the game remember our previous choices like it does for skirmishes.
That said, I still think my words were accurate. It might not be true for you personally, but I've sifted through a lot of the forums for this week and one thing a lot of expedition fans seem to love is that they get to use all their crew.
I will toss it back to you and you can determine how the rest of this thread goes. I think after the initial dread posts, a lot of us have chilled and have tried to engage and be diplomatic and I was serious in trying to find common ground for the sake of the community and civility. You have nominated yourself in here as the ultimate expedition defender and that is great, I respect that, and maybe I'm reading into this something that was not intended, but I took your words as a rejection of my olive branch, so if you would like to continue this conversation I have given you all the tools with which to make an informed decision as to the tenor you wish that conversation to take.
I think you have made some great points and have done a good job communicating your position, and as such I think you have won some folks over. I hope you can recognize this and perhaps pump the brakes a tad.
I definitely don't remember nominating myself as anything, but I'm always happy to champion Expeditions and moreover, to try to contribute to something constructive in the community.
You're entirely right that getting to use all our crew is a big part of the appeal of Expeditions. You're also right that selecting our crew is one of the most tedious parts. I, and every other pro-Expedition player I've ever interacted with on the forums will gladly agree with you on that, which was all I was trying to get at in my previous reply to you. It's just that for players like me, that doesn't ruin the format and make it unplayable, as it apparently does for a lot of others.
I'm reminded of that great scene in Lawrence of Arabia where he explains the match trick. William Potter emulates what he's seen Lawrence do and extinguishes the match by pinching it in his fingertips. "That damn well hurts!" he shouts.
"Of course it hurts," Lawrence acknowledges.
"What's the trick, then?"
"The trick, William Potter, is not *minding* that it hurts," Lawrence explains.
The trick to enjoying getting to use all your crew is not minding that it's so tedious and frustrating to find them.
For the first time I am going to be threshold and out. I hate expedition events, while I know and have the crew each ticket takes about an hour, and the only rewards are VP. Every other event type provides something additional to victory points.
What do you do once you finish all your Expedition events? Do you do them again and again? There's no point is there, once you rack up all the rewards?
I'll say this much: like my forum friend @DavideBooks has hinted at, a percentage of us who currently do not like expeditions do see that they could be better with a few changes. And since @Travis S McClain has drawn the comparison between them and skirmishes, let me explicitly connect the dots to hopefully strike terra firma on common ground.
Could you imagine how horrible skirmishes would be if we had to select all 4 battle stations before EVERY space battle? That perfectly encapsulates why I currently VERY MUCH dislike expeditions. I do not know what the solution is as apparently the thing that people like about expeditions is the need to sift through ALL your crew to use them all, but to those of us that dread expeditions, this is why. I fully expect the first time through to take forever as we encounter the missions for the first time and have to plan how best to get through them, but with no way to lock in choices for the future like we can with skirmishes, I know I am having to re-invent the wheel EVERY time I replay, so that is why I am not a fan.
You can feel free to nominate me as the head of the strategic gameplay faction. I've advocated for skirmish event changes that would require you to pick your crew each battle(with improvements in crew selection mechanics). I preferred expedition events where you had to think about your crew and carefully pick them each time.
Playing a game is entertaining when your actions directly impact your final result. Picking the correct crew in an event difficult enough so that crew matters impacts your result. Auto-populating crew and then mindlessly clicking through missions would make expeditions as boring as skirmish/galaxy events and create another event where people are incentivized to write bots.
Trying to cram though 6 Use-It-Or-Lose-it tickets in the first 12 hours of phase two was the most annoying part. After that, 3 a day was not that bad. My last two tickets I played for all stars.
Trying to cram though 6 Use-It-Or-Lose-it tickets in the first 12 hours of phase two was the most annoying part. After that, 3 a day was not that bad. My last two tickets I played for all stars.
I'm still Anti-Expedition.
Fourteen was draining, but I did it.
On the whole "Cancel" thing. I would like to suggest "Complete Ticket" for what the button should say. Clear and concise..........
