The Autoplay and Speed Up buttons are definitely too small and close together, as has already been mentioned by other people. But overall these changes to ship battles have made them much less tedious.
Not to be a downer, but I think the bigger problem is that ship battles themselves are inherently tedious and, frankly, kind of boring. Making them pass faster with these new changes is really only a superficial solution. I've only been playing for several months, so I might have missed some past discussions on this topic, but I can't be the only one who thinks that ship battles could have more flavor.
Then again, this is a F2P mobile game! And a relatively standout one at that. Can't complain too much.
The Autoplay and Speed Up buttons are definitely too small and close together, as has already been mentioned by other people. But overall these changes to ship battles have made them much less tedious.
Not to be a downer, but I think the bigger problem is that ship battles themselves are inherently tedious and, frankly, kind of boring. Making them pass faster with these new changes is really only a superficial solution. I've only been playing for several months, so I might have missed some past discussions on this topic, but I can't be the only one who thinks that ship battles could have more flavor.
I totally agree with you but those events seem to be preferred by a lot of players. They just want to tap and not do anything thinking. You might prefer Expeditions in that case. But, adding more "flavor" in the form of Story or Strategy has a tendency to make some players FREAK OUT!!
It‘s a huge improvement and big quality of life change. Way less time needed to accomplish XY score. 👍🏻
Yes, scores might be inflated for the couple first events, but am sure mid term,
it will go down again.
So PLEASE keep the changes and please repeat(make it permanent for Skirmishes the awesome offer you introduced with this Skirmishes.
Great deal for a small price = good revenue from all the different types of players(well except the strict non spenders).
Keep: Intro/outro skip, Speed-up - Change it back: Auto-play
For personal enjoyment, I'd rather none of the recent changes stay. I liked the slower pace, and the ability to split my concentration and do other things during the event. Now, even though time spent has been reduced, it requires a lot more attention and is more exhausting/demanding.
But speed-up/intro skip does address a few issues that prior Skirmishes had and should help out players who can't afford to treat the game as another job.
So far I like them a lot. They make clearing threshold rewards a lot less tedious and I generally like space battles better with all of these changes.
I'm not sure yet how it will impact ranking, but so far it doesn't look like top 1500 will take more time than before (more chrons, yes). It's hard to tell if it will take significantly less time though.
For those who dislike auto-play and speed-up because it doesn't allow them to do other things at the same time, just using auto-play without the speed-up could be an option. It will take longer to reach a certain rank, but if you factor in the skip-intro/outro option, maybe it won't even take that much longer than before. You only have to tap three times and you can ignore the space battle completely while it plays out.
The only part where I assume it will have a significant impact (on chrons and playstyle) are the higher ranks (top 50? top 100? top 500?).
Keep: Intro/outro skip - Change it back: Auto-play, Speed-up
Will vote officially later, but my first thought is that I like the option to skip the intro/outro, but wish the rest would revert. Oh sure, I’m loving completing 5 battles in barely over a minute, but I’m not actually playing the event anymore. The AI is playing. I’m just saying “go”. I won’t search for it, but I believe I made this argument when the changes were first announced - this is only a quarter-step removed from full-on macro.
Also, for anyone targeting a specific rank tier, whether top 25 or top 1500 or whatever... at the rate that VP can be generated, almost no lead is safe. I’m imagining a lot of complaints on Monday about rank drops. We’ll see.
The changes certainly make the battles go faster. But what does it say about an event that changes were made so players are even less involved? It's literally set a crew once and then keep pulling the slot machine lever.
I may be the exception, but shouldn't a game have a game aspect to it?
Keep: Intro/outro skip - Change it back: Auto-play, Speed-up
The new changes may make it easier to accumulate rewards, but there is no 'game' in doing it. Once you have designed your ship/crew combo you just keep pressing the button. Skirmish are my favourites as I have to commit to watching the battle and selecting the right crew at the right time for each opponent. There are also good rewards once you clear thresholds. Because you have to apply yourself I can usually get in top 1500. I'm concerned i will have to speed play to keep up and its going to kill the fun/skill of skirmishes. It will be similar to Factions, put in crew, press button, wait for result. I agree on skipping the start/end clips.
