The BIG One! (A Collection of Game Improvement Ideas) Please Read :)
Bylo Band
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I've hinted at this project on these forums for over a month now, and today is the day I'm finally unleashing it! I took my time to make sure I did not forget anything I had mentally noted for inclusion, for a few last-minute ideas to make it on the list, and to make sure I hit a base level of quality in communicating my ideas.
Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that strictly speaking this might be a Make It So! sub-forum post, but I chose to post it in The Bridge for several reasons, and I hope it stays here. Primarily, I chose The Bridge because The Bridge is my home, I check in on this sub-forum at all hours of the day most days, and this where I exist on the forums. I also feel that this belongs here because I've tried to take these beyond mere suggestions and expand on them to make them more tangible, more of a community building effort and as such, The Bridge is where we exist as a community, and I very much want to encourage people to take these ideas and run with them, comment on them, engage others with them, etc.
I have observed on these forums in the past a general expression that some have made that whenever players make suggestions for game improvements or share their idea to make changes that some feel like communicating that they feel these suggestions are complaints, and I would like to state at the outset that these are NOT complaints, and if you feel that way I encourage you to keep those feelings to yourself or express this belief to me privately. Speaking on behalf of those select few who have had the courage to share new ideas on the forums, we do so NOT out of negativity or to complain, but because we actually have hope that we can build off the positive momentum created by other game improvements. I cannot speak for everyone but working on these ideas takes a lot of time and mental energy, and that is simply not something a person does when complaining, we are emboldened to take our own free time and expend it in such a way as to try and make a better experience for everyone, and that is what I intend for this thread.
To that end I want to personally express to DB and everyone that works on this game that I have been very pleased with many of the new additions, features, and changes to the game. Your willingness to listen and constantly work to make improvements has been great, and if anything has served as the inspiration for me to work on this project because I have faith that you are always on the lookout for ways to improve the game. The recent additions of The Borg faction, Campaigns, new game chapters, crew selection, etc (I know I'm forgetting several!) have all enhanced the game experience, and I present this in part as a gift for you to try and help you carry the burden of coming up with new ideas.
And finally, I would like to thank several people who have helped me on this project. First and foremost, @Banjo1012 for listening to me and giving me someone to bounce ideas off of, it was very helpful
Next to @Prime LorQa [10F] both for pushing me hard in recent weeks to up my game and for being open to collaboration and idea sharing - I decided to post this a day early to vacate Tuesday for you I would also like to thank @Flemming and @DavideBooks for your contributions ALL the way back in the Replicator thread, and for encouraging me to express my creativity. @Haere Lintesereg also deserves a thank you for encouraging my creative expressions There are too many others to thank as literally dozens of you have been very cool to me over the many months I've been on here, but I'd like to single out @Lady Gaghgagh for being the gold-standard for forum excellence; your example on how to be both professional and respectful on the forums has been my inspiration since my first day to try and match you.
It is my hope that these ideas inspire players both to dream of what might be but also to engage with you on them to see if we cannot make them better. As such I want to personally encourage EVERYONE who reads this to express your thoughts. There is admittedly a LOT here to unpack as quite a few of these idea could EASILY warrant their own threads, but I definitely want to hear from everyone here, so please comment. Also, if somebody wants to take a specific idea and run with it in a new thread that is great!
I have attached a copy of the finished work in Word format to allow people to download it and read it that way, but after I submit this thread here in a moment I will do my best to copy/paste it into the replies to make it more accessible to everyone. Here then is the Table of Contents:
I. Gauntlet
A. Preview Skill Pairing
B. Reward Tokens
C. Dilithium Refreshes
II. Cryostasis Vault
A. Merits
B. Cryo Cruise
III. “And” Shuttles
IV. Offers
V. Committee
VI. Inventory
A. Sorting
B. Purging
VII. Arena
A. Rival Crew
B. Defense
VIII. Packs
A. Consolidation
B. Save Feature
C. Calendar Year Packs
IX. Voyage Traits
A. Dilithium Skip
B. Logical Trait Pairings
X. Voyage Improvements
A. Boosts
B. Drafted Crew
C. Ship Levels
XI. Faction Rep
XII. Faction Shuttles
XIII. Ferengi
XIV. Timelines Originals/Small Factions
XV. Holograms
XVI. Siege (New Event)
XVII. Patrols (New Feature)
XVIII. Replimat (New Feature)
XIX. Fleets
XX. Minuet
XXI. Tuesdays
XXII. Story Replay
XXIII. Crew Sorting
XXIV. DYC
XXV. Faction Events
Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge that strictly speaking this might be a Make It So! sub-forum post, but I chose to post it in The Bridge for several reasons, and I hope it stays here. Primarily, I chose The Bridge because The Bridge is my home, I check in on this sub-forum at all hours of the day most days, and this where I exist on the forums. I also feel that this belongs here because I've tried to take these beyond mere suggestions and expand on them to make them more tangible, more of a community building effort and as such, The Bridge is where we exist as a community, and I very much want to encourage people to take these ideas and run with them, comment on them, engage others with them, etc.
I have observed on these forums in the past a general expression that some have made that whenever players make suggestions for game improvements or share their idea to make changes that some feel like communicating that they feel these suggestions are complaints, and I would like to state at the outset that these are NOT complaints, and if you feel that way I encourage you to keep those feelings to yourself or express this belief to me privately. Speaking on behalf of those select few who have had the courage to share new ideas on the forums, we do so NOT out of negativity or to complain, but because we actually have hope that we can build off the positive momentum created by other game improvements. I cannot speak for everyone but working on these ideas takes a lot of time and mental energy, and that is simply not something a person does when complaining, we are emboldened to take our own free time and expend it in such a way as to try and make a better experience for everyone, and that is what I intend for this thread.
To that end I want to personally express to DB and everyone that works on this game that I have been very pleased with many of the new additions, features, and changes to the game. Your willingness to listen and constantly work to make improvements has been great, and if anything has served as the inspiration for me to work on this project because I have faith that you are always on the lookout for ways to improve the game. The recent additions of The Borg faction, Campaigns, new game chapters, crew selection, etc (I know I'm forgetting several!) have all enhanced the game experience, and I present this in part as a gift for you to try and help you carry the burden of coming up with new ideas.
