Seeing a reward table full of DIL is a great reward for players. I like the "gauntlet" of ship battles a lot. Increasing Victory Points is nice, as is the 1- through 5- star ship option on each level.
The Intel gathering from both mission types is a great approach and well-received here. On the other hand, the 5k intel cost for each run is very steep. I would like to see it taken back to Skirmishes where it starts off lower (maybe not as low as skirmishes) and gradually increases.
This could be an interesting attempt with multiple matching skills giving an incentive to rotate the roster. I am loading up on Locutus/Mirror Spock/[Garth or Killy] and a VP bonus crew. If you allowed each crew' matching trait to give an additional bonus incentive, you could see people making harder decisions ("I could get 8 bonuses if I ditched Killy", for example). It's worth considering.
The only other thing I would recommend would be to make this more like an actual gauntlet. Multiple leaderboards, and maybe even make this a new PvP approach. Alternatively, this seems like the PERFECT event for squadrons, you know... fighting in squadrons. A Shared Killy would be devastating to those without, so sharing is probably not a good goal, but squadron community goals seem perfect here.
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction
I can’t believe people are Pooh-poohing this FREE opportunity to get Beaucoup dilithium!
If you think 5000 Intel is too expensive, don’t compete.
If you think it’s not worth the chrons, don’t compete.
You have nothing to lose by not participating, don’t ruin this for the rest of us!
Please more like this DB!
The problem I (and others) have with the event isn't the dilithium, it's very much a one time thing for testing purposes and you're not seeing it ever again, it's the structure of the event, it just feels like a subpar skirmish with increased costs, tedium, and lesser post-battle rewards. If that sticks to mid-week mini events fine but if DB is testing balance changes to the weekend skirmishes this is bad and they need to know.
I didn't pay too much attention to the rewards, but generally speaking they seem to be lower. As for the increased cost, it could prevent newer, low spending players from competing, so while it's not a problem for me, I agree that 5000 intel might be a bit too high.
However, I find it a lot less tedious than the standard skirmishes. Not only because there are decent rewards for every ticket (the vp tiers are a lot closer) but also because 10 battles instead of 5 for some reason is less annoying to me. And that's just a small thing, but I also appreciated that I didn't have to play through standard and elite to unlock epic.
So all in all, even if they should apply this structure to weekend events, I wouldn't be disappointed (maybe with some changes to the amount of post-battle rewards, at least for the honor drops).
In a general feedback statement from my fleet And many other fleets i have contacts with, as for mini-mid week events.
1. The di rewards obviously are very attractive but this is a beta so who knows if that will continue to be the standard reward scale.
2. Ppl are frustrated with the changing crew situation as it takes longer. Some ppl do have jobs, and it would seem the target to make more money from ppl with income during a midweek event should take less time not more. Working players dont have time for this in addition to completing dailies.
3. The cost of intel to run this is outrageous. While i realize di is a highly valued reward and it would seem fair, a smaller amt of di vs a lower amt of intel to play more rounds may be a better compromise.
4. Wether you do or dont have stored chrons? “Individual play style”, is irrelevant again for a mid-week mini event. This is taking to long. Some ppl are getting the individual chron drops for each battle Many times, so for those lucky players it is all working out. But if you happen to be in the “no chrons for you” category where your individual battle rewards rarely drop chrons this is way out of balance. That seems to be a built in skirmish system for all skirmish events. Some ppl rake in the chrons and then turn them into intel. But there is a % of players divided into high/med/low chance of chron drops. For the low and medium section of rewarded chrons this is an imbalanced system vs the high intel to run.
5. It has also been pointed out that this event being heavy on chrons, midweek just prior to a galaxy can be taken 2 ways given individual play style. Some ppl Pre-farm so it doesnt matter. Some ppl like to save up chrons and play consistently by farming and doing galaxy builds during the event. Again these are primarily the ppl who work and dont have as much weekday time to pre-farm.
6. Only if you are a veteran player who happens to have the proper crew to make a build that doesnt require crew swapping, can you save some time and get higher VP per round. This blocks out a large number of current players for the quickest and higher earning strategy. Either no bonus trait crew, simplify bonus traits to something more general such as “human, vulcan, klingon”, or have 1 consistent trait “desperate” for at least 7 or 8 of the 10 battles.
