Returning Player Thoughts on First Event
srhrobhudsah
✭✭
in The Bridge
Hey everyone,
Been away for a few months. This was my first event back and I must say I am a little concerned. As a player that always finishes top 1k in factions, this one messed with me a bit. I must admit that the new shuttle tokens have changed the outcomes of faction events drastically. I spent 8 of those tokens over the weekend and had very few fails throughout the event, and still finished in the 1100 rank area. Does anyone else feel like these extra shuttles have greatly affected these events? Looking over this one, I feel like I probably should just drop the game and not come back, especially if we are at a point now where it is required to buy shuttles to rank..
Been away for a few months. This was my first event back and I must say I am a little concerned. As a player that always finishes top 1k in factions, this one messed with me a bit. I must admit that the new shuttle tokens have changed the outcomes of faction events drastically. I spent 8 of those tokens over the weekend and had very few fails throughout the event, and still finished in the 1100 rank area. Does anyone else feel like these extra shuttles have greatly affected these events? Looking over this one, I feel like I probably should just drop the game and not come back, especially if we are at a point now where it is required to buy shuttles to rank..
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I bought zero shuttle requisitions and used just the 2 that came in the threshold rewards and placed 600th (ish)
Amen to that. There is a reason to push ahead, which causes those who were already trying to rank to have to push farther to maintain said rank. Boosts enable this much, much more than requisition tokens, which are useless unless you have good crew to staff them with. I imagine the top 25 has to worry about the effect of tokens much more than the rest of us.
If you mean the very top, it's always been p2w. Top 1K certainly isn't.
The extended rewards also play a part as there are less threshold & out players. Not a bad thing imo...
^ This.
Also, it was “PTW” as soon as the ranked reward crew were made available for $50 purchase. Ironically, it would cost much less to acquire that crew by buying boosts or Chrons or whatnot, but anything short of Free and Effortless will get some to complain.
IMO, since DB introduced the boost packs, the buyers gain an advantage. I'm not saying an unfair advantage. I finished at 1477 this time & finally hit threshold first time since new reward structure because I had more time this weekend to run shuttles consistently. With a better crew & more shuttle successes, maybe I could've made top 1k, barely.
But I wasn't referring to finishing at ~996 when I said p2w. Do you think one could finish in top 10 without $?
Choose your battles wisely. Stock up on shuttle boosts and just enjoy the game for what it is. The time outlay for finishing top 1000 has really become not worth it for the vast majority of crew I just do my bit to support the SL.
Jim
I've slowly built up my crew, never airlocking, just freezing if I needed space. I don't spend money on the game, I try to use my resources as efficiently as possible without waste etc. etc.
On top of that I let life dictate how much time I can put into the game ... if I don't send out a next batch of shuttles every 3 hours, oh well ... the thing was that even with this attitude I could make top 1000 ... and I could do it on a regular basis, where I didn't have to "save" any resources for just the "right" event.
That's all gone, there is no way I can make top 1000 without dedicating more time, effort and resources into the game ... for the time being, I've put aside any inkling of making top 1000 ... to me, Faction events have become Galaxy events, but with shuttle RNG thrown in ... grind, grind, grind ... and without the benefits of a Galaxy (Community rewards and being able to FF a 4*!!! - determining when you dedicate your time to participate etc. etc.).
Faction events have gone from being my favourite to my most disliked event-type. The only good thing is the extended Threshold rewards, that I just make each time, especially the Honor and Voyage revival token are key ... the 10x pull ends in deception most of the time.
For reference:
Recent Faction event ranks: this past weekend was 1692 ... the previous one 2101 ... 2453 (didn't obtain all thresholds due to really, really poor RNG) ... 2210 the first with the new reward structure.
The problem with gauging off of any one or two faction events is that a lot of factors go into the VP mark for the 1000 cutoff (which then trickles down into the next couple of thousand). These include attractiveness of reward crew, availability of bonus crew, and availability of sweeteners like boosts and rentals, and then the ability to get value out of them due to crew strength.
Note : I am not disputing the OP's perception that factions have gotten harder, I expect they do now require more effort, only noting that multiple factors have changed over time and from event to event. E.g., time doublers are now twice as available due to Thursday ad-doublers, there are a lot more crew in play than when you probably stopped playing, and there are new enhancement options.
I only have a smattering of data for Factions going back to last September, but here are 4. The computed quantity is (Rank 1000 VP Cutoff) / (# of 4/5 Event Bonus Crew Possible in the Event):
Sep 2018 - Tucker On The Ropes Reward - 29,358 VP per Bonus Crew
Nov 2018 - Captain Spock Reward - 22,273 VP per Bonus Crew
Nov 2018 Rerun - Mountaineer Spock Reward - 23,000 VP per Bonus Crew
Dec 2018 - Warship EMA Reward - 9,330 VP per Bonus Crew
So, take the December "Joy to the World" event. It had the highest actual VP cutoff, but also had 56 bonus crew to help get there (Pilots, Sisko, etc). Was this event harder or easier? Was it more or less accessible to a broad player base? Was it harder or easier than pre-rental/pre-ad-doubler Ready to Rumble/Tucker on the Ropes which had only 12 bonus crew, the lowest of the last 6 months of 2018? I skipped RtR because "yuck" on Tucker on the Ropes, but I expect it was probably a pretty painful event, if I gauge by how hard it was to get good success percentages in Children of Apollo, which had 20. RtR had the lowest VP cutoff though. Does that make it harder or easier? Really hard to say.