And finally, I would like to thank several people who have helped me on this project. First and foremost, @Banjo1012 for listening to me and giving me someone to bounce ideas off of, it was very helpful
Next to @Prime LorQa [10F] both for pushing me hard in recent weeks to up my game and for being open to collaboration and idea sharing - I decided to post this a day early to vacate Tuesday for you I would also like to thank @Flemming and @DavideBooks for your contributions ALL the way back in the Replicator thread, and for encouraging me to express my creativity. @Haere Lintesereg also deserves a thank you for encouraging my creative expressions There are too many others to thank as literally dozens of you have been very cool to me over the many months I've been on here, but I'd like to single out @Lady Gaghgagh for being the gold-standard for forum excellence; your example on how to be both professional and respectful on the forums has been my inspiration since my first day to try and match you.It is my hope that these ideas inspire players both to dream of what might be but also to engage with you on them to see if we cannot make them better. As such I want to personally encourage EVERYONE who reads this to express your thoughts. There is admittedly a LOT here to unpack as quite a few of these idea could EASILY warrant their own threads, but I definitely want to hear from everyone here, so please comment. Also, if somebody wants to take a specific idea and run with it in a new thread that is great!
I have attached a copy of the finished work in Word format to allow people to download it and read it that way, but after I submit this thread here in a moment I will do my best to copy/paste it into the replies to make it more accessible to everyone. Here then is the Table of Contents:
I. Gauntlet
A. Preview Skill Pairing
B. Reward Tokens
C. Dilithium Refreshes
II. Cryostasis Vault
A. Merits
B. Cryo Cruise
III. “And” Shuttles
IV. Offers
V. Committee
VI. Inventory
A. Sorting
B. Purging
VII. Arena
A. Rival Crew
B. Defense
VIII. Packs
A. Consolidation
B. Save Feature
C. Calendar Year Packs
IX. Voyage Traits
A. Dilithium Skip
B. Logical Trait Pairings
X. Voyage Improvements
A. Boosts
B. Drafted Crew
C. Ship Levels
XI. Faction Rep
XII. Faction Shuttles
XIII. Ferengi
XIV. Timelines Originals/Small Factions
XV. Holograms
XVI. Siege (New Event)
XVII. Patrols (New Feature)
XVIII. Replimat (New Feature)
XIX. Fleets
XX. Minuet
XXI. Tuesdays
XXII. Story Replay
XXIII. Crew Sorting
XXIV. DYC
XXV. Faction Events
10
Comments
Here are a few ideas I have to improve the Gauntlet experience.
A. A skill pairing preview: The Gauntlet would be greatly improved with the addition of window somewhere on the screen that shows players what the NEXT skill pairing will be. Often players are forced to run a losing match up and knowing what the next skill pair will be will make this decision making process significantly better for players.
B. Reward Kits: Gauntlet rewards would be improved with the ability for players to purchase (with dilithium) kits to avoid “winning” trainers from Gauntlet reward boxes/crates. I understand that trainers have a purpose and varying value to players at different stages of the game and it is not my intention to disrupt the current reward structure with regard to trainers, but speaking as someone who takes The Gauntlet seriously and regularly spends resources in The Gauntlet, it is very upsetting to “win” trainers, as most players after a certain point have far more trainers than they can use.
My solution is the creation and introduction of Gauntlet Reward Kits. They will function similarly to the current Supply Kits in that once activated they will last for a specific amount of time (say 24 hours – this time is negotiable) and will prevent players from “winning” trainers from Gauntlet loot crates. There are a lot of additional details that could be expanded on here to make these new Kits valuable, but the genesis of this is to give players who care about The Gauntlet something they can purchase to avoid the tremendous letdown associated with spending dilithium and merits to “win” something without value.
C. There are currently three ways to use dilithium to refresh a crew member in The Gauntlet: directly after a crew is knocked out in a match up to both recover the fallen crew and maintain the current win streak (50 dilithium), on the crew select screen a previously knocked out crew can be revived to fight again (30 dilithium), and right before a selected match up a crew can be refreshed to bring a fatigued crew member back to full stats (30 dilithium). Based on my own observations it feels like very few players take advantage of these features (at least very few are willing to admit it!) and I have some ideas as to how to change these features to both improve the experience and therefore to increase the dilithium players use on The Gauntlet, which will certainly help the company.
I feel the 50 dilithium option is fine as is, players get a lot of value in both recovering a knocked out crew and keeping their current streak active, but the other two could definitely stand an improvement. Here are my proposals for how to improve the feature of removing fatigue (Refreshing) and reviving knocked out crew (Recovering):
- REFRESHING: When a player spends 30 dilithium to refresh a crew to remove fatigue, it would be great if that crew were given a one-time 5% boost in their stats, making it 5% more likely that their crew will win.
- RECOVERING: When a player spends 30 dilithium to revive a previously knocked out crew, it would be great if that crew were given a one-time 5% increase in their critical percentage, making it 5% more likely that their crew will hit a critical.
I think both of these proposals will increase the value players can achieve when spending dilithium in The Gauntlet, and will almost certainly increase the amount of dilithium players will spend in The Gauntlet.
II. CRYOSTASIS VAULT:
A. It costs 100 merits to thaw a single crew per day from our Cryostasis Vaults, and after giving this serious thought for months, it is my considered opinion that this is too high a price to pay. We are required to work hard, buy packs, etc to fuse up and level crew, and at the end of that process often we are required to freeze them to get our roster spot back, as crew slots are a finite resource. I understand the business model regarding crew slots and that there needs to be a cost associated with moving crew back and forth to the Cryostasis Vault, but considering we are asked to pay with merits we win to do this rather than dilithium we can buy or credits we can farm from away missions and space battles, the 100 merits cost is too high.
I propose that the first merits cost for thawing crew each day be reduced to 25-50 merits, with the second each day being reduced to 100. This retains a reasonable cost associated with the act of extensive utilization of the Cryostasis Vault as a replacement to additional crew slots, but will be less punitive for players who often have to thaw a dozen or more crew they have previously invested in to prepare for an upcoming event.
B. As an alternative to the cryostasis vault and the costs to thaw crew, I propose the creation of a Cryo Cruise. Think of it like an extended pleasure voyage for unneeded crew. Players will buy tickets for each crew on the Cryo Cruise, the cost per crew will be much less than the traditional cost to thaw (say 10-15 merits per crew) and once sent those crew will be on the Cryo Cruise for the duration (I am thinking each one can last a month) and unavailable for use by the player. The advantage to using the Cryo Cruise is that it will accept all crew, not just those who have been immortalized, so the Cryo Cruise will offer an alternative for players who wish to use merits to manage their crew slots.
III. “AND” SHUTTLES:
For the purposes of this report I will not go into detail for the uninitiated regarding what is meant by saying “And Shuttles”, it is my hope that those who are not aware will either be able to logic it out from what is said here or do a bit of digging on the forums to find the answer. If this is not sufficient, I welcome a private message, where I will explain it in detail.
In my time on the forums I've seen several prominent players claim that the “And” bug has been fixed while others claim it has not, but I propose that if it has been “fixed” that it should be re-broken, and made an explicit game feature, as I feel it has potential for a tremendous boost in satisfying game play.