Overal for every play style and the built in rewards % drops to skirmish there is a wide range of opinions depending on your play style, time in the workweek, and what rewards are being allotted to you for each battle. Many ppl i have had feedback from do like the general idea but the balance of swapping crew, chron drops or not, high intel cost to run, This is not properly balanced, and too time consuming for many players.
This was advertised as a beta no “featured crew” “ to allow spontaneous participation”, swapping trait crew for battles is not spontaneous.
mid week mini to Test and address boredom and possibly add or grow existing weekend event types without specifically impacting those events at this time.
If this is what a regular 4 day weekend skirmish is going to possibly develop into, there will be alot more players at mid or lower lvl locked out of ability to gain max VP and disappointed.
I am a veteran player. I no problem finding the proper crew balance. I always try to include a perspective from all play styles, player levels, and player time constraints. Of course you cant please everyone all the time. But making an effort to include as many players in masses would seem to be the point of growing the game. Lower lvl players who dont have the correct trait crew with good battle skills, and have less time to swap crew every battle are frustrated.
And of course the usual roll out glitches occurred. Many ppl lost the weekend event rewards screen if it was not claimed prior to weekday event starting.
Many ppl could not start the event bcuz they couldnt get in to event screen or if they did get in it was blank, Or there were problems in ship selection screen with it being blank. Im sure these kinks will be worked out.
I find the event frustrating as it highlights one of the most annoying aspects of the game, that being whenever there is a time sensitive task...it always locks up. This time I can't get past battle nine as at first it kept spinning, and I was forced to reload the game, then I had to use my one retry and this time the ships kept flying past each other, but it never got to the battle. My internet connection is fine...the game just refuses to load when I am in a hurry, almost like it has a sensor to detect it.
Yep I had a similar problem, but presumed it was my connection?
Oddly, though, now I am not looking at this new game/test game as something to do like other events, I am only upgrading crew, and obviously accruing the Intel, and then am running a game. The 5000 is very steep, but it really just serves me to upgrade crew & this is a bonus.
The Maryland Fleet need YOU, come and join us! We are rushing headlong into the abyss...................but we will have a blast whilst doing it,
Having decide that it was worth it to invest chronos in this mini, I have now hit threshold. I do have some views:
1) Rewards - yes, this was very much worth the rewards; these rewards. That calculation would change with different rewards. For example: honor, holoemitters = yes; merits = maybe; credits = no, big no; a mix of stuff = highly dependent on what the mix is.
2) The bonus crew was tedious to deal with. If these minis are only Skirmishes, then it's just an annoyance that could be lived with, but I'd recommend rethinking it (see note below for idea). But if they cycle in other event types, this will be a problem.
3) Length of the battles actually bothered me a lot and I like playing Skirmishes. It was just noticeably longer to get through a set. That might have had to do with changing bonus crew after each battle.
4) Intel cost for a run is high; not sure I can tell if you get 5x the VP for the same run in a regular Skirmish event. Then again, I've never liked the point scaling in Skirmish events; it never made any sense to me. Not sure what to do about this.
5) The Skirmish bonuses seemed off on this and without bonuses they seemed significantly less generous. I'd sooner drop them for minis. But especially drop the "bonus" intel; getting ~25 intel when you need 5K for a run is not helpful, I'd rather get credits.
Bonus crew idea: have one character give a bonus, regardless of rarity. That would level the playing field for all players (a 2* gives the same bonus as a 5*) and make it easier to play through. I'd recommend always making it a main cast member, because those tend to have the most versions at varying star levels and are the widest available. This bonus idea should be able to scale for other event types too: Spock coordinating shuttle rescues in a Shuttle mini; Janeway setting up relief shipments in a Galaxy mini; or Sisko leading a fleet in another Skirmish mini.
And a request: if future minis do use other event types, please don't make shuttle missions take a standard 3hr. I won't want to participate if I have to use the same amount of time reducers that I have to use in a regular Faction event. Collecting those already make my Thursdays hell; I don't want to have to increase my work load to get more.
I can’t believe people are Pooh-poohing this FREE opportunity to get Beaucoup dilithium!
If you think 5000 Intel is too expensive, don’t compete.
If you think it’s not worth the chrons, don’t compete.
You have nothing to lose by not participating, don’t ruin this for the rest of us!
Please more like this DB!
