I'd be down with a forced restart for EVERYONE, not just the Steam players. I could use that time to stretch my hands out and possibly see about getting my eyes to focus again
You can still do that considering the ranked rewards from 1st to 15th are now the same.
The Guardians of Tomorrow Protecting the Galaxy's Future from Itself
Fleet Admiral
Boy, I sure would hate to inconvenience the people NOT playing this event, but I find it a little inconvenient myself that people can continue racking of 25% more points than me by just leaving their Steam account running.
I kinda like the solution. Probably the best they could do.
I agree 100%. I am also REALLY glad this got handled so quickly, it will probably save a lot of people a lot of headaches, and probably allow some folks to sleep a bit more.
Boy, I sure would hate to inconvenience the people NOT playing this event, but I find it a little inconvenient myself that people can continue racking of 25% more points than me by just leaving their Steam account running.
This!
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the reward change, but I think this event just got a whole lot more competitive and I assumed you'd made it so some people didn't have a clear advantage over others. That's like going to all the effort of creating a vaccine but not actually getting anyone to take it if they don't want to. How long can steam stay open?
I wanted to see for myself what the impact was, so I loaded up the game last night, took a video for the fleet (so everyone could understand just how bad this was), and let it sit. After the "change" was made, I loaded it back up (without restarting) and was still able to skip the animations some... 14 hours later? I had no prompts to restart. I closed out of the game voluntarily and downloaded the new update because this whole mess is dirty.
I'd be down with a forced restart for EVERYONE, not just the Steam players. I could use that time to stretch my hands out and possibly see about getting my eyes to focus again
how about a one day lockout of anybody using steam so the rest of us can catch up on the 25% more points they earned using the exploit
I personally like the solution but I'm pretty sure no-one at TP thought they would be doing something like this to the game when they started work today so considering the circumstances, both game and real life related, I think it was the best they could do.
Whether you agree with the solution or not however, TP should be applauded for how quickly and decisively they handled the issue.
So thank you Shan and all the TP staff.
The Guardians of Tomorrow Protecting the Galaxy's Future from Itself
Fleet Admiral
I wanted to see for myself what the impact was, so I loaded up the game last night, took a video for the fleet (so everyone could understand just how bad this was), and let it sit. After the "change" was made, I loaded it back up (without restarting) and was still able to skip the animations some... 14 hours later? I had no prompts to restart. I closed out of the game voluntarily and downloaded the new update because this whole mess is dirty.
I don't think there were any prompts to restart and i didn't had to download anything, just a restart of the game because i was playing something else.
The new reward tier looks better and i wish they keep it.
I wanted to see for myself what the impact was, so I loaded up the game last night, took a video for the fleet (so everyone could understand just how bad this was), and let it sit. After the "change" was made, I loaded it back up (without restarting) and was still able to skip the animations some... 14 hours later? I had no prompts to restart. I closed out of the game voluntarily and downloaded the new update because this whole mess is dirty.
I don't think there were any prompts to restart and i didn't had to download anything, just a restart of the game because i was playing something else.
The new reward tier looks better and i wish they keep it.
I second this, I know I would actually be competing in a lot more events with this structure as opposed to the current model of holding powder for 2-4 events a year that I can actually push for.
In situations like these, there is no perfect solution.
We looked at it from various angles, and went with what was considered the best of the imperfect options.
Thank you again for you patience while we were figuring this out.
In situations like these, there are no perfect solution.
We looked at it from various angles, and went with what was considered the best of the imperfect options.
Thank you again for you patience while we were figuring this out.
Thank you for how you've handled this. Between the early and often communication and adjusting the rewards now rather than waiting for after the event, I think this is the best I've ever seen a problem handled in STT. Hopefully there will be no more issues in the future, but if there are I think this has been a great model that I hope TP can follow going forward.
I can only speak for myself, but I was neck and neck with Smelly in 4th place when this all went down and WAS committed to doing whatever it took to win top 5 this weekend for the Janeways. I'm taking this decision in stride and choose to see it as an opportunity to spend more time with my family, so I'll be using up the remaining massive pile of Intel I had already farmed and then coasting.