# of bonus crew make a huge difference, since the VP impact difference between a 60-70% success rate and an 85+% success rate is equivalent to more time doublers than can be freely accrued over a couple of Thursdays. And in low bonus crew events, by the time many players get to the 5th shuttle, they're out of good crew. It is highly likely that the players able to get good value out of 5th shuttles were already placing comfortably in the top 100-300, they're just using them to add margin or stop using doublers sooner - i.e., they may not be displacing that many new people.
My only conclusion is "it's really hard to say why it appears to take more effort now than when the OP stopped playing" ...
Possible: Yes
Time to stock up on required resources: ...years...
So why not use some of the free extra shuttle tokens to send an extra 2+ overnight (8 hour) shuttles, and more speed boosts than only the quickstart, and get some sleep? It sounds like you're intentionally forcing yourself to require to get up at night instead of using all the free extra shuttles and a few more speed boosts than just the quick start?
Yeah. I have mostly used my Shuttle Tokens for things like do all seven Daily Shuttle Missions in one shot. I have double digits of the free ones sitting around, because I have done that twice. With the Event Crew I usually have on hand, I am lucky to have 3/4 Success during an Event.
Rank 1000 VP cutoff was 490,000 VP.
After kickstart, let's say there are 31 3-hour cycles available to run shuttles.
Let's assume you had good crew and got a 90% success rate. (I averaged 89%). I'll explore other alternatives below.
With no doublers (and highly disturbed sleep), 31 * 4 * (4,000 * 0.9) = 446,400 VP right out of the gate, and not including VP earned during kickstart. That left a 43,600 VP gap, a small part of which would be earned during the kickstart. That's 11 doublers, which can easily be earned without buying a refresh in 1-2 Thursdays.
At 80% success rate, it would have been 396,800 VP / 93,200 VP gap. 29 doublers. 1-3 weeks, not years.
At 70% success rate, it would have been 347,200 VP / 142,800 VP gap. 51 doublers. Probably involves skipping an all Faction event to accrue doublers, or putting extra effort into Galaxy phase of a hybrid and not time-boosting during Faction phase. Still not years.
All of that assumes zero expenditure, but a lot of sweat equity. Purchasing cadet tickets on Thursday, or boost packs during the event saves you sweat equity, but it doesn't put you in a class of play unreachable by others.
The years it takes to stock up on required resources is driven by the time needed to build crew (resources) to get the higher success rates, not the time required to stockpile doubler boosts on Thursdays. As you can see above, a +20% success rate is worth about +100K VP during the event.
For rentals, the few times I've tried them, I see at least a -15% hit on success rate because my best crew are out of service. At 90%/75% base/rental success, a rental every cycle could add +93K VP to the total, but these players don't need them to rank. If they rent, all they're doing is buying back some 1.5 hour check-in hassle to reach the same mark they could already have reached. At 80%/65% base/rental success it would be +80K VP from rentals (though I still think you can easily clear 1000 with an 80% base), and at 70%/55% it would be +68K. At 70% base, that 68K is equivalent to about 24 additional time doublers, again, harvestable in weeks not months or years.
All of those requirements of course go up if you choose not to spend 96 hours organizing your life around a 1.5 / 3-hour cycle, which is a perfectly reasonable position to hold about how hard events should be. But I don't see a barrier to entry that can't be overcome by endurance, or by skipping a Faction or Faction phase or two between tries to save doublers.
Edited/appended: For reference, below are my assignments during the last event. I came in ~ rank 200, way overshooting the mark, but I'm being conservative until new faction event dynamics settle down and I really wanted to not do 90-minute cycles on the weekend. Stopped doubling on Friday and only ran 1 or 2 rentals because I had tickets sitting around.
What helped most here were:
(1) My squad leader's shared Hawk (as well as my won Hawk from last week). Yes, I DYC'd on Hawk 3/5 and got lucky to pull one more from the one crew pack I bought for a 4th B-4, but that mission would have run just fine at >90% with him at only 1/5.
(2) The full house of SRs. These are what take months or years to accumulate. Without them, the seats would have been filled with non-bonused crew which is what really drags down success %. In most factions that have only 20-odd bonus crew, bonused SRs are make/break, unless you have a massive stable of legendaries. But if you have the SRs, only a modest number of legendaries are needed to rank 1000.
(3) The fistful of Data's were an enhancement; if you want to do well in Factions, pursue high-event-play cards when you can.
(4) Mad de Neuf was nice but not needed - there were slightly lower % missions I could have run without her.
Not bragging, just illustrating. I don't think my assigned roster is unobtanium and I didn't use many doublers, and I only used a couple of rentals for convenience because I happened to have them.
The way I see it, top 1000 is P2W unless your willing to lose an entire weekend grinding away with disturbed sleep and not been very sociable every 1.5 hours, which is just ridiculous for a game. Personally I would like to see the ability to kickstart stopped (even though I used it myself in the past), change it so you can only open max 4 missions at a time. Just to give everyone a more even chance
As a VIP0, I just accept that faction is where I really can't compete, and only really push in galaxy and skirmish events, especially with community awards. Still, never got top 1k, and only hit the 4x4* rank a couple of times... You get what you pay for so I'm still okay with it!
Now I have to use some time boosts to place in top 1000k. I am not talking about the quick start time boosts or those used until I reach 4000VP for first time.
Two things happened I believe at same time. They also increased the threshold rewards. So it is still possible that it was the effect of threshold rewards.