The problem I (and others) have with the event isn't the dilithium, it's very much a one time thing for testing purposes and you're not seeing it ever again, it's the structure of the event, it just feels like a subpar skirmish with increased costs, tedium, and lesser post-battle rewards. If that sticks to mid-week mini events fine but if DB is testing balance changes to the weekend skirmishes this is bad and they need to know.
I’m fairly confident that you’re wrong about that. I’m 99% certain of it.
Feedback: In general I'm not a huge fan of skirmishes - there's an awful lot of repetitive clicking, though the rewards are good. Historically they are a large time sink since to do at all well, you have to do a large number of runs. I thought this was a better implementation.
Pros:
- Fewer skirmish runs (I'm happy with the increased cost, but longer runs as a compromise).
- The dilithium/cron balance was interesting and probably had something for most people. As a newish player I had no real cron stash and used the "buy crons" option as I figured that I'd recoup the dilithium spent *and* equip some characters. Seems to have worked. Longer serving players got to swap their crons for dilithium, I guess.
- In the end, I decided that having to swap crew in and out was a benefit as it meant I had to pay more attention.
- Accruing INTEL from all missions was a huge plus and didn't leave me underwhelmed by having to do non optimal ship missions.
- Only lasting two days was a plus. I'd like to see the weekend events shortened to, well, a weekend. With maybe a mid week 24 hours event.
Cons:
- Some of the additional rewards remain unbalanced (50 crons or 1000 credits - is that even a question? Same for 20 intel) (I may have the numbers wrong :-)
- The skirmish remains unchallenging. With a fully formed D'Kora and some half way decent crew only the ship at the end was causing any real damage.
it takes 2-3 seconds to switch one crew out for another bonus character. I don't see how this is tedious.
Same here. It’s so quick and easy. All you do is click any chump that says bonus. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people complain about an opportunity to get 7620 dilithium for doing a few hours of skirmishing. I just don’t get it. “Well, the intel cost.....selecting bonus crew......it just seems like a grind....” Seriously? So many people know how to “improve” it. What they are really doing is saying make this much easier for me. This set up is a win for us and a nice gesture by them. Take it as such. If taking two seconds to select bonus crew is too much for you, then bow out. If you don’t have 8k or so chrons then bow out. If ten battles versus five scares you, then bow out.
@Shan saw this asked earlier in thread but did not see an answer. Can understand if it does not count since it is “mini”; would like to know the answer- I apologize if I missed it.
it takes 2-3 seconds to switch one crew out for another bonus character. I don't see how this is tedious.
Same here. It’s so quick and easy. All you do is click any chump that says bonus. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people complain about an opportunity to get 7620 dilithium for doing a few hours of skirmishing. I just don’t get it. “Well, the intel cost.....selecting bonus crew......it just seems like a grind....” Seriously? So many people know how to “improve” it. What they are really doing is saying make this much easier for me. This set up is a win for us and a nice gesture by them. Take it as such. If taking two seconds to select bonus crew is too much for you, then bow out. If you don’t have 8k or so chrons then bow out. If ten battles versus five scares you, then bow out.
You're completely missing the point. This is testing changes for the weekend skirmish events and you're not getting dilithium every other weekend. Dilithium is irrelevant here, it's not staying, the event design and structure should be considered separately. Take a mental picture, completely forget about the dilithium for a moment and think about these changes applied to regular skirmishes. Which one is less annoying and offers the most exciting post-battle goodies?
There are always people advocating for increased annoyance and tedium in every online game I've played, but this one takes the crown. That's puzzling.
I think a lot of people are looking at this in the wrong way.
Don't think of this as a mini-event, where you need to compete. Look at it instead as a bonus game mode for free dilithium, for doing what you'd do normally. Just spend chrons like you normally would, and then check in with the "event" now and then and run it when you have enough intel. Receive free dilithium. Repeat until "event" ends.
Unless you're competing for Rank 10 or above, there's no point stressing over it beyond that.
There’s no way that most people would drop 4,000-6,000 chrons on a weekday as a normal activity. I didn’t even do that when power-leveling six legendary crew right before the TOS mega.
Chron hoarders are probably spending around 80-200 a day to clear daily missions (less, if they use arena battles and cadet missions towards dailies) and pre-farmers probably go through 500-1000 a day depending on how fruitful their voyages are. Hoarders aren’t even going to get enough intel to run a third round (on top of the two that someone calculated based on normal intel accumulation) and pre-farmers are maybe getting two extra rounds...that’s not that much of a dent in the thresholds at all.
it takes 2-3 seconds to switch one crew out for another bonus character. I don't see how this is tedious.