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
Got to 40 in the Skirmish part so I could completely skip the expedition part. Ended up 111. Did one expedition ticket on my F2P account to get to Elana. Nearly fell asleep and didn't even complete the ticket.
From my perspective the problem with expedition is that it requires us to do missions which are mind numbingly boring. Just as much tapping as any other event but you have to give an attention level it doesn't deserve. At least in Skirmish I am just mindlessly blowing stuff up so I can watch the TV whilst doing it.
...
From my perspective the problem with expedition is that it requires us to do missions which are mind numbingly boring. Just as much tapping as any other event but you have to give an attention level it doesn't deserve. At least in Skirmish I am just mindlessly blowing stuff up so I can watch the TV whilst doing it.
And getting dribbles of honor and Chrons in real time. Seems like they could at least drop some items in Expeditions to help prefarm for galaxies. Not that I am encouraging more expeditions...
From my perspective the problem with expedition is that it requires us to do missions which are mind numbingly boring. Just as much tapping as any other event but you have to give an attention level it doesn't deserve. At least in Skirmish I am just mindlessly blowing stuff up so I can watch the TV whilst doing it.
This was my argument a year ago...some people didn’t understand that a task which requires the player to pay close attention during crew selection (and when sending them to complete nodes) could be a grind.
I read the comments the pro-expedition people wrote, took the advice, and adapted my strategy accordingly. I actually got on a good rythym by the end and was knocking out tickets with all the stars on the high bonus in about 10 minutes. Managed to sneak into 770th place or so and scored a Sisko!
Previously i was way down on the event league table... hadn't cracked top 1500.
Intense skirmishing got me into the top 300 or so and dili buying 3 or 4 tickets in expedition got me in a happy place!
Then I got a second star for Zhian'tara Odo from a reward begold.
Just finished, man do i miss expeditions but it would be very very interesting to see what the ranks were like without the skirmish half!
I spent something like 40K chrons on skirmishes to try to get enough honor for those packs, so by the time the expedition half started i was in top 200 and just cruised...so DB, if you're listening, you would get MUCH more love for expeditions if they randomly dropped credits and honor too!!
Just finished, man do i miss expeditions but it would be very very interesting to see what the ranks were like without the skirmish half!
I spent something like 40K chrons on skirmishes to try to get enough honor for those packs, so by the time the expedition half started i was in top 200 and just cruised...so DB, if you're listening, you would get MUCH more love for expeditions if they randomly dropped credits and honor too!!
Just finished, man do i miss expeditions but it would be very very interesting to see what the ranks were like without the skirmish half!
I spent something like 40K chrons on skirmishes to try to get enough honor for those packs, so by the time the expedition half started i was in top 200 and just cruised...so DB, if you're listening, you would get MUCH more love for expeditions if they randomly dropped credits and honor too!!
Can only speak for myself but I ended phase 1 at 430,000 and phase 2 at 935,000.
Previously i was way down on the event league table... hadn't cracked top 1500.
Intense skirmishing got me into the top 300 or so and dili buying 3 or 4 tickets in expedition got me in a happy place!
Then I got a second star for Zhian'tara Odo from a reward begold.
Previously i was way down on the event league table... hadn't cracked top 1500.
Intense skirmishing got me into the top 300 or so and dili buying 3 or 4 tickets in expedition got me in a happy place!
Then I got a second star for Zhian'tara Odo from a reward begold.
DB, it's obvious that players are still confused by the "Cancel Ticket" button. (Not only here on the forums, but in the LINE chat for our group of fleets, someone always inevitably asks about it whenever an Expedition event runs.)
We've mentioned this here I don't know how many times now over the past couple of years, that something along the lines of "End Ticket" or "Finish Current Ticket" would be much more self-explanatory, and not cause players who are new to Expeditions to think they're doing something wrong — but nothing has been done. It's a simple text fix! Why hasn't anyone there cared enough to make this change (which I assume would be very easy to implement)?