I will use two recent crew with similar skills for this exercise, Chancellor L'Rell and Thrax. Both L'Rell and Thrax are Command/Diplomacy/Security, but they get there in vastly different ways. At 1/5 FE Thrax has 564 Command, 211 Diplomacy, and 744 Security, whereas L'Rell has 536 Command, 915 Diplomacy, and 276 Security (all scores listed are the unmodified base scores, taken from the STT Wiki).
Now, let us assume we have a shuttle seat that asks for the following: Diplomacy AND Security. I propose that the game actually care a great deal between Diplomacy AND Security and Security AND Diplomacy. As it stands currently, assigning either L'Rell or Thrax to this shuttle will make little difference, but thematically it really should. The feature skill should be first in priority. In this example, L'Rell SHOULD be much better in this seat than Thrax, because Diplomacy is her strong suit. If the shuttle was Security AND Diplomacy the reverse would be true, as Thrax is much stronger in security.
I understand that of all my ideas this one is likely to be the most controversial, but I feel strongly that it would improve the game.
IV. OFFERS:
The massive overhaul to the weekly popup offers has been a welcome change, and in the spirit of both helping players by having offers featuring valuable items and helping the company's bottom line through increased sales, I would like to make the following proposal: “Build Your Own Offer” offers.
A “Build Your Own Offer” offer would work like this: there are already established prices/values for various purchasable offer items (for example: premium shuttle packs seem to be valued at $4.99, Chronitons are valued at $9.99, etc) are presented on a checklist, and players will be able to select the items they desire. So instead of a static offer made available for all players, a “Build Your Own Offer” would let players choose any number of purchasable items, each with their own price, to let players buy those things they need and skip those they do not.
For example, a player could select a 10x Premiuim Pack for $9.99, a 10x Premiuim Boosts pack for $4.99, and 1,500,000 credits for $4.99, and not select any other items.
As a way for these “Build Your Own Offer” offers to be even more beneficial to the company, I would additionally propose that after the first item is selected by a player, each additional item selected reduce the total purchase price by 5% per item added. This would incentivize players to buy more, which should increase profits; a win-win for both players and the company.
V. COMMITTEE:
I would like to propose that an informal committee of volunteer players be formed to work closely with DB to help with the fine tuning of new cards/features to hopefully avoid unfortunate situations and the inevitable corrections that follow, like the roll out of Tribunal Pike, missing character traits, etc. Here are some examples of how I see this being valuable:
1. A private message could be sent out to committee members saying, “Greetings Captains, we are considering possibly creating an Assimilated Porthos card in the coming months and we would be interested to hear what you think a rough sketch of the skills should look like and what traits he should have.”
2. A private message could be sent out to committee members saying, “Greetings Captains, we are considering creating a new in-game offer and would like feedback regarding what things players are looking for.”
3 A private message could be sent out to committee members saying, “Greetings Captains, the ranked reward for the upcoming event is (this variant of this character) and we would like suggestions as to what this character should be named and what traits they definitely need to have.”
4. A private message could be sent out to committee members saying, “Greetings Captains, we are considering creating a new fusable card for (character name). Which two variants of (crew #1) and (crew #2) make the most sense to use in this process, and how best do you feel it should be introduced when the time comes?”
The sky is the limit here but I think this move would go a LONG way toward curtailing much of the griping that currently occupies a significant portion of forum real estate as players would have confidence that fellow players we all respect have been consulted before changes are made or new features added. I can personally name several handful of players I respect and would feel confident in having them represent player interests in decisions that impact/effect the game.
VI. INVENTORY:
A. This proposal will be brief as it has been suggested by several other players before, but the current inventory system is inadequate for proper resource management. Players would greatly benefit by being able to sort their inventory. The current sorting system is lacking in both finesse and specificity.
B. This will also be brief as this has also been suggested by several other players before, but assuming the inventory cap is not going to be either eliminated or extended, a more direct system is desperately needed to allow players to eliminate items from their inventory that they do not need/want to create space to allow for incoming items.
A. Short of a significant overhaul of the entire Arena which is not necessary, there is one feature that should be added to The Arena to make it both more enjoyable and much more helpful for newer players, an improvement to the interface that allows players to tap on the portraits of crew on rival ships during the selection process to see a brief description of each crew's ship ability; four tiny portraits displayed next to a ship with no additional information is not helpful to those who are not experienced in The Arena or who are new to the game. Being able to select each crew on a rival ship before combat starts and see their activated ability will help players see combinations and potentially avoid months of painful trial and error by those attempting to improve their standing in The Arena.
B. One new feature that would make The Arena much more dynamic without a major overhaul would be to allow players to pre-program the timing and order of ship and crew abilities while their ships are on defense. This would make battles MUCH more challenging, allow for skilled players to hold onto their rank more easily, and provide more stability to the leaderboard, which in turn would encourage players to care a great deal more about all three Arena divisions.
A. While strictly in the realm of a quality of life improvement, I would like to see individual packs won by players through various ventures like Gauntlet and Daily Rewards be automatically consolidated into 10x packs to save time for players when they go to redeem those packs. I realize that this would create a minor conflict with Rewards packs as certain guarantees are in place when redeeming 10x packs which are not present when redeeming 10 individual packs but that should not prevent this from happening, and for Boost packs there is no concern here at all. Opening 10+ individual packs is quite tedious and not a pleasant experience, especially when trying to redeem something that has been won as a prize, as it kind of feels more like a punishment.
B. The addition of the “Dismiss All” button at the conclusion of opening a 10x Rewards pack has been great, but an additional button or feature is needed to fully realize this quality of life improvement: a “Save” button.
A player opens a 10x Premium Rewards pack and receives 3 bundles of ship schematics, 6 random rare crew they intend to dismiss for Honor, and a super rare crew from a behold they intend to save for their roster; currently the player is required to either manually dismiss all 6 rare crew one at a time before hitting “Continue” to keep the 1 crew they intend to keep or they must select “Dismiss All” and then close out of the Time Portal, open their Crew tab, select the “Reenlistment” button, and manually reenlist the super rare they dismissed during the “Dismal All”. I propose the addition of a “Save” button that pops up when an individual crew is selected from an opened pack that will save any selected crew to the player's crew roster automatically, allowing them to then hit the “Dismiss All” button to dismiss the 6 rare crew safely at once without risking the super rare crew they want to keep.