I have to focus and give Timelines attention. I'm sorry but the quality of the "gameplay" here deserves none of this. Better let us forget about it while we're catching up on TV.
This is testing changes for the weekend skirmish events and you're not getting dilithium every other weekend. Dilithium is irrelevant here, it's not staying
And you know this to be a fact how, exactly?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
If one is simply evaluating structure changes for future skirmishes, then I would agree the constant or frequent swapping of crew would be annoying. However, I like the 10 battles in a row. That should be a keeper.
All of the Tuvoks (and Tuvix) I have unfrozen have tactician and telepath, but it would be wise to check.
I am using Tuvix, as he provides a bit of accuracy for Killys kill shot.
it takes 2-3 seconds to switch one crew out for another bonus character. I don't see how this is tedious.
Same here. It’s so quick and easy. All you do is click any chump that says bonus. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people complain about an opportunity to get 7620 dilithium for doing a few hours of skirmishing. I just don’t get it. “Well, the intel cost.....selecting bonus crew......it just seems like a grind....” Seriously? So many people know how to “improve” it. What they are really doing is saying make this much easier for me. This set up is a win for us and a nice gesture by them. Take it as such. If taking two seconds to select bonus crew is too much for you, then bow out. If you don’t have 8k or so chrons then bow out. If ten battles versus five scares you, then bow out.
You're completely missing the point. This is testing changes for the weekend skirmish events and you're not getting dilithium every other weekend. Dilithium is irrelevant here, it's not staying, the event design and structure should be considered separately. Take a mental picture, completely forget about the dilithium for a moment and think about these changes applied to regular skirmishes. Which one is less annoying and offers the most exciting post-battle goodies?
There are always people advocating for increased annoyance and tedium in every online game I've played, but this one takes the crown. That's puzzling.
I think you need to re-read the mini-event announcement. I don’t think this has anything to do with the structure of skirmishes. The announcement pretty clearly states that they’re looking to do this mini-events every week. Why would they ask for feedback about it and then completely alter the rewards? That doesn’t make any sense.
I like this event. I like any skirmish event, but this is easier because we don’t have to do a lot in order to get preferred crew. The dilithium is very welcome too. I wont make it to threshold, but I appreciate even a little of it. Curious to see if every event like this will bring extra dilithium?
I personally am enjoying / like this mini event and I do enjoy skirmishes though they can be time consuming. So the cost of 5k intel means I do not have to churn my way up the scale and it limits the time I spend on the Mimi event. That you can earn tickets via away team missions to me is useful and much better than the only option being buying them with dilithium in the regular event. While I personally will be saving my chrono for the upcoming galaxy event that the option exists to me is very good. Should be some updating to the in game info given for the new Cataclysm event in the ? Info tab for the event it says tickets are earned passively over time by away team missions and by ship battles in the event when low on tickets clicking on the ticket button says tickets are earned passively over time and by ship battles no mention of away team missions and no way to engage them from there
I have done my 12th round and this is the first time I remembered to change crew in all 10 battles to get max VP and reward from box.
I still think the solution to crew switching is to provide some event specific bonus crew. Thus, no need to switch them out. And would give the 100% bonus to VP and reward boxes. As it is now, the max increase is 50%
I have decided that the intel cost is fine. Basically, I do not want to do more battles to hit all threshold rewards. However, if we can achieve the max bonus of 100% there would not be any neeed to change the intel cost.
Nice that Intel is gained by away missions & ship battles.
Getting 10 skirmishes accomplished in as little as 6 minutes.
I'm a saver, so trading chrons for dilithium is a winner for me.
My base crew is set so I only need to change a bonus crew on battles 5 & 6.
That you can earn tickets via away team missions to me is useful and much better than the only option being buying them with dilithium in the regular event.
If by "the regular event" you mean Skirmishes, you can earn Intel in those by doing ship battles.
Should be some updating to the in game info given for the new Cataclysm event in the ? Info tab for the event it says tickets are earned passively over time by away team missions and by ship battles in the event when low on tickets clicking on the ticket button says tickets are earned passively over time and by ship battles no mention of away team missions and no way to engage them from there
They obviously just copy/pasted that info from the normal Skirmish text, in which only ship battles earn you Intel.