I couldn't agree more. When they communicate to us about other things, DB should mention it so newbies like me don't think "Well, that's it. I've gone as far as I can go so now I have to wait until the event is over" When in actuality I have several more tickets to spend. I posted in chat two days ago that I had gone as far as my crew level would take me and no one mentioned that I could cancel my ticket and play again. I wish I posted here earlier. It's thanks to AviTrek and DavideBooks that I was able to play a few more times until I got too tired and fell asleep. They told me what to do.
FWIW, my lat tickets were 7-8 minutes each. But that was skipping normal completely.
The good thing about expeditions during mega's is the ability to use 100% bonus crew, and not have to change crew between missions.
Still a terrible interface for crew selection. You're designing events wrong when you incentivized people to avoid your UI as much as possible.
I found the expedition part painfully laborious, but I can appreciate there are certain aspects of it that would be attractive to some players. I have to admit, the expedition part was very good to me VP-wise. I ended the skirmish part on 82k VP, and managed to make up about 318k VP with my nine expedition tickets to finish with a total of just over 400k VP. This from someone whose previous best-ever event finish was about 180k VP total.
For context, I have been playing for about 40 days, and am currently level 38. I am not VIP0, but am far from being a whale either, with the only money I've spent on the game so far being one monthly card and the recent DF Paris deal. I also did get a bit of a boost from some GoTA closure refugee freebies.
At this point in time, a main issue with my developing crew roster is a lack of depth. I am typically down to 30% success rate with my fourth shuttle, and my voyage times are usually around the 3h mark. So I thought the expedition phase was going to be particularly bad for me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that with some very careful planning, I was able to squeeze a lot out of each ticket, to the point I was able to 36/36 three times, I think. It required a huge time investment with crew planning because I could not completely autopilot even once I had my best placements sorted out. I was relying on high proficiency rolls to crit, or even not fail, a number of nodes, and contingency reshuffling downstream was required a number of times.
As satisfying as it was to be able to use strategy and planning to "overperform" relative to my experience level and how I've been doing with other event types, this came at a huge time cost, and so "quality of life" interface changes to make the non-planning parts of working through each ticket as smooth and quick as possible would be vital improvements. I would add my voice to the calls to have some way for featured/event crew to always be at the top of the selection list. The "hunt for Demora" got a bit tedious towards the end of each ticket.
You could probably place me in the "slightly favourably inclined to expedition events" camp, but even then, my preference would be that they are rare, and hopefully fall when I am on holidays!
Edited to add: having the expedition as the second half of a part of a mega event was a good thing, and yes, it would be fantastic if they occasionally gave out some other additional rewards like skirmishes do.
Comments
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from itself
I definitely don't remember nominating myself as anything, but I'm always happy to champion Expeditions and moreover, to try to contribute to something constructive in the community.
You're entirely right that getting to use all our crew is a big part of the appeal of Expeditions. You're also right that selecting our crew is one of the most tedious parts. I, and every other pro-Expedition player I've ever interacted with on the forums will gladly agree with you on that, which was all I was trying to get at in my previous reply to you. It's just that for players like me, that doesn't ruin the format and make it unplayable, as it apparently does for a lot of others.
I'm reminded of that great scene in Lawrence of Arabia where he explains the match trick. William Potter emulates what he's seen Lawrence do and extinguishes the match by pinching it in his fingertips. "That damn well hurts!" he shouts.
"Of course it hurts," Lawrence acknowledges.
"What's the trick, then?"
"The trick, William Potter, is not *minding* that it hurts," Lawrence explains.
The trick to enjoying getting to use all your crew is not minding that it's so tedious and frustrating to find them.
You can feel free to nominate me as the head of the strategic gameplay faction. I've advocated for skirmish event changes that would require you to pick your crew each battle(with improvements in crew selection mechanics). I preferred expedition events where you had to think about your crew and carefully pick them each time.
Playing a game is entertaining when your actions directly impact your final result. Picking the correct crew in an event difficult enough so that crew matters impacts your result. Auto-populating crew and then mindlessly clicking through missions would make expeditions as boring as skirmish/galaxy events and create another event where people are incentivized to write bots.