C. There has (rightly) been a lot of talk on the forums lately about rosters full of FE 1/5 crew and “Decrepit Legendaries” (tip of the cap to Prime Lorca )and I believe I have a solution to this umbrella issue, albeit without the catchy name; Yearly Reward Packs. Here is how it would work: the 10x Premium Rewards Packs would still be available, but in addition there would be 2017, 2018, 2019, etc Rewards Packs which function exactly like standard Premium Rewards packs in every way except all 4* and 5* crew drops and beholds will pull ONLY from crew from that year. For example, if somebody was looking to acquire a copy of Leonardo da Vinci, instead of buying a standard Premium Rewards Pack and needing to get unbelievably lucky, a player could instead buy a 2017 Rewards Pack and at least know that if they hit a 5* behold that their odds of getting Leonardo are much better.
This new feature would also necessitate the creation of a new item: the Premium Rewards Token. Currently in weekend events players are able to win a free 10x Premium Rewards pack at the 350,000 victory tier, but this will need to be replaced with a Premium Rewards Token, which is able to be redeemed for any Yearly Rewards pack or a standard Premium Rewards pack.
I personally believe this is something that needs to happen, the pool of legendary crew is so bloated at this point that it is virtually impossible to chase specific legendary crew from packs, and it is my belief that players would be more willing to buy more packs if they had more hope of getting the specific crew they want/need. This also solves another problem of the tremendous letdown a player feels when they get lucky and hit a begold from a pack only to have all three choices be “decrepit” and not useful.
A. This will be brief as it is very self-explanatory; I have a solution to the frequently discussed topic of voyage ship traits regularly not lining up with the 5* ships players have built, the creation of a button for players to pay dilithium to skip undesirable ship traits during the voyage selection process. This would work like the button to pay dilithium to refresh crew in The Gauntlet and would give players a way to spend dilithium to avoid ship traits they do not like. As an additional way to expand this feature I would also propose a second button where players can spend dilithium to skip the selected feature skills on the voyage select screen. Both of these additions would give players an outlet to spend dilithium on something that will directly enhance their enjoyment of the game, which feels like a win-win for everyone.
B. This next idea is much less simple and would most likely require a reorganization of how the voyage system works, but in my opinion it is very much needed, and would be worth the effort, but the ship trait absolutely needs to start being reflected in both the featured skills and the crew traits for each voyage seat. For example: how much sense does it make for a voyage to ask for a “Warship”, but then feature Science as the primary skill and Medicine as the secondary skill?
For thematic/flavor reasons, the ship trait needs to be reflected in the goal of the voyage. Presumably a voyage that calls specifically for a “Warship” is going to be exploring a region of space where combat is expected, and as such the voyage should also require a boost to Command and Security, so I propose that the feature skills be more thoughtfully tied to the ship trait. So for another example, if the ship bonus is for an “Explorer” ship, it would be appropriate for that voyage to ask for Science and Diplomacy.
Another layer to this issue is when the bonus ship asks for something like “Klingon”, but then has several seats award bonus antimatter for crew with “Romulan” or “Vulcan” traits. Why does this voyage specifically need a Klingon vessel if not to involve Klingons? Also, would not Klingons be preferred to serve on a Klingon vessel? In these types of situations where the ship trait is a specific game faction, I propose that any crew that matches that faction trait also be given a 25 antimatter bonus. For example: if the ship trait is “Klingon” and a diplomacy seat asks for a Hologram for the 25 antimatter bonus, assigning a Klingon to that seat would also earn a 25 antimatter bonus, to reflect that there is a flavor benefit to assigning a Klingon to a Klingon vessel. (Thank you to @Banjo1012 for the assist on this one!)
For a few months at least I've seen in various threads on the forums the idea of adding an extra voyage seat to help players either get longer voyages or else to account for particularly tricky feature skill combinations, and while I find that idea appealing (I've even made my own suggestion toward this end!) I would like to offer up two alternatives to this idea that I think either fit better within the current game or else will add in additional benefits that will add depth and satisfaction to the voyage experience. Or possibly both!
A. Keep voyages as is with 12 seats, but add in a tab where players can use a boost from various Boost packs to enhance the voyage. 0*-5* skill boosts would function exactly the same as they currently do for shuttles (0* adding +50 to skill, 5* adding +700 to skill, etc) and would help players squeeze in additional skill points as needed. However, this is not the only application of this new tab, as other boosts could instead be used to achieve beneficial effects. For example, time reducer boosts could slightly reduce the time between dilemmas, boosts like reward multipliers and reward boosts could slightly improve RNG for item/crew drops on voyages, and it also opens up the possibility of creating new boosts that could automatically refresh exhausted voyages, etc (there is room here for creativity and profitability). I believe that this solution would make voyages a lot more fun for players while still in part addressing the original issue.
B. Keep voyages as is with 12 seats but allow crew acquired/found/rescued on the voyage to count toward the skill totals of the voyage. These crew would be considered Enlisted Crew, and their skill points would be immediately added to the appropriate totals of the voyage. Additionally, this new feature would come with a new starbase room for fleets to invest in, the Quartermaster's Office. At rank 1, the Quartermaster's Office would assign Enlisted Crew skill scores as they are at crew level 1, at rank 2 the Quartermaster's Office would assign Enlisted Crew skill scores as they would be at crew level 10, etc, maxing at rank 4 (crew level 30). For example: a voyage acquires/finds/rescues Smiley O'brien. The player's fleet has the quartermaster's Office at rank 3, so the player's voyage immediately adds Smiley O'brien's level 20 skill scores of 65 Command, 104 Engineering, and 41 directly to the voyage skill values (unmodified base skill score plus average of unmodified proficiency average)! This solution adds in a lot of RNG variation, but will also add in a lot of fun potential, and has the added benefit of giving even the most established fleets something else to invest in to improve and enhance their game experience!
C. This one will be brief. Voyages should be restricted to only 5* ships. A 5* ship at only 1/10 construction provides a superior reserve of antimatter than any other tier of ship that it is pointless to even allow the possibility of 0*- 4* ships to be eligible for use in voyages. It only takes about a week of dabo wheel spins for players to win enough 5* schematics to build a 5* ship, and during that time they won't have crew strong enough to warrant sending a voyage anyway, so if anything this will provide a mild incentive for brand new players to hunt for ship schematics, and seasoned players will absolutely LOVE this change as they will no longer have to sort through dozens and dozens of 0*- 4* ships every time they go to send out a new voyage. This change would be simple and GREATLY improve the game experience, and may even sell a few more Rewards packs in the process, so it feels like another strong win-win! (Worry not, I have plans for those 4* and under ships later!)
XI. FACTION REP:
After reaching maximum reputation with a specific faction, it would be much appreciated if players received some additional benefit apart from getting more transmissions for the price and unlocking the final slots in the faction store.
One solution is to have successful shuttle missions award vouchers with the specific faction, which players can use to purchase items in the faction stores at a discount or possibly even get items so heavily discounted that they become free.
