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The Gauntlet revamp?
As everyone knows, gauntlet competition is a challenging one especially for a younger low-mid level account. In fact, for a young account it may seem impossible to win anything battling against the high level players taking part in the very same gauntlet.
First, I had an idea to create a 'noob gauntlet' - to gather young accounts to join the gauntlet at the same time so they can compete among each other: more wins, more fun, less frustration. The down side of this: this group would have to be super secret so it doesn't attract higher level accounts looking for an easy win. That's just not very convenient, and maybe hard to organize young players like that.
I was discussing this with my fleet members when we came up with an idea: why not organize the gauntlet just like the arena is organized? Divide it into 3 groups of players with different levels of difficulty. The issue here would be how to divide the players:
1. limit by player level: low, mid, and high captain level groups. However, a player's success in the gauntlet may depend rather on their rooster than their level. Players throwing a lot of money at the game will have very strong characters despite being low captain level, much stronger than f2p or players for example buying just the monthly card etc.
2. limit by card rarity: as in the arena there would be three groups to compete in: up to rare crew, up to super rare crew, and up to legendary crew.
The second option makes more sense I think, and would possibly enhance the gauntlet experience for everyone.
Of course, the rewards would have to be differentiated. Rather than creating new gauntlet exclusive crew for the lower levels, which might be more complicated and time consuming to implement, how about assigning different success chances to get different loot boxes in each 'division'? For example, low-level gets high chance of getting currency and gauntlet boxes and little chances of getting the better stuff. Mid-level gets most chance to get gauntlet chest-crate with little chance to get the vault, and the higher level gets highest chance to get the vault.
What do you think?
First, I had an idea to create a 'noob gauntlet' - to gather young accounts to join the gauntlet at the same time so they can compete among each other: more wins, more fun, less frustration. The down side of this: this group would have to be super secret so it doesn't attract higher level accounts looking for an easy win. That's just not very convenient, and maybe hard to organize young players like that.
I was discussing this with my fleet members when we came up with an idea: why not organize the gauntlet just like the arena is organized? Divide it into 3 groups of players with different levels of difficulty. The issue here would be how to divide the players:
1. limit by player level: low, mid, and high captain level groups. However, a player's success in the gauntlet may depend rather on their rooster than their level. Players throwing a lot of money at the game will have very strong characters despite being low captain level, much stronger than f2p or players for example buying just the monthly card etc.
2. limit by card rarity: as in the arena there would be three groups to compete in: up to rare crew, up to super rare crew, and up to legendary crew.
The second option makes more sense I think, and would possibly enhance the gauntlet experience for everyone.
Of course, the rewards would have to be differentiated. Rather than creating new gauntlet exclusive crew for the lower levels, which might be more complicated and time consuming to implement, how about assigning different success chances to get different loot boxes in each 'division'? For example, low-level gets high chance of getting currency and gauntlet boxes and little chances of getting the better stuff. Mid-level gets most chance to get gauntlet chest-crate with little chance to get the vault, and the higher level gets highest chance to get the vault.
What do you think?
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Currently, there are several methods a captain can employ to improve their Gauntlet success. They can simply get lucky and win a Gauntlet crew from a streak box or a victory box at the end. They can brute force a stronger finish buy spending dilithium 50 at a time to keep win streaks alive or 30 at a time to refresh crew that have been knocked out. They can buy packs. They can buy various LTOs like Elusive Treasures or pack bundles hoping to land a strong Gauntlet crew. They can try and win the occasional ranked event crew that has good Gauntlet potential.
My concerns over establishing a tiered Gauntlet structure are that it doesn't appear to make financial sense for the company, and to a lesser extent I am not sure it would incentivise players to get stronger. Why would a player want to get stronger in The Gauntlet when their only reward for doing so is a guarantee of much tougher competition, and why would the company spend resources (ie time, money) to redesign an existing model that will almost certainly generate less revenue for themselves?
I think any proposal to change how The Gauntlet functions will need to address both of those questions directly. I do not mean to sound negative, but I do like the idea of a Gauntlet change and I feel that those are two pretty significant obstacles, and we will need to think up solutions to them
What if...
Top 20-30 get 1 loot box
Top 10-20 get 2 loot boxes
top 5-9 get 3 loot boxes
top 2-4 get 4 loot boxes
top 1 gets 5 loot boxes
THEN: on top of that, they get an additional option for pulls for additional loot like Skirmish rewards.
40-1XX get options to purchase up to 3 loot boxes for Dilithium (5 Dils for first pull, 10 for second, etc.)
Top mentioned above get +1 per tier (Top 1 would get a max of 8)
Whether or not the Gauntlet is broken down into separate difficulty levels, this would fix many problems, as long as the trainers were eliminated and maybe boosts were added.
Thoughts?