I may be the exception, but shouldn't a game have a game aspect to it?
It retains most of the game aspect, which is picking a ship and crew, the rest isn't so much gaming as a race to getting a repetitive strain injury by splodging your screen with finger grease like a maniac.
As someone who misspent a chunk of his childhood in arcades, what we do in events is about as close to gameplay as a long term meth addict is to Miss World.
I get some people enjoy the repetition, and that's fine, but many of us don't, and that should be fine too.
It's a mobile gaming platform problem - how do you keep up fresh content, cheaply, while trying to not burnout or alienate your playerbase by boring them to death with the SSDD stuff after a year or three?
It's why a lot of games are designed to quickly build a playerbase, mine them for cash, then watch them go to the next game, and bring in the next swathe of players. It's a testament to Trek that Timelimes is so 'sticky'
I don't think anyone has an answer, but kudos to TP/WRG for having a try at it with this.
Keep: Intro/outro skip, Auto-play - Change it back: Speed-up
Here is my $0.02:
I like skipping the intros and outros. I think this is a feature a lot of us were asking for, when it came to skirmishes.
I don't mind the auto-mode. What I like most about the auto-mode is that it allows us, the players, to see how our ship setups are played, by the computer, while we are on "defense" in the arena. I don't know that auto-mode is needed in skirmishes, but I don't mind it.
What I think should absolutely be removed is the speed-up function. The speed-up tool, in my opinion, makes it harder for players without "good" rosters to get a high rank.
Here's what I mean, because of the way/order auto-mode plays crew and ship abilities, certain setups just do not work. For example, one of my first skirmish setups was: The Duras Sisters, Ardra, Suus Mahna Sarek, and an event card; all on the Krayton. The thing with that setup is, you have to wait for the Krayton's 'Power Surge' to charge to its 2nd initialize time, at 6s. Not only does this setup 100% not work well in auto-mode, but playing it in manual, with the speed-ups active, is next to impossible. Thus, the speed-ups give an unfair advantage to those with setups that play well in auto-mode. Killy, Ardra, Garth, and an event card, on the Krayton, for example.
I would love to see future incarnations of skirmishes loose the speed-up ability in order to balance-out(ish) the playing field.
Keep: Intro/outro skip, Auto-play - Change it back: Speed-up
Also, I agree with those that are saying the buttons, for speed-up and auto-mode, should be changed. They should be made larger and moved further apart.
That said, if it helps, I have found that my biggest problem is the auto-mode button. And, I have found that, if you tap right in the center of the blue circle (not slightly left or right, on the white words) the auto function works every time. For some reason that button is VERY particular about how it is pressed.
For the sake of reaching 350k for threshold rewards or 400k for legendary crew if available the speed is great. But if I want to rank well, it's gonna eat through more chrons than normal. A case of you can't have it both ways but I like it so far.
For the people that only played to a fixed point (like threshold and out), I would imagine the new features are the single best improvement to the game in some time. For those that are playing for a rank it almost certainly means more chrons and possibly more time spent playing (at the very least, not the time saving experienced by the first group of people). So in the end, mixed results based on your play style. I'm not sure I would change anything though and I'm sure WR is happy to see people spend down chron stockpiles if not buying chrons and intel.
The Autoplay and Speed Up buttons are definitely too small and close together, as has already been mentioned by other people. But overall these changes to ship battles have made them much less tedious.
Not to be a downer, but I think the bigger problem is that ship battles themselves are inherently tedious and, frankly, kind of boring. Making them pass faster with these new changes is really only a superficial solution. I've only been playing for several months, so I might have missed some past discussions on this topic, but I can't be the only one who thinks that ship battles could have more flavor.
Then again, this is a F2P mobile game! And a relatively standout one at that. Can't complain too much.
If memory serves, the original (pre-release) idea for ship battles was going to be more involved but it ended up not working out for technical and/or interface reasons. Think about the complexity involved with space battles in Star Trek Online or even a simpler game like Star Trek Legacy...it would have been magnificent to have that carry over here but I guess it wasn’t meant to be?
I wonder if the poll numbers would change much if we ask again on Tuesday.