The other solution, and the one I am very much in favor of, is to allow players the ability to tell the various factions what items they want from successful shuttles, after all, we are partners in the venture. These factions make us purchase their transmissions to run shuttle missions for them, and presumably they have a vested interest in us successfully completing the missions for them, AND we are assigning valuable crew to the task that prevent us from using them elsewhere, it stands to reason that we should be able to make requests as to what items we would like in compensation for a job well done. It would not be a 100% guarantee, but players should absolutely be able to expect a higher chance to get the specific items they need from factions they have painstakingly achieved maximum reputation with from successful shuttle missions.
This one is brief and exclusively proposed for flavor/thematic reasons, but it would be very cool if certain factions offered up unique benefits for successful shuttle missions. For example, it would be cool if Ferengi shuttles offered up additional credits to reflect their skill at commerce/trading, Klingon shuttles offered up a minor cache of Honor to reflect how important honor is to their culture, etc. Not all factions would benefit from such a change, but this could perhaps be implemented for all the factions that don't normally get much love from players to offer up an additional motivation for assisting those factions. All things being equal, most players run shuttles for Federation (for ancient films, IDICs, etc), Augments (for science/medical experiments), KCA (for various alcoholic beverages), Section 31 (for Security Codes and holoprograms), Borg (for numerous opportunities at useful items), and possibly Maquis (for Encoded Communiques, Novels, etc) and it would be cool if the other factions were able to offer a little bit more to make running missions for them more valuable, and it could be done in a way consistent to that faction's unique characteristics to add a layer of to the game!
XIII. FERENGI:
I would like to propose that either a lot more Ferengi characters be introduced for both Ferengi factions or that the two Ferengi factions be consolidated into one faction, as presently there just are not enough characters or differences between the two to justify keeping both as is. I realize that combining them would create a bit of a problem with regard to Chapter 4, but I think it would be worth it. My numbers here may be slightly off as I took the notes for this section back in mid-June but by my count there are currently 20 total Ferengi in the game, plus 3 Kazon crew that in the story are affiliated with the Ferengi Traditionalists.
In addition to simply creating additional Ferengi cards like Quark's cousin Gaila or the Ferengi assassin Leck, another possibility to swell the numbers of “Ferengi” is to have them hire various random crew like Kaelon scientist Timicin. This would give current one-ofs (like Timicin) a chance for a home, more easily allow for the future creation of additional one-ofs, and also help increase the numbers of “Ferengi” for both flavor and event purposes.
Consolidating the two Ferengi factions into a single faction OR allowing the Ferengi to conscript/hire one-of random crew (like Timicin) would also provide an opportunity for a very powerful mega event!
XIV. TIMELINES ORIGINALS/SMALL FACTIONS:
In my research into the various factions for this project I found several other factions sorely lacking in support. As of mid-June there were only three Hirogen cards, only four KCA cards, only five Section 31 cards, and only nine Augments cards. That is 21 total cards for four factions, and that total is only three more than the current 18 Timelines Originals in the game. Having so few cards for four of the current 14 factions really diminishes their standing in the game.
I see an opportunity here. Given the limited exposure these factions were given in canon, their numbers could be increased in game through the invention of some new cards under the Timelines Original banner. For example, we only met three Hirogen in enough detail on Voyager to create three cards for the game, but it could be fun to create some new Hirogen, like maybe a Hirogen mechanic, a Hirogen chef, etc. Or maybe a random Section 31 recruiter, gardener, etc.
The Timelines Originals concept is fun and adds a unique element to the Star Trek experience that we players cannot get anywhere else, I want to urge the writers to embrace the idea of creating more original crew cards, and it seems like this is a great way to enhance some current factions that are in desperate need of additional cards. Either this, or canon should be scoured to find additional cards for these factions, because they are in desperate need of more content.
By my mid-June count there were 37 crew cards with the Hologram trait, with potential for a lot more. Since I am essentially advocating for the removal of one Ferengi faction I would like to propose the creation of a new Holograms faction to keep the number of factions the same. If Holograms were made their own faction today they would rank only behind the Bajorans at 46 and the Federation at approximately 1,056,781.2, respectively. There is already a significant Hologram presence in the game, and adding them as an official faction makes a lot of sense.
The creation of a new Holograms faction would also provide an opportunity for a really cool mega event!
XVI. SIEGE (NEW EVENT):
This is the idea that began this entire project as many months back several players were trying to come up with ideas for new event types, and it was at that time that I hatched the basic idea for this new event, The Siege. It was while working to try and put some meat on the bones of this idea that I realized I had a lot more ideas and so instead of posting things one at a time and flooding the forums with many individual threads, I made the decision to collect everything into one place. I should say at the outset that I do not intend The Siege to be a regular event, it is so massive in scope that it would need to be a rare occurrence, as you will soon see!
Here is The Siege in very broad strokes: the home world of one of the in-game factions is being besieged by “some kind of” enemy force (I'm envisioning a massive planet eating machine of the size and scale of the planet eater featured in The Doomsday Machine TOS episode or something similar and with accompanying support vessels). Rather than make a new event based around a single game feature not currently utilized in event formats (like The Gauntlet for example) my vision here is that ALL the game features be crammed into one gigantic, all-encompassing event that will provide relentless entertainment for players! Here now friends, is that vision....
Players will use three ships for this event, one from each Arena division. Unlike skirmish events where players take on ships in a series of one-on-one battles and try to end the fight quickly, ships in a Siege are going for stamina. Admiral Division ships are taking on the massive planet eater directly, trying to weaken it, and points will be awarded based on how long the ship is able to survive before retreating. Captain Division ships in a Siege will be tasked with taking on the swarm of smaller ships to keep them off the 5* ships, and points will be awarded for how long the ship is able to survive before retreating. Commander Division ships will be tasked with entering the battle and recovering escape pods launched by the other ships in the giant battle, and points will be awarded for how many escape pods are recovered, so again an emphasis will be placed on stamina, and escape pods will be awarded via RNGesus' will.
After a player's ship are all spent from participating in The Siege they will need to be repaired, which will happen automatically at a slow pace, but players may run away missions to acquire Siege Materials much like players can currently run space battles during a Skirmish to gather Intel (and just like with Intel, Siege Materials will generate automatically at a slow pace). Players are then able to apply Siege Materials to their ships to help them be repaired more quickly. That being said, players will also need Siege Materials to deliver in their shuttles, as players will also be sending relief to the besieged home world in the form of Siege Materials to the faction under siege to give support to aid the people on the planet's surface, with points being awarded for successful shuttle missions. Voyages run during a Siege will also be on the lookout for huge caches of Siege Materials, which will have a chance to generate randomly during voyages, mirroring the increase drop rates of chronitons.