That's why I suggested that the rewards would have to vary at different difficulty rewards. If lowest difficulty level gets close to no chances for good rewards (like people ending up at the bottom of the rank now) and the higher the difficulty the better the chances (like players getting long streaks and ending up in the high ranks now), I don't think what you're saying would be a problem? Lower level players would be happy competing among each other for common rewards, and obviously striving to get even better rewards from higher difficulties.
Love this idea!
In my estimation, the key to revitalizing The Gauntlet is the introduction of 4* crew with strong proficiency stats in skill combinations presently lacking. I'd make them Voyage exclusives, which could help inject that with some much needed new life. Some ideas:
Administrator Vandenberg (TOS "The Devil in the Dark") - CMD/ENG/SEC
Admiral Eric Pressman (TNG, "Pegasus") - CMD/ENG/DIP
Dejar (DS9 "Destiny") - ENG/SCI/SEC, Obsidian Order, Undercover Operative
Doctor M'Benga (TOS) - MED/SCI/DIP
Dr. Farallon (TNG "The Quality of Life") - SCI/ENG/CMD
Surmak Ren (DS9 "Babel") - MED/CMD/SCI
It’s true. Barring some heavy duty trait matches, there are only really a handful of useful crew for most skills (I may have forgotten some that I don’t have or discounted due to having only two skills):
COM - Enabran Tain, Mirror Picard, Admiral Nechayev, Revolutionary Damar, Marshal of France Q
DIP - Locutus, Chancellor Gowron, Bartender Guinan, Mambo Picard (half credit to Minuet and Kai Opaka)
ENG - The Caretaker (Interfaced La Forge and Assimilated La Forge are worthless at 5% and 25% critical chances and are only passable at 45%)
SEC - Gary Seven, Gangster Spock, Away Team Burnham (honorable mention to Duelist Yar, Commander Landry, and Musketeer La Forge)
SCI - Surak, Armus, AT#1, Bem, Boothby Replicant (honorable mention to Seven of Nine, Survivalist Kirk, and The Keeper)
MED is, oddly enough, relatively wide open compared to the other skills. Captain Beverly’s MED proficiency on its own is well beyond anyone else but her other proficiencies are poor and she isn’t that common, while a number of 4* crew find themselves useful when traits or even the featured skill fall into place. There are six different crew I have used for MED in the gauntlet recently (D. Phlox, Sulan, Twilight T’Pol, Crell Moset, Doc Crusher, and Nurse Garland) and another handful of others that have drawn limited duty over time when the traits and skill are just right (AF Bashir, Mirror Phlox, Antaak, Rev Phlox, and Juliana Tainer).
Having more parity in other skills helps break down walls and frankly makes the Gauntlet more exciting. I will push back on one of your suggestions, however...Dr. M’Benga simply has to be a 5* or I will be very grouchy. He can still be a stout gauntleteer, just so long as his legendary status is reflected in the game as well as reality.
Enabran Tain's max is high, but his min is so low that with a weak roll he can easily lose even if he hasn't already been used. I much prefer Damar, whose min is more than 100 points higher.
Fair.
His minimum is low, but both Mirror Picard and Admiral Nechayev are very close with their minimums and Damar doesn’t seem to be all that common. I don’t use him all the time, he’s just a serviceable complement to the others until we can get a COM-primary gauntlet ace. For example, if SEC is the featured skill and their crit chances are the same, I’d probably take Tain over Damar while the roles would be reversed for a DIP gauntlet.
Which leads me to another point: if we ever do get a replacement for Armus as the featured special reward crew, I’m no longer certain that it needs to be an ENG-heavy counterweight to The Caretaker. As much as we desperately need such a crew, I think we need a clear-cut #1 option for COM gauntleteers. Damar’s max roll is a bit of a boat anchor, Q is a 4* with an awful tertiary proficiency, and Away Team Number One needs a highly-upgraded starbase to crack the 300-point threshold on her minimum proficiency. MED is the only other skill with a dearth of crew that have high minimum proficiencies, though there are so many useful crew in general it doesn’t feel like such a critical gap.
Likewise, all five of the top COM gauntleteers have the exact same collection of skills except for Mirror Picard’s worthless SCI tertiary. If we were to get a new COM-heavy gauntlet special reward crew, it would be best to have a completely different skill mix. Perhaps, in an effort to kill two birds with one stone, it could be a COM/ENG/x (where X really should be MED but probably ends up being SCI) version that could beat the Caretaker and finally give us a better secondary option than Assimilated La Forge outside of the Human/Borg/Brutal gauntlets. And maybe it could be from a series that doesn’t already have a gauntlet special (so no TNG or VOY options). Some ideas come to mind:
-Archaeologist Sisko. I now forget the episode name...whatever it was when he dug up that Bajoran artifact to decipher the inscriptions it carried, causing Kai Winn to be extra grouchy. ENG as a secondary might be a stretch, however.