Only after beating everything the first time.
Traitor.
😜
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I'm still Anti-Expedition.
Fourteen was draining, but I did it.
On the whole "Cancel" thing. I would like to suggest "Complete Ticket" for what the button should say. Clear and concise..........
From my perspective the problem with expedition is that it requires us to do missions which are mind numbingly boring. Just as much tapping as any other event but you have to give an attention level it doesn't deserve. At least in Skirmish I am just mindlessly blowing stuff up so I can watch the TV whilst doing it.
Noooooooooo
I couldn’t play my last ticket today due to traveling...
And getting dribbles of honor and Chrons in real time. Seems like they could at least drop some items in Expeditions to help prefarm for galaxies. Not that I am encouraging more expeditions...
This was my argument a year ago...some people didn’t understand that a task which requires the player to pay close attention during crew selection (and when sending them to complete nodes) could be a grind.
Intense skirmishing got me into the top 300 or so and dili buying 3 or 4 tickets in expedition got me in a happy place!
Then I got a second star for Zhian'tara Odo from a reward begold.
Skirmishes...... I love them.
I spent something like 40K chrons on skirmishes to try to get enough honor for those packs, so by the time the expedition half started i was in top 200 and just cruised...so DB, if you're listening, you would get MUCH more love for expeditions if they randomly dropped credits and honor too!!
@Shan @JazzRiker
Can only speak for myself but I ended phase 1 at 430,000 and phase 2 at 935,000.
Look how close we were.
Haha woah, not much of a gap at all. Cool.
I couldn't agree more. When they communicate to us about other things, DB should mention it so newbies like me don't think "Well, that's it. I've gone as far as I can go so now I have to wait until the event is over" When in actuality I have several more tickets to spend. I posted in chat two days ago that I had gone as far as my crew level would take me and no one mentioned that I could cancel my ticket and play again. I wish I posted here earlier. It's thanks to AviTrek and DavideBooks that I was able to play a few more times until I got too tired and fell asleep. They told me what to do.
The good thing about expeditions during mega's is the ability to use 100% bonus crew, and not have to change crew between missions.
Still a terrible interface for crew selection. You're designing events wrong when you incentivized people to avoid your UI as much as possible.
For context, I have been playing for about 40 days, and am currently level 38. I am not VIP0, but am far from being a whale either, with the only money I've spent on the game so far being one monthly card and the recent DF Paris deal. I also did get a bit of a boost from some GoTA closure refugee freebies.
At this point in time, a main issue with my developing crew roster is a lack of depth. I am typically down to 30% success rate with my fourth shuttle, and my voyage times are usually around the 3h mark. So I thought the expedition phase was going to be particularly bad for me. I was pleasantly surprised to find that with some very careful planning, I was able to squeeze a lot out of each ticket, to the point I was able to 36/36 three times, I think. It required a huge time investment with crew planning because I could not completely autopilot even once I had my best placements sorted out. I was relying on high proficiency rolls to crit, or even not fail, a number of nodes, and contingency reshuffling downstream was required a number of times.
As satisfying as it was to be able to use strategy and planning to "overperform" relative to my experience level and how I've been doing with other event types, this came at a huge time cost, and so "quality of life" interface changes to make the non-planning parts of working through each ticket as smooth and quick as possible would be vital improvements. I would add my voice to the calls to have some way for featured/event crew to always be at the top of the selection list. The "hunt for Demora" got a bit tedious towards the end of each ticket.
You could probably place me in the "slightly favourably inclined to expedition events" camp, but even then, my preference would be that they are rare, and hopefully fall when I am on holidays!
Edited to add: having the expedition as the second half of a part of a mega event was a good thing, and yes, it would be fantastic if they occasionally gave out some other additional rewards like skirmishes do.
It's the highest I've ranked in an event. Plus I got 2 achievements for it. So I'm good with this.
I did my last 3 tokens after the reset so I wouldn't have to play today.