The Siege uses virtually every other active game feature, and is designed to be completely immersive and simulate a real galactic crisis! One primary motivation for this event was me attempting to come up with a valid use for ships below the 5* level that rarely see use by players, but another motivator was trying to come up with an event structure that closely simulates what it must be like to be in charge of coordinating a full-scale conflict. For this to work properly players would be required to lock in the three ships they intend to use to make sure damaged ships cannot simply be replaced with a fresh ship to get around the need to repair them, and the trait awarding a minor event bonus to crew would need to be one that covers a significant percentage of available crew as players will be using dozens and dozens of crew in a Siege to cover all the battle stations, shuttles, and away missions.
More work would need to be done to hammer out the details of this structure with regarding to points, reward tiers, repair times, etc, but hopefully this is is complete enough for people to understand the concept and be excited for the possibilities it represents!
Since I have advocated requiring that Voyages be exclusive to 5* ships, here then is my proposal for a new game feature for all the 4* and lower ships; Patrols. The basic concept of a Patrol is that it fulfills an administrative function that any successful militaristic organization must do regularly. We are Captains (presumably Star Fleet Captains) and one of the duties of Star Fleet (or any other game faction) is to do regular patrols of their territory to make sure things are OK. We already send out Voyages to make contact with new cultures, discovery new things, etc, and this is in a similar vein, only this one is about maintaining order within the borders.
Every day players will have the ability to send out a single Patrol. Patrols will always last 6 hours and function like shuttles in that crew sent on Patrol will be unavailable for most other game features for the duration. Additionally, Patrols will feature precisely 6 crew, and have a theme/purpose. Since Patrols are routine and administrative in nature, they will be sent each day with a purpose; it could be working on repairing various infrastructure features on colonies (Engineering), vaccinating colonists to “some kind of” galactic disease (Medicine), repelling small border incursions (Security), etc, but each Patrol will have a feature skill related to the specific mandate of the day. Along the way each Patrol will have skill checks similar to Voyages, and Patrols will offer up unique rewards along the way for successes.
Patrols would add a new and hopefully fun/engaging daily feature to the game, which would bring the Daily Missions total up to an even/round 12, and give players a chance to use a lot more of the ships they've acquired and built over the years that otherwise see no use at all. They would also provide a means by which players could acquire unique and valuable resources, and give players a chance to dig a bit deeper into their rosters than they currently do, giving more crew a chance to contribute!
This new feature proposal aims to solve a multitude of smaller issues that have been expressed on the forums over the last many months, consolidate them all into one larger issue, and hopefully resolve them. Those issues are: the need to have an outlet to dump unneeded inventory items, the ability to more easily acquire certain items that are currently hard to acquire,give players a reason to explore the galaxy map, and even potentially solve an issue regarding a certain day of the week (see item XXI).
The inspiration for The Replimat was the Enterprise episode Dead Stop, where Archer and crew are able to trade excess supplies to fix their ship (for the purposes of this section we'll gloss over the bit where the station tried to kidnap Mayweather as payment!). The Replimat could always be in the same location, it could travel around like a space nomadic trader, it could even only appear sporadically, but the general idea is that players can travel to it and trade in unneeded inventory items for the ability to create items off of a menu.
Here is how this would differ from our current Replicator feature:
1. It would not count against a player's daily replication total.
2. It would ONLY accept inventory items like uniforms, ship schematics, components, etc. Basically, only items that currently clog up players' inventories, not replicator rations or starbase components.
3. Rather than replicating a targeted item while building crew gear like the Replicator, players will have a menu to select from, meaning players will be able to use The Replimat to generate things like 0* science experiments, even if no crew has an immediate need for them!
4. Players would only be able to use The Replimat to generate 0*, 1*, and 2* components/items. The idea here is not to replace or circumvent the current Replicator, so players will not be able to use The Replimat to create 5* equipment OR those hard to farm 3* and 4* items.
The basic principle is that this would allow players to turn all of the items in their inventory they no longer need or cannot use into things they can use, like 1* databases, 0* casings, 0* holoprograms, etc; things players need in bulk both in constructing equipment or for Galaxy events.
I would advise placing a cap on how many times The Replimat could be used each day (I would think 50 or so uses) but allow players to spend dilithium to purchases additional uses. The frequency with which The Replimat is made available would obviously influence the number of uses per day, as if it was only made available once a month for example it would need several hundred uses to be of any real value. Just to be clear, The Replimat is not intended as a feature available every day, it would be available for only 24 hours and then disappear for a time.
XIX. FLEETS:
This one is very short and absolutely in the realm of quality of life improvement, but I would like to be able to see our fleet starbase somewhere on the galaxy map (similar to how there are starbases on the Earth map location). Additionally, I would like to be able to see my fleetmates' ships, where ever they are currently parked. These both seem trivial but in my opinion would greatly enhance both the game experience and reinforce fleet friendships, as it would make our presences felt and enable some fun games of hide and seek! (I dedicate this idea to @Flemming, assuming of course that he hasn't blocked me!)
While I intend to lobby for a revision to the Minuet card later, I am using her as a proxy here to communicate a fundamental truth about how players use the various crew cards in STT (this section, while undoubtedly interesting for players to read, is intended for DB employees).
In case the people creating the various cards for the game are not consciously aware of this (I believe on some level they are) we as players look for different aspects of the cards to determine their value and their potential role in our ever-expanding/evolving rosters, and I will do my best to elaborate on this now. We players need crew to send on voyages, crew to send on shuttles, crew to send into The Gauntlet, crew to work battle stations in different tiers of The Arena, Skirmishes, and story space battles, crew to use for events, and crew to complete for Collections. Technically we also need crew to complete story missions, but we can use crew from other groups to achieve success on story missions.
For voyages, players need crew with 3 skills. There is a lot more nuance in selecting voyage crew but with VERY few exceptions the top criteria is that voyage crew need three skills. If a new crew is introduced with only 2 skills, please be advised that this crew will not be useful for voyages.
For shuttles, players tend to favor 2 skill crew, although 3 skill crew also get the job done. What players look for when assigning crew for shuttles first and foremost are skill combinations and high base skills. If a new crew is introduced with low base skill scores but high proficiency scores or only has 2 skills commonly found among many other crew, please be advised that this crew will not be useful for shuttle missions.
For Gauntlet, players look for crew with above average or better proficiency scores, usually across 3 skills, although there are a fair amount of 2 skill crew (both with only 2 actual skills and some with 3 skills but only 2 with good proficiencies: see Mirror Jean-Luc Picard) that make an impact. Skill combinations also play a part, but overwhelmingly the only consideration is high proficiency scores. If a new crew is introduced with low proficiency scores, please be advised that this crew will not be useful for The Gauntlet.
