Normally the rank drop in the top 700-500 is pretty small for pure faction events but it was sinficant this time. Must be more competition.
There was a lot of competition between 2,000 and 4,000 that's for sure. No one could afford to miss a set of shuttles. But I'm only running 3 though they were high percentage (never below 83%). I was pretty upset to lose those 3 overnighters I was making steady gains throughout the event apart from that! Maybe all my bad luck happened in one hit.
This really was a strange Event for sure!
These are my results for the last Shuttle Events. (Name / Points / Place)
A Logical Reaction // 329160//1085
Homestead //294260 //323
They came from the Holodeck #2// 259430 // 703
When Giants Walk // 343860 // 434
The Trouble with Klingons // 184990 // 1350
The Triskelion Tournament // 256610 // 629
Second Battle of NY // 300621 // 182
Experimental Design // 178294 // 1053
As you can see, I usually score top 1000. With >300.000 Points, normally, you´d be able to be in the top 300. So from August (Homestead) to now, in just 2 months time, difficulty has increased VERY much and I dont understand why. Yes, probably many People had the same Event Crew as I did (normally, I expect the usual Player to have less - I have 77 lvl 100 4/4 purples and 33 different lvl 100 legendaries with different star Ratings. So thats one Thing. Still, it is strange that I score more than in any other shuttle Event before and fall down 700 places in rank.
When this game first came out you would get a legendary character for being top 1,000. Now almost two years later and tens of thousands of more people have joined, and yet you still need to be top 1,000 to get the legendary? That makes no sense. We shouldn't be punished because you got more people to play the game.
Let's do some quick (or not so quick) shuttle math here.
Assuming someone were to use the shuttle kick start to get to 4k right away, and be able to do 7 full rounds per day, over the full event that is 112 (7*4*4) shuttles.
Now let's consider a normal three faction event that is not at the end of a mega event. Consider a player who normally has 1-2 bonus crew per shuttle and can boost those shuttles to about 80% with a skill boost. That player probably isn't going to use many time boosts since the unboosted shuttle value is likely 65-70% on average. Their expected VP is going to be about .8*112*4000+.2*112*800 or 376,320.
Now let's consider that same player after a month long mega event building up bonus crew. They likely will have 2-3 bonus crew per shuttle and be able to get to about 90% boosted, 80% unboosted on shuttles. Their expected VP is going to be .9*112*4000+.1*112*800 or 412,160 with no time boosts. Now if that same player decides to time boost 1 shuttle the whole way with 3 star boosts since now they can do so and still get plenty of successes. Expected VP is now .9*84*4000 +.1*84*800 +.8*56*4000 +.2*56*800 or 497,820.
So in summary you have the following 3 scenarios for a similar player
Normal event 376k VP
Mega event finale no time boosts 412k VP
Mega event finale one shuttle time boosted 498k VP
Does that explain why scoring was so high?
As to the scores being so tightly packed together, its harder to quantify but you have a lot more players in an event like this with extra bonus crew being able to do the full shuttle kick start and stay at 4k the whole time since they have more bonus crew. This causes the scores to be a lot more tightly packed.
Let's do some quick (or not so quick) shuttle math here.
Assuming someone were to use the shuttle kick start to get to 4k right away, and be able to do 7 full rounds per day, over the full event that is 112 (7*4*4) shuttles.
Now let's consider a normal three faction event that is not at the end of a mega event. Consider a player who normally has 1-2 bonus crew per shuttle and can boost those shuttles to about 80% with a skill boost. That player probably isn't going to use many time boosts since the unboosted shuttle value is likely 65-70% on average. Their expected VP is going to be about .8*112*4000+.2*112*800 or 376,320.
Now let's consider that same player after a month long mega event building up bonus crew. They likely will have 2-3 bonus crew per shuttle and be able to get to about 90% boosted, 80% unboosted on shuttles. Their expected VP is going to be .9*112*4000+.1*112*800 or 412,160 with no time boosts. Now if that same player decides to time boost 1 shuttle the whole way with 3 star boosts since now they can do so and still get plenty of successes. Expected VP is now .9*84*4000 +.1*84*800 +.8*56*4000 +.2*56*800 or 497,820.
So in summary you have the following 3 scenarios for a similar player
Normal event 376k VP
Mega event finale no time boosts 412k VP
Mega event finale one shuttle time boosted 498k VP
Does that explain why scoring was so high?
As to the scores being so tightly packed together, its harder to quantify but you have a lot more players in an event like this with extra bonus crew being able to do the full shuttle kick start and stay at 4k the whole time since they have more bonus crew. This causes the scores to be a lot more tightly packed.