Indeed, it’s why I wanted to wait to vote until I had a better handle on the total experience. Already, I have come around to the idea that the automation and speed-up functionality are maybe not well suited to Skirmishes, as nice as they are for the Arena and for powering through thresholds as quickly as possible.
The Autoplay and Speed Up buttons are definitely too small and close together, as has already been mentioned by other people. But overall these changes to ship battles have made them much less tedious.
Not to be a downer, but I think the bigger problem is that ship battles themselves are inherently tedious and, frankly, kind of boring. Making them pass faster with these new changes is really only a superficial solution. I've only been playing for several months, so I might have missed some past discussions on this topic, but I can't be the only one who thinks that ship battles could have more flavor.
Then again, this is a F2P mobile game! And a relatively standout one at that. Can't complain too much.
If memory serves, the original (pre-release) idea for ship battles was going to be more involved but it ended up not working out for technical and/or interface reasons. Think about the complexity involved with space battles in Star Trek Online or even a simpler game like Star Trek Legacy...it would have been magnificent to have that carry over here but I guess it wasn’t meant to be?
I wonder if the poll numbers would change much if we ask again on Tuesday.
Indeed, it’s why I wanted to wait to vote until I had a better handle on the total experience. Already, I have come around to the idea that the automation and speed-up functionality are maybe not well suited to Skirmishes, as nice as they are for the Arena and for powering through thresholds as quickly as possible.
I've been using the auto and sometimes the intro skip when I want to multitask. Just because the 3x speed is there, doesn't mean that I have to use it. Then when I'm ready to power through, I change from my "safe mode" set-up to my speed and efficiency set-up. On "safe mode" my quickest initialization is 4s To allow extra time to hit auto. My aggressive crew starts with Polywater Yar at 2s.
I am not necessarily going for a top finish this week so I'm stopping for now.
I wanted to score some points before weighing in more thoughtfully, and I think overall these changes have been nothing short of incredible. I can definitely see that it is a bit less awesome for those going for rank, but for like 99.9% of the people these changes are amazing.
I have had a few examples where I simply could not press the auto-battle button, I hit it over and over and nothing happens. It could be my thumb, it could be my phone, it could have been a glitch, I'm not sure, but I think if the buttons were slightly larger and possibly spread out a bit more it would be perfect. I also think the auto button could do with a color change, after you've burned through 400,000 Intel the simple on/off gets confusing. Does it say "ON" because it is on? Does it say "ON" because I need to push it to turn it on? After like 4 straight hours, it is not always clear, so maybe have them also be red for off and green for on? Just a suggestion.
It has been a new experience, and one I've had to relearn. It was MUCH easier to multitask in the old system, you had time between the battles to do things like prepare food, wash dishes, get dressed, etc. But the thing is, with this new setup, you don't really NEED to do that anymore. If you need to make food, just stop for a few minutes, make your food, and come back, you can score all those points lost from your break very quickly. You also have a few seconds between each fight to move a computer mouse, click a link, etc. It's taken some time to relearn, but I do like it this way better.
I'm starting to get the hang of 2x. For the moment, I wish it was a simple 1x / 2x toggle so I could slow
down more easily. However, I'm learning how to work around that.
My ship/crew choice works poorly for auto-play, so I avoid it. I certainly don't mind it being available.
Like many others, I wish speed multiplier and auto-play buttons were further apart. I've miss-clicked many times, although nothing disastrous. I also know phone UX can be nightmarish to develop for, given the amount of variation that needs to be supported. And the Pixel 3 does have a smallish screen.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
I'm not sure how people's chroniton stashes are goings down really ... for me this is a non-issue ...
If you want to reach 350k VP you'll still need the same number of chronitons, whether you do it in one hour or in 10.
The more chrontions you spend the more you get back through reward boxes, as you'll also have more chance of getting 300 chroniton reward boxes etc.
For this event;
- I started with 19.5k
- At the moment of writing this, I have 19.6k, 14k intel still saved up, 527k vp (rank 1239).
- Have used a supply kit to run missions.
- Have FE'd nearly 2 5*s (First Officer Chekov and Medic Jett Reno), which required running Away Team missions for some components.
- I'd set myself a lower limit of 15k ... but the lowest I've been is 18.7k so far ... yes, I want to rank, but time is my limiting factor.