For battle stations, players look partly to passive ship scores provided via Equipment Bonuses (for example: Crit Rating) but more so toward the actual ship ability with an emphasis on fast initialize times and utility (for example: instant damage). Also a minor consideration are the skills of the crew as this determines which stations they are eligible to work on the various ships. If a new crew is introduced with a high initialize time, an under-powered or underwhelming ship ability, or extremely low Equipment Bonus scores, please be advised that this crew will not be useful for ship battle station assignments for ship battles/skirmishes/Arena.
For events, players look for replay value. For example, main cast crew cards are valuable as they are likely to be useful in multiple future events, whereas one-time crew have much less utility for events. Likewise for Collections, players are much more likely to be excited for a new card if immortalizing it will help them make progress toward at least one Collection. If a new crew is introduced and it is not a main cast or part of at least one Collection, chances are the player base will not be excited for the card if it is not useful for other game features like voyages, shuttles, etc.
I assume that to some degree none of this is news to the producers of the game, and yet the existence of Minuet makes me question this assumption. She only has 2 skills and they are uniquely packaged in such a way as to be effectively useless for voyages (only 2 skills), shuttles (only 1 skill with a high base score), Gauntlet (only 2 skills, only 1 good proficiency), battle stations (good initialize score but very underwhelming ability and limited access based on skills), events (not main cast), AND Collections (to my knowledge she does not count toward any Collections).
For these reasons, Minuet is my least favorite card, as she has absolutely no purpose. She is a perfect storm of uselessness. She is now and should forever be the poster child in the DB office to make sure the next Minuet never happens again; please, please, PLEASE be mindful of the various needs (see above) that players have when creating new cards, especially a mega event crew!
As to Minuet specifically, I would like to formally request that she receive an errata to make her at least minimally useful. This can be accomplished by adjusting her accordingly with a mindful eye toward the above material, but here are a few suggestions:
1. Keep her as is but raise both of her base skill scores by 100-200 points, and raising her average proficiency scores by 100-150. This will make her borderline viable on certain voyages, make her less of a pushover in Gauntlet, and allow her to challenge for spots on Command/Diplomacy shuttles where she currently gets absolutely dominated by Professor Sato, among others.
2. Keep her Command and Diplomacy scores as is but award her a third skill. This new third skill could be almost anything (a strong case could be made for Security, Medicine, and Engineering) and the scores need not be high or even moderate, but giving her a third skill with even a 200 base score and average proficiency of 150 would GREATLY increase her usefulness!
Please, have mercy, and show Minuet the respect she deserves.
If it has been said once it has been said a hundred times by dozens of respected players, but the one day in the STT week where there is really nothing much going on is Tuesday (Mondays are usually spent dealing with the aftermath/spoils from the recent event and Wednesdays are spent finalizing crew for Thursday morning). It would be nice if there was something for players to sink their teeth into on Tuesdays. I should state at the outset that I understand that there are undoubtedly players who look forward to having a day off on Tuesday, so any plans involving improvements to Tuesday will need to be of the optional variety, but even given that framework there are quite a few options to improve the Tuesday experience.
The single biggest area for improving Tuesday is to focus on the Cadet Challenges, as the rewards from Tuesday cadets are just not worth it for most players, and even the standard rewards from the individual missions are sorely lagging behind the quality level of every other day of the week. In my opinion, the most needed change to Tuesday is to at the very least address the standard rewards offered by the specific Tuesday Cadet Challenges missions; I would personally like something better than crew trainers but understand if those are deemed crucial to helping new folks.
The other obvious area for improving the Tuesday experience for players is to add in some manner of Tuesday only content. I have seen several other players like Banjo and Elim Lorca (among others) who have shared some pretty exciting ideas for things that could be added to Tuesdays and I encourage them to share those ideas in this thread to make sure they get seen. As for my contributions I would just add that the new features I've shared in here, namely Patrols, Sieges, and the Replimat could easily be adapted to become Tuesday special events/features, and I would not be opposed to any or all of them being considered as such. Of them, I feel The Replimat makes the most sense.
XXII. STORY REPLAY:
It would be great if there was a way for players to go back and revisit the story told in the various chapters. Thematically it could work in a similar way as to how Riker was viewing all the Enterprise encounters on a holodeck, and could be accomplished with a single optional tab inside each chapter. If left unchecked players could continue to play and/or warp missions as normal, but if the tab is checked players would get to revisit the post-mission dialogue. This would add some replay value and allow seasoned players to go back and refresh their memories regarding the stories in the chapters they likely completed many, many months in the past.
With most crew it is not too tough to do a search in our Cryostasis Vaults to find all the variants collected in a single grouping simply by typing their name. For example: one can type in “Ezri” to find all the Ezri Dax variants or type in “Jadzia” to find all the Jadzia Dax variants.
However, for crew like “Q”, Jean-Luc Picard, “The Doctor”, etc, this is much more tedious. For example, there are currently 18 variants of Jean-Luc Picard, but a Cryostasis Vault search for “Picard” will yield only 13 variants of Jean-Luc Picard plus Captain Beverly Picard, but ignores 5 variants including Locutus of Borg, Galen, Robin Hood, and both Dixon Hills. Searching for variants of Voyager's Doctor is nearly as tedious, and searching for “Q” is an exercise in pure frustration.
A better search tool or organizational method in the Cryostasis Vault is desperately needed to make finding crew easier as players begin the process of thawing frozen crew in preparation of weekend events.
These same issues occur when trying to search for crew under the Crew tab and a solution here would not be unwelcome, however managing crew here is generally not as difficult.
XXIV. DYC:
The current implementation of the DYC (Double Your Crew) offer is doubly broken; often players are unable to take advantage of a DYC because they are still on cooldown from a card that triggered a previous DYC that they did not want, and therefore the company loses out on a significant number of potential DYC purchases. This is a very common situation, especially on days where we are given an offer that includes 10-15 10x Premium Packs. As a player you almost dread opening those packs because sooner or later you will hit that first begold and whichever card you select will be locked in as your DYC for the next 24 hours, meaning that a later begold with a better DYC option will not trigger. I will never forget the day I opened a “Prisoner” themed pack and getting a copy of Tosk. I dismissed Tosk almost instantly, but he triggered a DYC and for the next 12 hours I had to swat away that offer every few hours for a card I didn't even have anymore, and then later that day when I won a legendary card from The Gauntlet where I ABSOLUTELY would have purchased the DYC, I was unable as I was still a “Prisoner” of my Tosk triggered DYC. We all have stories like this, and I have two potential solutions.
The first option would be to create a “Not This Card” option when the DYC pops up. Once selected, this would remove the current DYC offer and reset the player's DYC cooldown, allowing for another DYC offer to occur.