But this is indeed a very nice change of pace to be able to get it from away missions as well. That let me just focus on leveling up my T'Pol (doing lots of 10-warps) without concern over sticking to ship battles, and I ended up with an additional 50,000 Intel as a result.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
The more that I think about this, the more I wish that the leaderboard felt unique. This would've been a cool opportunity for a community-oriented event -- maybe a way to introduce the long-requested fleet leaderboard. I feel like it's hard for people to devote a lot of solo time to the game 7 days a week. Making the thresholds or rank rewards achievable through a group effort would've been cool.
The good:
I will always take free dilithium.
I appreciate the chance to grind Away Team missions in prep for galaxy events.
The bad:
We already have enough Skirmish as it is. I'm a regular top-25 skirmish player and I'm so over that event type with regular events, let alone an extra added event.
No one has time to manually change their crew every battle - especially not when the people who win can do so through sheer force of chrons
My suggested event type in the Make It So forum would work just fine in Skirmish's place, though.
it takes 2-3 seconds to switch one crew out for another bonus character. I don't see how this is tedious.
Same here. It’s so quick and easy. All you do is click any chump that says bonus. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people complain about an opportunity to get 7620 dilithium for doing a few hours of skirmishing. I just don’t get it. “Well, the intel cost.....selecting bonus crew......it just seems like a grind....” Seriously? So many people know how to “improve” it. What they are really doing is saying make this much easier for me. This set up is a win for us and a nice gesture by them. Take it as such. If taking two seconds to select bonus crew is too much for you, then bow out. If you don’t have 8k or so chrons then bow out. If ten battles versus five scares you, then bow out.
You're completely missing the point. This is testing changes for the weekend skirmish events and you're not getting dilithium every other weekend. Dilithium is irrelevant here, it's not staying, the event design and structure should be considered separately. Take a mental picture, completely forget about the dilithium for a moment and think about these changes applied to regular skirmishes. Which one is less annoying and offers the most exciting post-battle goodies?
There are always people advocating for increased annoyance and tedium in every online game I've played, but this one takes the crown. That's puzzling.
If you are correct in your assumption that this is actually a beta-test for revised skirmish events, then there are a couple key points you're not taking into consideration:
1. Having event crew with matching traits for every battle would eliminate the need to swap crew, thereby eliminating one of the big complaints.
2. A 10-battle skirmish vs a 5-battle skirmish - assuming all post battle rewards are consistent with current skirmish events - actually means you only lose the secondary reward (ie: honor, chrons, etc..) once every 10 battles, rather than once every 5 battles.
3. I would agree that a 10-battle skirmish round should cost no more than 2,500 intel, since running 2 x 5-battle skirmishes currently only costs a total of 2,400 intel. I think the mini-event cost of 5,000 intel is due in large part to the substantial threshold rewards (ie: dilithium).
Having said that, what makes you think this is a beta-test for revamping weekend skirmish events, rather than a new mid-week feature as DB has suggested?
EDIT: I wonder if the appearance of dilithium and honor as the rewards are a result of the survey that was done a few months ago, when players were asked what existing in-game resources players would appreciate new opportunities to earn? If so, kudos to DB for listening to the players!
This is testing changes for the weekend skirmish events and you're not getting dilithium every other weekend. Dilithium is irrelevant here, it's not staying
And you know this to be a fact how, exactly?
Since many of you were asking me the same question:
We have multiple goals in mind:
- propose a potentially reoccurring mid-week activity that is familiar yet has a few twists
- provide a new way to get specific rewards - test out balance changes without impacting our regular events
- gather specific feedback
Yes, it's "potentially reoccurring" but we're also testing changes to skirmishes, which is the "regular event" cataclysm is the closest to. The proposed changes here are more micro management, lesser rewards, taking twice as long to clear the thresholds and dramatically increased chronitons costs, which is why IMO it's important to put feedback here into the context of potential weekend skirmishes changes.
Comments
The Intel gathering from both mission types is a great approach and well-received here. On the other hand, the 5k intel cost for each run is very steep. I would like to see it taken back to Skirmishes where it starts off lower (maybe not as low as skirmishes) and gradually increases.