As for the changes ... meh ... I could take 'em or leave 'em so far, don't really care with regards to the event ... I've found I've had to pay more attention to what I'm doing because it all goes by so fast, whereas before I could just pay attention to other things while blindly tapping ... I've almost lost a couple of times now because I didn't realise the Auto-tap had apparently missed, or been turned off again, by my chunky fingers.
Comments
Not to be a downer, but I think the bigger problem is that ship battles themselves are inherently tedious and, frankly, kind of boring. Making them pass faster with these new changes is really only a superficial solution. I've only been playing for several months, so I might have missed some past discussions on this topic, but I can't be the only one who thinks that ship battles could have more flavor.
Then again, this is a F2P mobile game! And a relatively standout one at that. Can't complain too much.
Agreed.
I totally agree with you but those events seem to be preferred by a lot of players. They just want to tap and not do anything thinking. You might prefer Expeditions in that case. But, adding more "flavor" in the form of Story or Strategy has a tendency to make some players FREAK OUT!!
Yes, scores might be inflated for the couple first events, but am sure mid term,
it will go down again.
So PLEASE keep the changes and please repeat(make it permanent for Skirmishes the awesome offer you introduced with this Skirmishes.
Great deal for a small price = good revenue from all the different types of players(well except the strict non spenders).
Says the guy murdering the event.
I'm Team squirrel!!!!
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
I will likely bother to hit thresholds with the auto, possibly farm stuff, this is so much better.
But speed-up/intro skip does address a few issues that prior Skirmishes had and should help out players who can't afford to treat the game as another job.
I'm not sure yet how it will impact ranking, but so far it doesn't look like top 1500 will take more time than before (more chrons, yes). It's hard to tell if it will take significantly less time though.
For those who dislike auto-play and speed-up because it doesn't allow them to do other things at the same time, just using auto-play without the speed-up could be an option. It will take longer to reach a certain rank, but if you factor in the skip-intro/outro option, maybe it won't even take that much longer than before. You only have to tap three times and you can ignore the space battle completely while it plays out.
The only part where I assume it will have a significant impact (on chrons and playstyle) are the higher ranks (top 50? top 100? top 500?).
Also, for anyone targeting a specific rank tier, whether top 25 or top 1500 or whatever... at the rate that VP can be generated, almost no lead is safe. I’m imagining a lot of complaints on Monday about rank drops. We’ll see.
I may be the exception, but shouldn't a game have a game aspect to it?
Too many times after hitting auto, I've gone to speed it up and switched off the auto instead, leaving a scramble to correct at 3x speed...
At least it seems to have cured the "big button" issues...
It retains most of the game aspect, which is picking a ship and crew, the rest isn't so much gaming as a race to getting a repetitive strain injury by splodging your screen with finger grease like a maniac.
As someone who misspent a chunk of his childhood in arcades, what we do in events is about as close to gameplay as a long term meth addict is to Miss World.
I get some people enjoy the repetition, and that's fine, but many of us don't, and that should be fine too.
It's a mobile gaming platform problem - how do you keep up fresh content, cheaply, while trying to not burnout or alienate your playerbase by boring them to death with the SSDD stuff after a year or three?
It's why a lot of games are designed to quickly build a playerbase, mine them for cash, then watch them go to the next game, and bring in the next swathe of players. It's a testament to Trek that Timelimes is so 'sticky'
I don't think anyone has an answer, but kudos to TP/WRG for having a try at it with this.
I like skipping the intros and outros. I think this is a feature a lot of us were asking for, when it came to skirmishes.
I don't mind the auto-mode. What I like most about the auto-mode is that it allows us, the players, to see how our ship setups are played, by the computer, while we are on "defense" in the arena. I don't know that auto-mode is needed in skirmishes, but I don't mind it.
What I think should absolutely be removed is the speed-up function. The speed-up tool, in my opinion, makes it harder for players without "good" rosters to get a high rank.
