So how about a new Voyage based event type?
smintili
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I feel it’s time to add a new event type, especially since expedition events are now obviously dead. To fill that void and to give us something new to do, I suggest a Voyage based event.
That would work as follows:
What do you think? Any suggestions for improvements to my concept? Would you even want that?
I would add as a suggestion an overhaul to the voyage menu, especially the ship selection. Having to flip through the entire collection every time is annoying, so another solution like maybe a drop-down menu or something like that would be a huge improvement.
That would work as follows:
- As we are used to from skirmish events, there’d be a set of event characters and an event ship (or multiple thereof) which would provide bonuses.
- When starting a voyage during such an event you could choose between regular and event voyages, as during shuttle events.
- The voyages would be themed around a certain story, as we know from shuttle events, with special text bits for dilemmas (the rest of the voyage could of course use the normal text bits).
- The dilemmas on an event voyage would be more frequent than on a regular voyage, I suggest a dilemma interval of 30 minutes, or maybe an hour.
- Every event dilemma would provide event points as well as minor drops like credits, chronitons, merits and honor. In addition, the longer the voyage lasts, the bigger the rewards get. For example: the 30-minute dilemma drops 500 event points whereas a 4-hour dilemma drops 2,250, which would be a 250 point increase for every half hour. So the longer you can sustain a voyage, the higher your reward. These values would increase with the fitting event character, and the correct event ship would provide a bonus to antimatter.
What do you think? Any suggestions for improvements to my concept? Would you even want that?
I would add as a suggestion an overhaul to the voyage menu, especially the ship selection. Having to flip through the entire collection every time is annoying, so another solution like maybe a drop-down menu or something like that would be a huge improvement.
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Comments
Brilliant!!
My 2¢ on your idea...
It seems very pay2win. Keeping a voyage alive would be necessary to win, and that would take dilithium.
Dilemmas every 30 minutes would mean that the spender who sleeps the least will win. Also, I don't want to check my phone every 30 minutes. I'd rather avoid every hour if possible.
Would there be any benefit to choosing a regular voyage? If not, then why have the option?
I like the story idea, the event crew and ship ideas, and especially the squad shared ship that was added.
In my thread, someone asked about multiple event voyages. Would those fit your vision for a voyage event or would it be a single voyage?
Part of my idea was to have successful skill checks provide VP. Would you consider this idea?
The 30 minute idea came about because if it were just a regular voyage, the VP drops would have to be fairly high to justify such a drawn out event. Also a possibility though, as with Faction Events the same situation exists. I guess a single voyage would be fine. Multiple voyages would just turn it into a glorified Faction Event, plus when I think of players who just started the game or haven't progressed to higher levels, they tend to have a small crew pool and ships to choose from, so multiple voyages would quickly lead to frustration for players who have only grey or green ships, or maybe very lowlevel blue/purple/gold ones, let alone enough crew to staff them all, so they wouldn't benefit from multiple voyages and it would give an unfair advantage to higher level players.
Hm, while I am intrigued by the re-staffing idea, I think that would be quite a tall order, to remake voyages almost from the ground up in terms of coding, I would guess, to achieve that.
The squad feature is generally lacking, so that would be an amazeballs idea!
Ah, you are still lurking.
Here is the thread that Bylo and I worked on for a voyage-style event. I'm not saying that it's the definitive be-all-end-all way to create such an event, but there were some good ideas and great input from the community.
Our (because Bylo gave a lot of input) thread was built on ideas that I found from @[TFA] GTMET (DB - Do Better) . I'm curious to see what input he might have here as well.
As far as the 30-minute thing, my idea to mitigate that was to drop VP at successful skill checks. When you start failing skill checks, the VP return on investment goes down. So continually extending the voyage becomes less viable as a winning strategy.
On the topic of P2W, it has been hashed and re-hashed on the forum. Galaxy events are absolutely not pay-to-win. Several VIP 0 players have won galaxies. Skirmishes are the same. Stockpile, then put in the long hours. Faction are the only true P2W events. I personally don't care if you make the event P2W. But I do think it essential to make sure F2P have a way to get in the top 1,500 without spending. If you're confident in that, then it's all good. I just like honesty up front if you're pitching a P2W event.
I wouldn’t intend to make it a P2W event if possible, because I have been baffled by the direction the game took in the recent months. In 2016 and ‘17 I had no problems to get into at least the top 3,000 in any event, but now it has become much harder, regardless of the effort I put in.