This could be an interesting attempt with multiple matching skills giving an incentive to rotate the roster. I am loading up on Locutus/Mirror Spock/[Garth or Killy] and a VP bonus crew. If you allowed each crew' matching trait to give an additional bonus incentive, you could see people making harder decisions ("I could get 8 bonuses if I ditched Killy", for example). It's worth considering.
The only other thing I would recommend would be to make this more like an actual gauntlet. Multiple leaderboards, and maybe even make this a new PvP approach. Alternatively, this seems like the PERFECT event for squadrons, you know... fighting in squadrons. A Shared Killy would be devastating to those without, so sharing is probably not a good goal, but squadron community goals seem perfect here.
Immortalized crew count:
27×1★; 53×2★; 78×3★; 196×4★; 87×5★
I didn't pay too much attention to the rewards, but generally speaking they seem to be lower. As for the increased cost, it could prevent newer, low spending players from competing, so while it's not a problem for me, I agree that 5000 intel might be a bit too high.
However, I find it a lot less tedious than the standard skirmishes. Not only because there are decent rewards for every ticket (the vp tiers are a lot closer) but also because 10 battles instead of 5 for some reason is less annoying to me. And that's just a small thing, but I also appreciated that I didn't have to play through standard and elite to unlock epic.
So all in all, even if they should apply this structure to weekend events, I wouldn't be disappointed (maybe with some changes to the amount of post-battle rewards, at least for the honor drops).
1. The di rewards obviously are very attractive but this is a beta so who knows if that will continue to be the standard reward scale.
2. Ppl are frustrated with the changing crew situation as it takes longer. Some ppl do have jobs, and it would seem the target to make more money from ppl with income during a midweek event should take less time not more. Working players dont have time for this in addition to completing dailies.
3. The cost of intel to run this is outrageous. While i realize di is a highly valued reward and it would seem fair, a smaller amt of di vs a lower amt of intel to play more rounds may be a better compromise.
4. Wether you do or dont have stored chrons? “Individual play style”, is irrelevant again for a mid-week mini event. This is taking to long. Some ppl are getting the individual chron drops for each battle Many times, so for those lucky players it is all working out. But if you happen to be in the “no chrons for you” category where your individual battle rewards rarely drop chrons this is way out of balance. That seems to be a built in skirmish system for all skirmish events. Some ppl rake in the chrons and then turn them into intel. But there is a % of players divided into high/med/low chance of chron drops. For the low and medium section of rewarded chrons this is an imbalanced system vs the high intel to run.
5. It has also been pointed out that this event being heavy on chrons, midweek just prior to a galaxy can be taken 2 ways given individual play style. Some ppl Pre-farm so it doesnt matter. Some ppl like to save up chrons and play consistently by farming and doing galaxy builds during the event. Again these are primarily the ppl who work and dont have as much weekday time to pre-farm.
6. Only if you are a veteran player who happens to have the proper crew to make a build that doesnt require crew swapping, can you save some time and get higher VP per round. This blocks out a large number of current players for the quickest and higher earning strategy. Either no bonus trait crew, simplify bonus traits to something more general such as “human, vulcan, klingon”, or have 1 consistent trait “desperate” for at least 7 or 8 of the 10 battles.
Overal for every play style and the built in rewards % drops to skirmish there is a wide range of opinions depending on your play style, time in the workweek, and what rewards are being allotted to you for each battle. Many ppl i have had feedback from do like the general idea but the balance of swapping crew, chron drops or not, high intel cost to run, This is not properly balanced, and too time consuming for many players.
This was advertised as a beta no “featured crew” “ to allow spontaneous participation”, swapping trait crew for battles is not spontaneous.
mid week mini to Test and address boredom and possibly add or grow existing weekend event types without specifically impacting those events at this time.
If this is what a regular 4 day weekend skirmish is going to possibly develop into, there will be alot more players at mid or lower lvl locked out of ability to gain max VP and disappointed.
I am a veteran player. I no problem finding the proper crew balance. I always try to include a perspective from all play styles, player levels, and player time constraints. Of course you cant please everyone all the time. But making an effort to include as many players in masses would seem to be the point of growing the game. Lower lvl players who dont have the correct trait crew with good battle skills, and have less time to swap crew every battle are frustrated.
And of course the usual roll out glitches occurred. Many ppl lost the weekend event rewards screen if it was not claimed prior to weekday event starting.
Many ppl could not start the event bcuz they couldnt get in to event screen or if they did get in it was blank, Or there were problems in ship selection screen with it being blank. Im sure these kinks will be worked out.