So, I enjoyed the time savings on Steam (at the time I saw it, and for some time afterward, I thought it was available to everyone, but learned differently after visiting the forums).
And I must say, the "25% more VP" thing is a bit optimistic, imo. The best battle times are generally 20 seconds from start of the animation to end of the animation. (This is what I get when Killy delivers the killing blow as soon as she's activated. On rare occasions it's over before then, but it also occasionally lasts a second or more longer.) However, that's not all the time that's spent in a round.
From clicking/tapping Engage, to the start of the animation, is about 4 seconds. Claiming the VP and reward takes approximately 2 seconds (the final VP claim probably a little under a second). Adding all that up, you get 128 seconds, or 2 minutes, 8 seconds. Using the bug can save about 5 seconds, for a total of 25 seconds per round.
Now, this is all best case scenario. Sometimes you just don't get the full 5 seconds. Also, a 20-second battle doesn't always happen. And you've gotta have really fast fingers to get those other times down to their best case. A lot of (very good) players will get closer to 2:20 per total round or even 2:30.
So, assuming best case, it's actually a 19.5% increase in VP. At 2:20, it works out to 17.75%, and at 2:30, 16.66%. Bring that 5 second savings down to 4 seconds, which, in my experience, was a lot more likely, and you get approximately 16% for the 2:08 round, 14% for the 2:20 round, and 13% for the 2:30 round.
Still makes a difference, of course, but the numbers are definitely going to be smaller in actuality. (At least those are my calculations... if I made any mistakes in timing or arithmetic, I'm sure somebody will correct me. )
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
In situations like these, there is no perfect solution.
We looked at it from various angles, and went with what was considered the best of the imperfect options.
Thank you again for you patience while we were figuring this out.
This is the quickest no bs handling of an event glitch. Great start to TP with STT! Thank you
Update:
- we will not force restart everyone, that would be too disruptive and might create additional issues for players who might not even be participating in this event
- we are pushing a server change to expand the ranked rewards for this event, I will let you know once that is done.
Thanks very much for expanding the ranked rewards (it'd be great to keep them for the future. )! I think it was the best possible solution given the situation.
Though it's discouraging that you're not forcing a restart, making us have to continue to fight at a speed disadvantage for the next 3 days if we want those rewards.
Are you able to tell us what kind of additional issues a forced restart might cause, as we usually have forced restarts without issues (unlike forced updates mid-event)? What kind of disruptions are worth keeping the current Tilted Playing field?
Choosing not to level the field impacts next week's faction event as well.
Expanding the rewards was nice. However, without a forced restart, guess who’s gonna benefit from it the most? Steamers have THREE DAYS to claim the top ranks. I REALLY hope TP gives this a second look Monday morning, see’s what percentage of the top 75 are Steamers, and reevaluates whether this was anywhere even close to fair for the rest of us.
And Data, your numbers are off. My crew can clear a set (from one “Begin Skirmish” button to the next) in 2:04 during most skirmishes so consistently you could tell what time it is by counting sets. This event I’m running 2:03. I time myself as part of my routine. I had one set this event clock in at 1:57 but that was an anomaly. And For The Many has a faster crew than me. I don’t know what it is, but someday I may beg her to tell me. The animations take 4 seconds each. That’s 20 seconds per set, every time, without fail (at least on iOS). If you feel like it, run those numbers and see what you get. I’ve been afraid to.
IMO server and game updates shouldn't be implemented on a Wednesday or Thursday. If they were done on Monday after 12:00PM EST you should have time to put them up for all platforms by Thursday.
Doing updates right before events is what makes stuff like this happen.
I agree with @·§ë· For the Many , in that more thought needs to be given for how this situation impacts next week & further on. @Banjo1012 also brought up farming for future galaxy Events, so while it’s very much appreciated that you are bumping everyone up one rank tier, perhaps y’all need to look ahead a bit.
Off-topic rant:
If you want to maintain or even inspire confidence in your player base, of whom we are probably a (very) vocal minority, then you could start by doing more of the feasible things proposed in myriad threads in Make It So (e.g. purgatory, akin to The Holodeck’s hell). The Ship UI is a good start, but for the love of deity-of-choice, fix the frakking Inventory system before @eXo | SilverRose goes nuclear on you again.