-20th Century Archer. In Carpenter Street, he had to deal with plenty of Xindi hardware (not to mention the truck he and T’Pol stole). A SCI tertiary maybe makes less sense than DIP, though it would be less egregious than having an odd primary or secondary.
-Borg Queen Seven. The scene where she takes control of The Artifact should one day provide the best character artwork from all of Picard Season 1. And while there could certainly be some discussion about SEC instead of SCI, I think the skill order makes more sense for her than my other suggestions. Plus: a COM-primary variant of Seven should have everyone salivating, even if her bases are as low as to be expected.
-Shipwrecked Spock. He was certainly in command after the shuttle Galileo’s crash and had a primary focus on repairs to effect a rescue. SCI I think makes more sense as a tertiary than any other skill, though I could see arguments made for DIP, SEC, or even no tertiary at all based on the episode’s events.
-Shore Leave Planet Master Computer. Not only is it a wordy title, I had trouble thinking of appropriate suggestions from TAS before settling on the antagonist from the Enterprise’s second visit to the Shore Leave Planet. MED might actually make more sense as a tertiary, which I am sure nobody would be mad to see.
I'm down with all of those ideas, but I maintain ENG needs shoring up. The Caretaker's supremacy is so absolute that in the vast majority of ENG+x matches, all five of your opponent choices are going to be him because even if x is one of the skills he doesn't have, his ENG is so strong he can probably beat you anyway. The worst might be an ENG/DIP match, where you'll get a blend of The Caretaker and Locutus of Borg, neither of whom have both skills but are so dominant that it doesn't matter. And when someone makes nothing else matter, that's a problem.
Agreed. It’s the second reason why I had no compunctions with freezing Tempted Data when I finally landed his fifth star. Off the top of my head, he’s the strongest challenger in ENG/DIP without a trait match bonus and he would get dominated every single time he went up against The Caretaker.
I also froze my Tempted Data, hard as that was. But he's not the highest ENG/DIP in my roster — that would be North Star Tucker (who I'd probably freeze as well, once I got him FF). Emotion Chip Data has a pretty high combo of those skills, but in the order of DIP/ENG, rather than ENG/DIP. Nonetheless, I've never used any of those three in Gauntlet, so they've all been equally useless there. There's just nobody terribly worthwhile in ENG other than banjo man.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
The first reason was that my ENG/DIP crew is actually quite good after a focused campaign to make it better for voyages...immortalizing Bridge Officer Number One, Queen Po, Etana Jol. and Interfaced La Forge made Tempted Data the odd crewman out there as well as in the gauntlet.
I don’t have EC Data, and I am in no rush to level my Tucker because I know how unhelpful he’d be.
Yeah, if we're talking Voyages, none of those initial three even come close to making the cut. I was only talking proficiencies, since that's the thread of this... uh, thread. But sure, Stranded Quark, Interfaced La Forge, Po, Etana, all make Voyages regularly for me. (My BO #1 is only 1/5, but I have considered her for citing... just have other priorities at the moment.)
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
Here's what I'd like to see:
1. Commander division: 1*-2* only. You need a streak of 10 to get a loot box. (And, adjusted ranked rewards.)
2. Captain division: 1*-3* only. Streaks of 5 to get a loot box. (And, adjusted ranked rewards.)
3. Admiral: Gauntlet as it is now. 1*-5*, any crew you want. Streaks of 3... Etc.
Check out our website to find out more:
https://wiki.tenforwardloungers.com/
It's absurd to me that the Achievement rewards for e.g. top 50 and top 25 in a gauntlet are so paltry, given that it takes literal years of playing this game to hope to break into them. I finally broke top 50 for the second time ever, after playing for 2.5 years, and I still haven't broken top 25. The upper levels of gauntlet rounds are completely static and impossible to break into unless you're a member of an ancient fleet with fully upgraded starbase and/or you have Armus, Locutus, Caretaker, etc. which take years to accumulate.
I think segregating gauntlets into tiers based on prior gauntlet placing makes some sense. It'd also be good to maybe ignore fleet proficiency bonuses for gauntlets. Perhaps gauntlets shouldn't run for quite so long, so there'd be more chances per day/week/month to earn a high placement.
But most of all, the problem seems to be the weird rarety and randomness of characters with high Proficiency. It's especially odd from a flavor perspective to have characters with relatively low base skill but relatively high proficiency in a given skill. It's bad game balance to have tons of 4* and 5* characters that are basically garbage, and meanwhile, specific 4* and 5* characters dominate... this means winning in Gauntlets is more to do with the luck/persistence of grinding away at the game long enough to get the specific "best" characters, instead of some kind of reflection of player skill at selecting clever combinations of characters, careful choice of opponent matchups, when to preserve a character for later rounds vs. use them immediately, etc.... you know, the "game" part of the gauntlet minigame? The part that's actually fun?