One element that seems to be getting overlooked: the fact that a large portion of the playerbase effectively got handed an extra shuttle pretty recently. That's made a huge difference to event rankings, because people who had paid the original prices to get up to 4 shuttles have lost that advantage they've been used to. Which means to maintain the same relative advantage, they'd now have to engage in additional spending, either on extra cadet tickets or by buying boost packs outright or paying for speedups.
I don't mind when prices get lowered for things like shuttles or crew slots, but I'm certainly not going to give DB even more money to reward them for handing out things customers previously paid a premium for.
One element that seems to be getting overlooked: the fact that a large portion of the playerbase effectively got handed an extra shuttle pretty recently. That's made a huge difference to event rankings, because people who had paid the original prices to get up to 4 shuttles have lost that advantage they've been used to. Which means to maintain the same relative advantage, they'd now have to engage in additional spending, either on extra cadet tickets or by buying boost packs outright or paying for speedups.
I don't mind when prices get lowered for things like shuttles or crew slots, but I'm certainly not going to give DB even more money to reward them for handing out things customers previously paid a premium for.
I think the cutting of the advanced notice of bonus characters is meant to stir that spending as normally the veterans were able to level/unvault enough bonus crew to bring to bear. This would not have affected THIS event, but the upcoming one is another story.
I think the cutting of the advanced notice of bonus characters is meant to stir that spending as normally the veterans were able to level/unvault enough bonus crew to bring to bear. This would not have affected THIS event, but the upcoming one is another story.
I don't think this will be a big earner, I mean there is a limit to how many crew you can fit on a shuttle anyway, Will be interesting to see how this one goes, I'm not expecting my personal score to be anywhere near the 1K mark this time, for two reasons. 1) I don't have as much tanked event crew and 2) I have no enthusiasm for this events crew or characters.
I'd be happy just making the top threshold reward; anything else is just airlock fodder.
I think the cutting of the advanced notice of bonus characters is meant to stir that spending as normally the veterans were able to level/unvault enough bonus crew to bring to bear. This would not have affected THIS event, but the upcoming one is another story.
I don't think this will be a big earner, I mean there is a limit to how many crew you can fit on a shuttle anyway, Will be interesting to see how this one goes, I'm not expecting my personal score to be anywhere near the 1K mark this time, for two reasons. 1) I don't have as much tanked event crew and 2) I have no enthusiasm for this events crew or characters.
I'd be happy just making the top threshold reward; anything else is just airlock fodder.
Jim
True, the net is very wide this time, though so many folks have much more in cryo. I should have stated all faction events going forward. esp if it is just variants of a single character.
I've already got Soong, so I'm going in trying to get another star. Why? Cause I have him. If things are going south, I'll bail after threshold -- not going to spend dil or money on boosts, etc.
Moving the threshold to the new character and the existing to ranked, however, I think is going to spur spending on those characters people like. Current one is more niche appeal, but I know several in my fleet bought packs to get that extra star for him.
Whether they work or not, these do appear to really be fiscally motivated changes. (In some cases return to previous behavior)
I'm sure I gave a bunch of you regular top 1000 players a run for your money. I had bought packs this time because I wanted a FF Sarek but instead I got Mudd; I wanted to break into the top 1000 to get a second star on Mudd. I guess I displaced at least 1 regular from the top 1000 and also made the competition more fierce.
I got my second star on Mudd but never got my FF Sarek.. I just got a ton of Klingon Jadzias who are now floating in the cold abyss
So long as you have 4 shuttles (which only costs $4 for a monthly card when combined with dilithium from achievements) a player can rank if they had an adequate stockpile of 4★ and 5★ shuttle boosts, along with a large number of 3★ 1.5 hour shuttle boosts.
I finished rank 854 on my secondary VIP 1 account thanks to having a few discovery crew and lots of shuttle boosts. The account is crap too, with only 32 immortalized crew. And no I wasn't squad leader.
Wow really db? It won't let me post images except as attachments.
So long as you have 4 shuttles (which only costs $4 for a monthly card when combined with dilithium from achievements) a player can rank if they had an adequate stockpile of 4★ and 5★ shuttle boosts, along with a large number of 3★ 1.5 hour shuttle boosts.
I finished rank 854 on my secondary VIP 1 account thanks to having a few discovery crew and lots of shuttle boosts. The account is crap too, with only 32 immortalized crew. And no I wasn't squad leader.
Wow really db? It won't let me post images except as attachments.
Wow what insanity would drive you to start a second account?
I have a secondary account. It was actually my first. I use it to test out voyages etc. But yeah. One account is enough now there are plenty of chronos. Sometimes I use it if I'm really bored and have nothing to do on this one. It has thousands of unused chronitons etc but otherwise it's a bit rubbish
I have fewer points than I did last week and I'm ranked just inside the top 200. Perhaps all of this talk about expanding rewards was a little premature, based on one event with extraordinary participation.