Also: Tell us how you are improving the game. Resurrect the Production Updates, start some new Dev Diaries, do something! Don’t leave us always in the dark, searching for answers and parsing dry statistics to glean information. It’s not fun & it’s boring, albeit diverting, while the fact is that the game is sitting there idle for 2-3 hours at a stretch. Is that what your company wants, a mostly-disengaged player base with diminishing LTV? Somehow, I doubt it.
🖖
"In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game." — Nicky Case, The Evolution of Trust
Yeah, I feel you there, I was all prepared for 4 days of fighting tooth and nail for a top 5 spot, but there is little point in that now. At this point I still have like 30K Intel left to burn and I will definitely keep going as much as is necessary to protect my day 1 time/resource investment, but otherwise yeah, when you can go for 2 hours against other active people and get left in the dust, there is no real point in trying to push them. Thankfully the reward tables reflect this now, but this took all the air out of my sails.
And Data, your numbers are off. My crew can clear a set (from one “Begin Skirmish” button to the next) in 2:04 during most skirmishes so consistently you could tell what time it is by counting sets. This event I’m running 2:03. I time myself as part of my routine. I had one set this event clock in at 1:57 but that was an anomaly. And For The Many has a faster crew than me. I don’t know what it is, but someday I may beg her to tell me. The animations take 4 seconds each. That’s 20 seconds per set, every time, without fail (at least on iOS). If you feel like it, run those numbers and see what you get. I’ve been afraid to.
It's not that I don't believe you, but I've not come across any combo of ship and crew that can end a battle that quickly. For the total time to be 16 seconds, you would need to destroy the other ship in the first 3 seconds after the crew and ship positions appear. For instance, I have Rios on my Skirmish ship because he's got a 4-second initialization. But to get the numbers you're talking about, I would have to win the battles before he even gets initialized.
I'd be very curious to learn what crew and ship you might be using to achieve this.
Edit: I should clarify my statements above. When you said "20 seconds per set", it was my assumption you meant 20 seconds from one "Engage" button to the next "Engage" button (as opposed to 20 seconds per battle itself). But if you were indeed talking about total "set" time, then your estimate of 2:03 doesn't match those numbers. 20 seconds per set (which would include the time between "Engage" and the start of the ship animation), plus the 2 seconds to claim VP & bonus reward (for the first 4 battles alone), would only amount to 108 seconds, or 1 minute 48 seconds. That is what I was basing my statement on, regarding having to end each battle in the first 3 seconds after the crew appears.
However, I now realize you must have been referring to the battles themselves taking 20 seconds — which is the length I stated in my original post above. So 2:03 for a round isn't unheard of, although it's very, very fast — I just timed a few rounds and got lucky with a best time of 2:10. But even at 2:03, the savings from using the bug to eliminate the final 5 seconds of each battle would only amount to an additional 20% in VP, not 25%.
For what it's worth, I'm playing on Steam, with a very fast broadband connection, so I can't imagine there would be much difference between the in-between numbers I see and what another player is seeing.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
However, without a forced restart, guess who’s gonna benefit from it the most? Steamers have THREE DAYS to claim the top ranks. I REALLY hope TP gives this a second look Monday morning, see’s what percentage of the top 75 are Steamers, and reevaluates whether this was anywhere even close to fair for the rest of us.
I don't think they know which platform every player used and for how long. I, for example, used 3 platforms during this event. IMO the best thing would have been a force restart yesterday (and even today it's not too late to make improvements as we are still in the first part of the event), but I think it's too late for fairness.
I agree with @·§ë· For the Many , in that more thought needs to be given for how this situation impacts next week & further on. @Banjo1012 also brought up farming for future galaxy Events, so while it’s very much appreciated that you are bumping everyone up one rank tier, perhaps y’all need to look ahead a bit.