Yep I had a similar problem, but presumed it was my connection?
Oddly, though, now I am not looking at this new game/test game as something to do like other events, I am only upgrading crew, and obviously accruing the Intel, and then am running a game. The 5000 is very steep, but it really just serves me to upgrade crew & this is a bonus.
We are rushing headlong into the abyss...................but we will have a blast whilst doing it,
1) Rewards - yes, this was very much worth the rewards; these rewards. That calculation would change with different rewards. For example: honor, holoemitters = yes; merits = maybe; credits = no, big no; a mix of stuff = highly dependent on what the mix is.
2) The bonus crew was tedious to deal with. If these minis are only Skirmishes, then it's just an annoyance that could be lived with, but I'd recommend rethinking it (see note below for idea). But if they cycle in other event types, this will be a problem.
3) Length of the battles actually bothered me a lot and I like playing Skirmishes. It was just noticeably longer to get through a set. That might have had to do with changing bonus crew after each battle.
4) Intel cost for a run is high; not sure I can tell if you get 5x the VP for the same run in a regular Skirmish event. Then again, I've never liked the point scaling in Skirmish events; it never made any sense to me. Not sure what to do about this.
5) The Skirmish bonuses seemed off on this and without bonuses they seemed significantly less generous. I'd sooner drop them for minis. But especially drop the "bonus" intel; getting ~25 intel when you need 5K for a run is not helpful, I'd rather get credits.
Bonus crew idea: have one character give a bonus, regardless of rarity. That would level the playing field for all players (a 2* gives the same bonus as a 5*) and make it easier to play through. I'd recommend always making it a main cast member, because those tend to have the most versions at varying star levels and are the widest available. This bonus idea should be able to scale for other event types too: Spock coordinating shuttle rescues in a Shuttle mini; Janeway setting up relief shipments in a Galaxy mini; or Sisko leading a fleet in another Skirmish mini.
And a request: if future minis do use other event types, please don't make shuttle missions take a standard 3hr. I won't want to participate if I have to use the same amount of time reducers that I have to use in a regular Faction event. Collecting those already make my Thursdays hell; I don't want to have to increase my work load to get more.
I’m fairly confident that you’re wrong about that. I’m 99% certain of it.
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Pros:
- Fewer skirmish runs (I'm happy with the increased cost, but longer runs as a compromise).
- The dilithium/cron balance was interesting and probably had something for most people. As a newish player I had no real cron stash and used the "buy crons" option as I figured that I'd recoup the dilithium spent *and* equip some characters. Seems to have worked. Longer serving players got to swap their crons for dilithium, I guess.
- In the end, I decided that having to swap crew in and out was a benefit as it meant I had to pay more attention.
- Accruing INTEL from all missions was a huge plus and didn't leave me underwhelmed by having to do non optimal ship missions.
- Only lasting two days was a plus. I'd like to see the weekend events shortened to, well, a weekend. With maybe a mid week 24 hours event.
Cons:
- Some of the additional rewards remain unbalanced (50 crons or 1000 credits - is that even a question? Same for 20 intel) (I may have the numbers wrong :-)
- The skirmish remains unchallenging. With a fully formed D'Kora and some half way decent crew only the ship at the end was causing any real damage.
Same here. It’s so quick and easy. All you do is click any chump that says bonus. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that so many people complain about an opportunity to get 7620 dilithium for doing a few hours of skirmishing. I just don’t get it. “Well, the intel cost.....selecting bonus crew......it just seems like a grind....” Seriously? So many people know how to “improve” it. What they are really doing is saying make this much easier for me. This set up is a win for us and a nice gesture by them. Take it as such. If taking two seconds to select bonus crew is too much for you, then bow out. If you don’t have 8k or so chrons then bow out. If ten battles versus five scares you, then bow out.
It should.
You're completely missing the point. This is testing changes for the weekend skirmish events and you're not getting dilithium every other weekend. Dilithium is irrelevant here, it's not staying, the event design and structure should be considered separately. Take a mental picture, completely forget about the dilithium for a moment and think about these changes applied to regular skirmishes. Which one is less annoying and offers the most exciting post-battle goodies?
There are always people advocating for increased annoyance and tedium in every online game I've played, but this one takes the crown. That's puzzling.