Either one of these proposals or a possible third idea needs to be implemented because the current system is utter madness. For example: if your Gauntlet is ending on a day that event ranked rewards are handed out and you are trying to win a Gauntlet legend, currently this situation is a minefield of frustration, and it only gets worse when the player also have packs to open. All it takes is one accidental trigger of the DYC on a random card to completely disrupt days of planning and weeks of careful resource management, and is a source of true frustration for players, and directly leads to fewer DYC offers being purchased. Fixing this would absolutely benefit the players AND the company, there is no reason whatsoever not to fix this.
XXV. FACTION EVENTS:
This one is short and simple: the day before a faction event when the in-game preview for the event and rewards goes live on Wednesday, squadron leaders should at that time be able to share their intended crew with their squad. This would accomplish two very important improvements: first, it would help control for the different time zones around the world by allowing everyone a 24 hour window to share crew to ensure that despite work/sleep schedules, EVERY squad has the opportunity to have a shared crew active from the time the event starts; and second it will let squad members know exactly what crew is being shared and what skills they have, to make planning and decisions regarding crew to thaw for the event easier.
PLAYER COUNCIL
Back when the game launched, there was a players council. It was disbanded around when I started to play and check out the forum. I never got to be on it so I can't attest to how it functioned, but the model exists. Were it resurrected, I think forum members ought to vote on who our representatives on it ought to be.
The key concern is transparency. DB won't want council members blabbing about things in the brainstorming stages, and the crankier forum members I don't think anyone would want on the council are going to continue leveling conspiracy theories if they're out of the loop. I wouldn't envy anyone in that position.
FACTIONS
Picard and Discovery S3 are expected to introduce some significant changes to the geopolitical landscape. That seems a good opportunity to revamp the factions, but requires waiting until those things are allowed to be incorporated. I would welcome some overhauling in the interim, though. Maybe something like the Non-Aligned affiliation that Decipher had in their CCG for all the one-off guest characters who didn't belong to one of the major affiliations.
[Aside: KCA is another in desperate need of expansion, and I think this is an area where potential for Timelines Originals is rich. We did hear a reference to Lursa and B'Etor, but never saw them. What about Dukat, Damar, Madred, Enabran Tain, Opaka, Winn, Gowron, Martok, Kor, Koloth, Kang, Kruge, Gorkon, Chang, or that dude who ran a restaurant and played the Klingon accordion?]
TUESDAY
I still don't get why Tuesday gets such a bad rap, since that's the day the weekly themed packs go live. I am, however, all in favor of revamping the loot tables for "The United Federation" missions.
And of course I support the idea of pre-programmed timings in arena. All other ideas are good too, so I just go on the one I really don’t like - breaking back the AND shuttles. In my logic AND in such cases means equality of parts, so if it’s DIP/SEC - DIP should have the same influence as SEC. On the other hand, a new mode can be made, like “more important skill + less important skill”
On inventory management: make the inventory sortable/searchable or at least make it display the same way as the replicator screen. Navigating from one to the other is too cumbersome right now.
And I didn't see any mention of Dabo, so let me know if I've missed it, but that needs some attention as well. I don't care if I never hit top row again, I'm just tired of getting items for crew that I've already immortalized or crew I never owned at all.
Or crew that I've recently airlocked...
I, for one, am completely for these ideas. I was doing my normal STT routine before the gym this morning, and realized how very unenthused I was. I had no specific crew to level, a voyage out, sent out random shuttles, not interested in a lackluster event (personally uninteresting) and then...blah. There wasn't much to look forward to besides getting Scimitar schematics. This post however, with its ideas, has me hoping DB definitely considers the QoL and new features you have suggested.
There are some very good ideas in there, not just because the concept is good, but also because they leverage existing mechanics in the game. This makes them easier to implement, in contrast to some of the good ideas that are all new mechanics.
I'm only going to pick 3 to talk about, my "top 3" as it were, not because there are only 3 good ideas.
For players with robust crews and hangers, not something they'd spend on, but for 25 dil, being able to skip the MED ENG Holographic Ship voyage for the DIP COM Federation Ship voyage? There'd be some takers. I'd go one step further and use it for beholds as well, but with perhaps a higher cost structure and/or without the preview.
1) Gauntlet -
(a)like the idea of preview next skill would help me decide who to use or whether to go for a merit refresh. But I guess it does depend whether it is completeley RNG after a face-off/merit refresh or whether it is more a predetermined cycle.
(b&c) Perhaps Gauntlet should be part of a longer "competition" after all it is a "marathon" - we have trophies and tables why not a higher arenas with more chance of better rewards? Also in the loot tables why not introduce the chance of winning free revives or merit refreshes.
2 a&b) I'm not to fussed with the merit costing I like the careful planning it requires - obviously wouldn't complain if it was cheaper however. Cryo cruise is interesting I think what needs to be established is what happens when it returns can it be sent out again or pick new crew to go out does the cost remain the same, can it be recalled anytime or will there be a cooldown. Also given the nature of slots and inconsistency of immortalising numbers can the game engine even handle another method of storing crew (last question obviously a bit rhetorical).
3) AND shuttles - personally I've given up on this - but what I would prefer is some sort of assurance that faction events and the total number of mission successes across the board are functioning within normal parameters, and lets just read between the lines and take it as golden. No compensation necessary this ain't no PPI claim it affected everyone.
<more to follow as i go/have time>
I also envision this as a way to get more HOLOEMITTERS!!! Sorry to yell that, but the scarcity of these is one of the most frustrating things in the game for me. Anything to make them more available for daily players would be most welcome.
I think you just gave DB a whole month's worth of meeting notes to work on
I remember the Player Council as well @Travis S McClain – and I believe the disbandment was due both to the redundancy and some administrative changes on DB's side. It would be unlikely to ever get that back, as it would reveal proprietary information from DB to select few who sit on the Council, and if those few were put under NDA, it means the player base wouldn't get the info anyway.
I believe that all falls under Shan's job description (as well as at least one other) to peruse our concerns and ideas and bring them to DB's attention. I believe they are doing a great job on this, if understaffed.
There are yet more great ideas beyond what @ByloBand has presented and what DB is working on behind the scenes (I am guessing), so I look forward to all this game brings in the future, near and far.
Becca said it was due to her having too many other things to deal with at the time. In any case, I think we've gotten by just fine without it, and concur that Shan has done a great job as our liaison.
Back in the day, every day was the same. Now we have events, voyages, gauntlet, and all sorts of other things to keep you occupied. If we're going to focus on areas of the game to improve and advance, there are several good ideas here...but honestly the whole "we need more content on Tuesdays" motif has got to go. If you accomplish everything you want to on Tuesday, read a book. I have plenty of suggestions if you need one!
Plus, do you really want DB messing with more code for Tuesday-only events right before the weekly event? It's like I tell my people at work about not deploying minor things directly ahead of more important things.
Tour of duty: January 2016 to present.
Shut up Wesley.