I don't think it has any negative impact on future events. Battles are shorter so you can use more chrons to farm, but you get the same amount of items for those chrons. I think most of the players decide how much they skirmish based on chrons or the desired rank, not on a limit of hours. The speed of battles affects directly the ranking and the time involved, but not the inventory.
There's a segment of players who say that Steam is the fastest platform to play, early feature deploy notwithstanding.
So yeah, the early feature deploy is bad. Lack of parity across platforms is worse.
While I appreciate the TP turn around on a response, I don't find the solution remotely acceptable.
A Janeway for every event player and expanded rewards until platform performance is leveled should be table stakes.
I could not loggin yesterday, so I have lost one day for loggin and one day for this bug. I can't reach the ranked rewards any more, even if I start now and play without sleep.
Comments
You can still do that considering the ranked rewards from 1st to 15th are now the same.
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from Itself
Fleet Admiral
For more info on us, check our wiki page:
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I kinda like the solution. Probably the best they could do.
I agree 100%. I am also REALLY glad this got handled so quickly, it will probably save a lot of people a lot of headaches, and probably allow some folks to sleep a bit more.
This!
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the reward change, but I think this event just got a whole lot more competitive and I assumed you'd made it so some people didn't have a clear advantage over others. That's like going to all the effort of creating a vaccine but not actually getting anyone to take it if they don't want to. How long can steam stay open?
Check out our website to find out more:
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I wanted to see for myself what the impact was, so I loaded up the game last night, took a video for the fleet (so everyone could understand just how bad this was), and let it sit. After the "change" was made, I loaded it back up (without restarting) and was still able to skip the animations some... 14 hours later? I had no prompts to restart. I closed out of the game voluntarily and downloaded the new update because this whole mess is dirty.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
how about a one day lockout of anybody using steam so the rest of us can catch up on the 25% more points they earned using the exploit
Whether you agree with the solution or not however, TP should be applauded for how quickly and decisively they handled the issue.
So thank you Shan and all the TP staff.
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from Itself
Fleet Admiral
For more info on us, check our wiki page:
https://sttwiki.org/wiki/Fleet_Guardians_of_Tomorrow
GoT Bot server: https://discord.gg/R8QzpjW
All are welcome to join and use the Bot.
I don't think there were any prompts to restart and i didn't had to download anything, just a restart of the game because i was playing something else.
The new reward tier looks better and i wish they keep it.
I second this, I know I would actually be competing in a lot more events with this structure as opposed to the current model of holding powder for 2-4 events a year that I can actually push for.
We looked at it from various angles, and went with what was considered the best of the imperfect options.
Thank you again for you patience while we were figuring this out.
Thank you for how you've handled this. Between the early and often communication and adjusting the rewards now rather than waiting for after the event, I think this is the best I've ever seen a problem handled in STT. Hopefully there will be no more issues in the future, but if there are I think this has been a great model that I hope TP can follow going forward.
Shan, do the top 5 get the win achievement as well?
And I must say, the "25% more VP" thing is a bit optimistic, imo. The best battle times are generally 20 seconds from start of the animation to end of the animation. (This is what I get when Killy delivers the killing blow as soon as she's activated. On rare occasions it's over before then, but it also occasionally lasts a second or more longer.) However, that's not all the time that's spent in a round.
From clicking/tapping Engage, to the start of the animation, is about 4 seconds. Claiming the VP and reward takes approximately 2 seconds (the final VP claim probably a little under a second). Adding all that up, you get 128 seconds, or 2 minutes, 8 seconds. Using the bug can save about 5 seconds, for a total of 25 seconds per round.
Now, this is all best case scenario. Sometimes you just don't get the full 5 seconds. Also, a 20-second battle doesn't always happen. And you've gotta have really fast fingers to get those other times down to their best case. A lot of (very good) players will get closer to 2:20 per total round or even 2:30.
So, assuming best case, it's actually a 19.5% increase in VP. At 2:20, it works out to 17.75%, and at 2:30, 16.66%. Bring that 5 second savings down to 4 seconds, which, in my experience, was a lot more likely, and you get approximately 16% for the 2:08 round, 14% for the 2:20 round, and 13% for the 2:30 round.