Wow what insanity would drive you to start a second account?
I started the account mostly to just test a few things out, but the lack of warp drove me to not play it much (I don't have Borg Queen or Kortar on the account). Ended up buying 1 monthly card to get warp, decided I'd get 4 copies of T'Kuvma, and got carried away. It's not like STT is a very demanding game, I just hit the warp button a few dozen times per day and send out shuttles. I would be checking STT anyways for the timers I set for my main STT account.
Comments
This is the expected rank drop every 3 hours or so, give or take depending on time.
There was a lot of competition between 2,000 and 4,000 that's for sure. No one could afford to miss a set of shuttles. But I'm only running 3 though they were high percentage (never below 83%). I was pretty upset to lose those 3 overnighters I was making steady gains throughout the event apart from that! Maybe all my bad luck happened in one hit.
These are my results for the last Shuttle Events. (Name / Points / Place)
A Logical Reaction // 329160//1085
Homestead //294260 //323
They came from the Holodeck #2// 259430 // 703
When Giants Walk // 343860 // 434
The Trouble with Klingons // 184990 // 1350
The Triskelion Tournament // 256610 // 629
Second Battle of NY // 300621 // 182
Experimental Design // 178294 // 1053
As you can see, I usually score top 1000. With >300.000 Points, normally, you´d be able to be in the top 300. So from August (Homestead) to now, in just 2 months time, difficulty has increased VERY much and I dont understand why. Yes, probably many People had the same Event Crew as I did (normally, I expect the usual Player to have less - I have 77 lvl 100 4/4 purples and 33 different lvl 100 legendaries with different star Ratings. So thats one Thing. Still, it is strange that I score more than in any other shuttle Event before and fall down 700 places in rank.
Assuming someone were to use the shuttle kick start to get to 4k right away, and be able to do 7 full rounds per day, over the full event that is 112 (7*4*4) shuttles.
Now let's consider a normal three faction event that is not at the end of a mega event. Consider a player who normally has 1-2 bonus crew per shuttle and can boost those shuttles to about 80% with a skill boost. That player probably isn't going to use many time boosts since the unboosted shuttle value is likely 65-70% on average. Their expected VP is going to be about .8*112*4000+.2*112*800 or 376,320.
Now let's consider that same player after a month long mega event building up bonus crew. They likely will have 2-3 bonus crew per shuttle and be able to get to about 90% boosted, 80% unboosted on shuttles. Their expected VP is going to be .9*112*4000+.1*112*800 or 412,160 with no time boosts. Now if that same player decides to time boost 1 shuttle the whole way with 3 star boosts since now they can do so and still get plenty of successes. Expected VP is now .9*84*4000 +.1*84*800 +.8*56*4000 +.2*56*800 or 497,820.
So in summary you have the following 3 scenarios for a similar player
Normal event 376k VP
Mega event finale no time boosts 412k VP
Mega event finale one shuttle time boosted 498k VP
Does that explain why scoring was so high?
As to the scores being so tightly packed together, its harder to quantify but you have a lot more players in an event like this with extra bonus crew being able to do the full shuttle kick start and stay at 4k the whole time since they have more bonus crew. This causes the scores to be a lot more tightly packed.
Excellent reasoning. Thank you.
I don't mind when prices get lowered for things like shuttles or crew slots, but I'm certainly not going to give DB even more money to reward them for handing out things customers previously paid a premium for.
I think the cutting of the advanced notice of bonus characters is meant to stir that spending as normally the veterans were able to level/unvault enough bonus crew to bring to bear. This would not have affected THIS event, but the upcoming one is another story.
I'd be happy just making the top threshold reward; anything else is just airlock fodder.
Jim
True, the net is very wide this time, though so many folks have much more in cryo. I should have stated all faction events going forward. esp if it is just variants of a single character.
I've already got Soong, so I'm going in trying to get another star. Why? Cause I have him. If things are going south, I'll bail after threshold -- not going to spend dil or money on boosts, etc.
Moving the threshold to the new character and the existing to ranked, however, I think is going to spur spending on those characters people like. Current one is more niche appeal, but I know several in my fleet bought packs to get that extra star for him.
Whether they work or not, these do appear to really be fiscally motivated changes. (In some cases return to previous behavior)
I got my second star on Mudd but never got my FF Sarek.. I just got a ton of Klingon Jadzias who are now floating in the cold abyss
I finished rank 854 on my secondary VIP 1 account thanks to having a few discovery crew and lots of shuttle boosts. The account is crap too, with only 32 immortalized crew. And no I wasn't squad leader.
Wow really db? It won't let me post images except as attachments.
Wow what insanity would drive you to start a second account?