Why not have a voyage event there the player needs to solve a dilemma every 30 minutes instead every 2 hours.
Once the player have reached 2 hours the results of the dilemmas will be added to the rank score of the event. After 2 hours the voyage ends.
Winning or even scoring high enough to get multiple copies in any event requires tons of time on weekends. This proposal would be no exception.
Every 5 minutes or 15 or whatever is far too often, 30 is the absolute minimum I’d go to.
But for people who feel they have to login too much: welcome to MMOs, may I be your guide? Name one MMO where you can be a top or even just a good player by just logging in on the weekend once every three hours for a couple minutes, and I will happily side with you. But as I think this game doesn’t exist, I will say this: as with all MMOs I’m familiar with, with STT being no exception, your success depends on your investment of time and money. That’s why the top spots in events gather something like 3 million (or more) points while I, with a weekend dedicated to the event and roughly 21,000 chronitons only made around 1 million points and despite playing almost the entire time only made it to 47, which I find ridiculous. But I don’t blame it on the game specifically. Of course it’d be nice to win without throwing money at the game, but the devs can't survive on air, water, and our good will.
While I agree on the part that DB need to make their living out of the game I do not see an MMO and STT a valid comparison. This is a mobile game where 24/7 dedication should not be required or encouraged. An MMO provides pure entertainment (apart from watching your char doing crafts but you usually can do this while being afk) while events in every mobile game I know are basically redundant chores. In MMOs the route is the goal, in STT it is not.
Then what is the goal of STT? For me it comes down to three things: Collecting every star in the campaign missions, reaching a satisfying placement in events and completing as many collections as I can. I’ve played since April 2016, and I don’t feel bad in saying I’ve completed my dailies every single day with maybe 10 or so exceptions, whilst also “having a life”. It’s not like the game requires constant attention.
But I digress. What would you say is the goal of Timelines if not the route? Or maybe we have different views of what the route in Timelines is.
The other point being that I suspect whales won't want to log in every 30 minutes. I know that I won't want to. Faction events are won by spending dilithium to instantly recall shuttles. If you work time boosts and dilithium into this idea for shorter intervals between dilemmas, then the idea might have a chance. Otherwise, I'd say it's a pipe dream.
For me the goal is to add stars to my best crew, mainly to extend my voyage durations and to finish those remaining stars on the map. And my second goal is to aquire gauntletable crew to be more competitive there.
But events as such provide no pleasure to me, apart from maybe skirmish for some hours due to the expectation of extra-rewards after each round, but not for 24/4. No matter if it is logging in every 1.5 or 3 hours for Faction or tapping endlessly for Galaxy - I do not consider this as fun. I only WORK myself through for enough VP to be successful but it is not entertaining.
The best part about STT is to open packs and the excitement correlated to it. One pack is not very enjoyable most of the time but if I open like 20 or 30... I have to knock on wood that I never experienced the disappointment of zero golds.
And finally I get enjoyment out of the obtained chars. When I watch DS9 with my husband (we rewatch it currently) I always smile if there appears a character I have ingame.
But all in all... the way is more pain than pleasure, for me the "reward" is looking at my "stamp" collection of chars and feeling confident with what I have achieved. So... the goal is the goal.
MMOs in comparison... riding through sheer endless beautiful regions and questing along the way is permanent fun and moderate excitement. And I hardly ever played that much that I ran out of content so there was always something new to do. In the rare cases where there really was nothing to do apart from raiding (which I hate) I took a half-year-break and new content caught up with me.
But if STT was not enjoyable I would not play it. I just find that MMOs and mobile games are not comparable. It is like Camino de Santiago vs. Paris Dakar. Both are about getting from A to B but it makes no sense to compare them.
/edit on topic: If there was a voyage style event which required logging in every 30 minutes I would probably do it but I would hate it almost as much as I hate Galaxies. We really lack a "relaxing" event type which worked with LESS engagement instead of more than the others.
I see what you mean. My girlfriend and I also enjoy seeing someone from the game in the shows (even more when a particular voice line that is in game comes up on screen).
I enjoy most of the events though, they make up the main draw of the game for me (unless they’re Expedition events, but those seem to be dead anyway), even if they should really reintroduce the possibility to get the 4* character without community rewards (or introduce community rewards in every event type).