Still makes a difference, of course, but the numbers are definitely going to be smaller in actuality. (At least those are my calculations... if I made any mistakes in timing or arithmetic, I'm sure somebody will correct me.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
This is the quickest no bs handling of an event glitch. Great start to TP with STT! Thank you
Thanks very much for expanding the ranked rewards (it'd be great to keep them for the future.
Though it's discouraging that you're not forcing a restart, making us have to continue to fight at a speed disadvantage for the next 3 days if we want those rewards.
Are you able to tell us what kind of additional issues a forced restart might cause, as we usually have forced restarts without issues (unlike forced updates mid-event)? What kind of disruptions are worth keeping the current Tilted Playing field?
Choosing not to level the field impacts next week's faction event as well.
~· Fly with the Subspace Eddies! ·~
And Data, your numbers are off. My crew can clear a set (from one “Begin Skirmish” button to the next) in 2:04 during most skirmishes so consistently you could tell what time it is by counting sets. This event I’m running 2:03. I time myself as part of my routine. I had one set this event clock in at 1:57 but that was an anomaly. And For The Many has a faster crew than me. I don’t know what it is, but someday I may beg her to tell me. The animations take 4 seconds each. That’s 20 seconds per set, every time, without fail (at least on iOS). If you feel like it, run those numbers and see what you get. I’ve been afraid to.
Doing updates right before events is what makes stuff like this happen.
Off-topic rant:
Also: Tell us how you are improving the game. Resurrect the Production Updates, start some new Dev Diaries, do something! Don’t leave us always in the dark, searching for answers and parsing dry statistics to glean information. It’s not fun & it’s boring, albeit diverting, while the fact is that the game is sitting there idle for 2-3 hours at a stretch. Is that what your company wants, a mostly-disengaged player base with diminishing LTV? Somehow, I doubt it.
It's not that I don't believe you, but I've not come across any combo of ship and crew that can end a battle that quickly. For the total time to be 16 seconds, you would need to destroy the other ship in the first 3 seconds after the crew and ship positions appear. For instance, I have Rios on my Skirmish ship because he's got a 4-second initialization. But to get the numbers you're talking about, I would have to win the battles before he even gets initialized.
I'd be very curious to learn what crew and ship you might be using to achieve this.
Edit: I should clarify my statements above. When you said "20 seconds per set", it was my assumption you meant 20 seconds from one "Engage" button to the next "Engage" button (as opposed to 20 seconds per battle itself). But if you were indeed talking about total "set" time, then your estimate of 2:03 doesn't match those numbers. 20 seconds per set (which would include the time between "Engage" and the start of the ship animation), plus the 2 seconds to claim VP & bonus reward (for the first 4 battles alone), would only amount to 108 seconds, or 1 minute 48 seconds. That is what I was basing my statement on, regarding having to end each battle in the first 3 seconds after the crew appears.
However, I now realize you must have been referring to the battles themselves taking 20 seconds — which is the length I stated in my original post above. So 2:03 for a round isn't unheard of, although it's very, very fast — I just timed a few rounds and got lucky with a best time of 2:10. But even at 2:03, the savings from using the bug to eliminate the final 5 seconds of each battle would only amount to an additional 20% in VP, not 25%.
For what it's worth, I'm playing on Steam, with a very fast broadband connection, so I can't imagine there would be much difference between the in-between numbers I see and what another player is seeing.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I don't think they know which platform every player used and for how long. I, for example, used 3 platforms during this event. IMO the best thing would have been a force restart yesterday (and even today it's not too late to make improvements as we are still in the first part of the event), but I think it's too late for fairness.
I don't think it has any negative impact on future events. Battles are shorter so you can use more chrons to farm, but you get the same amount of items for those chrons. I think most of the players decide how much they skirmish based on chrons or the desired rank, not on a limit of hours. The speed of battles affects directly the ranking and the time involved, but not the inventory.
So yeah, the early feature deploy is bad. Lack of parity across platforms is worse.
While I appreciate the TP turn around on a response, I don't find the solution remotely acceptable.
A Janeway for every event player and expanded rewards until platform performance is leveled should be table stakes.