There’s no way that most people would drop 4,000-6,000 chrons on a weekday as a normal activity. I didn’t even do that when power-leveling six legendary crew right before the TOS mega.
Chron hoarders are probably spending around 80-200 a day to clear daily missions (less, if they use arena battles and cadet missions towards dailies) and pre-farmers probably go through 500-1000 a day depending on how fruitful their voyages are. Hoarders aren’t even going to get enough intel to run a third round (on top of the two that someone calculated based on normal intel accumulation) and pre-farmers are maybe getting two extra rounds...that’s not that much of a dent in the thresholds at all.
I have to focus and give Timelines attention. I'm sorry but the quality of the "gameplay" here deserves none of this. Better let us forget about it while we're catching up on TV.
And you know this to be a fact how, exactly?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
AoS Data 2,5,7,8
Duelist Torres 1,2,6,10
Killy 4
Delta Flyer Paris 3,9,10
or Tuvok for 3,9
All of the Tuvoks (and Tuvix) I have unfrozen have tactician and telepath, but it would be wise to check.
I am using Tuvix, as he provides a bit of accuracy for Killys kill shot.
I think you need to re-read the mini-event announcement. I don’t think this has anything to do with the structure of skirmishes. The announcement pretty clearly states that they’re looking to do this mini-events every week. Why would they ask for feedback about it and then completely alter the rewards? That doesn’t make any sense.
I still think the solution to crew switching is to provide some event specific bonus crew. Thus, no need to switch them out. And would give the 100% bonus to VP and reward boxes. As it is now, the max increase is 50%
I have decided that the intel cost is fine. Basically, I do not want to do more battles to hit all threshold rewards. However, if we can achieve the max bonus of 100% there would not be any neeed to change the intel cost.
Getting 10 skirmishes accomplished in as little as 6 minutes.
I'm a saver, so trading chrons for dilithium is a winner for me.
My base crew is set so I only need to change a bonus crew on battles 5 & 6.
If by "the regular event" you mean Skirmishes, you can earn Intel in those by doing ship battles.
They obviously just copy/pasted that info from the normal Skirmish text, in which only ship battles earn you Intel.
But this is indeed a very nice change of pace to be able to get it from away missions as well. That let me just focus on leveling up my T'Pol (doing lots of 10-warps) without concern over sticking to ship battles, and I ended up with an additional 50,000 Intel as a result.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
I will always take free dilithium.
I appreciate the chance to grind Away Team missions in prep for galaxy events.
The bad:
We already have enough Skirmish as it is. I'm a regular top-25 skirmish player and I'm so over that event type with regular events, let alone an extra added event.
No one has time to manually change their crew every battle - especially not when the people who win can do so through sheer force of chrons
My suggested event type in the Make It So forum would work just fine in Skirmish's place, though.
Same thing for battle #6 normal and elite.....
If you are correct in your assumption that this is actually a beta-test for revised skirmish events, then there are a couple key points you're not taking into consideration:
1. Having event crew with matching traits for every battle would eliminate the need to swap crew, thereby eliminating one of the big complaints.
2. A 10-battle skirmish vs a 5-battle skirmish - assuming all post battle rewards are consistent with current skirmish events - actually means you only lose the secondary reward (ie: honor, chrons, etc..) once every 10 battles, rather than once every 5 battles.
3. I would agree that a 10-battle skirmish round should cost no more than 2,500 intel, since running 2 x 5-battle skirmishes currently only costs a total of 2,400 intel. I think the mini-event cost of 5,000 intel is due in large part to the substantial threshold rewards (ie: dilithium).
Having said that, what makes you think this is a beta-test for revamping weekend skirmish events, rather than a new mid-week feature as DB has suggested?
EDIT: I wonder if the appearance of dilithium and honor as the rewards are a result of the survey that was done a few months ago, when players were asked what existing in-game resources players would appreciate new opportunities to earn? If so, kudos to DB for listening to the players!
Since many of you were asking me the same question:
From: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/15639/all-hands-to-battle-stations
Emphasis mine.
Yes, it's "potentially reoccurring" but we're also testing changes to skirmishes, which is the "regular event" cataclysm is the closest to. The proposed changes here are more micro management, lesser rewards, taking twice as long to clear the thresholds and dramatically increased chronitons costs, which is why IMO it's important to put feedback here into the context of potential weekend skirmishes changes.