Here's what I mean, because of the way/order auto-mode plays crew and ship abilities, certain setups just do not work. For example, one of my first skirmish setups was: The Duras Sisters, Ardra, Suus Mahna Sarek, and an event card; all on the Krayton. The thing with that setup is, you have to wait for the Krayton's 'Power Surge' to charge to its 2nd initialize time, at 6s. Not only does this setup 100% not work well in auto-mode, but playing it in manual, with the speed-ups active, is next to impossible. Thus, the speed-ups give an unfair advantage to those with setups that play well in auto-mode. Killy, Ardra, Garth, and an event card, on the Krayton, for example.
I would love to see future incarnations of skirmishes loose the speed-up ability in order to balance-out(ish) the playing field.
That said, if it helps, I have found that my biggest problem is the auto-mode button. And, I have found that, if you tap right in the center of the blue circle (not slightly left or right, on the white words) the auto function works every time. For some reason that button is VERY particular about how it is pressed.
If memory serves, the original (pre-release) idea for ship battles was going to be more involved but it ended up not working out for technical and/or interface reasons. Think about the complexity involved with space battles in Star Trek Online or even a simpler game like Star Trek Legacy...it would have been magnificent to have that carry over here but I guess it wasn’t meant to be?
Indeed, it’s why I wanted to wait to vote until I had a better handle on the total experience. Already, I have come around to the idea that the automation and speed-up functionality are maybe not well suited to Skirmishes, as nice as they are for the Arena and for powering through thresholds as quickly as possible.
I've been using the auto and sometimes the intro skip when I want to multitask. Just because the 3x speed is there, doesn't mean that I have to use it. Then when I'm ready to power through, I change from my "safe mode" set-up to my speed and efficiency set-up. On "safe mode" my quickest initialization is 4s To allow extra time to hit auto. My aggressive crew starts with Polywater Yar at 2s.
It's only my opinion but....
You must be new here
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I am not necessarily going for a top finish this week so I'm stopping for now.
I wanted to score some points before weighing in more thoughtfully, and I think overall these changes have been nothing short of incredible. I can definitely see that it is a bit less awesome for those going for rank, but for like 99.9% of the people these changes are amazing.
I have had a few examples where I simply could not press the auto-battle button, I hit it over and over and nothing happens. It could be my thumb, it could be my phone, it could have been a glitch, I'm not sure, but I think if the buttons were slightly larger and possibly spread out a bit more it would be perfect. I also think the auto button could do with a color change, after you've burned through 400,000 Intel the simple on/off gets confusing. Does it say "ON" because it is on? Does it say "ON" because I need to push it to turn it on? After like 4 straight hours, it is not always clear, so maybe have them also be red for off and green for on? Just a suggestion.
It has been a new experience, and one I've had to relearn. It was MUCH easier to multitask in the old system, you had time between the battles to do things like prepare food, wash dishes, get dressed, etc. But the thing is, with this new setup, you don't really NEED to do that anymore. If you need to make food, just stop for a few minutes, make your food, and come back, you can score all those points lost from your break very quickly. You also have a few seconds between each fight to move a computer mouse, click a link, etc. It's taken some time to relearn, but I do like it this way better.
I'm starting to get the hang of 2x. For the moment, I wish it was a simple 1x / 2x toggle so I could slow
down more easily. However, I'm learning how to work around that.
My ship/crew choice works poorly for auto-play, so I avoid it. I certainly don't mind it being available.
Like many others, I wish speed multiplier and auto-play buttons were further apart. I've miss-clicked many times, although nothing disastrous. I also know phone UX can be nightmarish to develop for, given the amount of variation that needs to be supported. And the Pixel 3 does have a smallish screen.
Starport
If you want to reach 350k VP you'll still need the same number of chronitons, whether you do it in one hour or in 10.
The more chrontions you spend the more you get back through reward boxes, as you'll also have more chance of getting 300 chroniton reward boxes etc.
For this event;
- I started with 19.5k
- At the moment of writing this, I have 19.6k, 14k intel still saved up, 527k vp (rank 1239).
- Have used a supply kit to run missions.
- Have FE'd nearly 2 5*s (First Officer Chekov and Medic Jett Reno), which required running Away Team missions for some components.
- I'd set myself a lower limit of 15k ... but the lowest I've been is 18.7k so far ... yes, I want to rank, but time is my limiting factor.
As for the changes ... meh ... I could take 'em or leave 'em so far, don't really care with regards to the event ... I've found I've had to pay more attention to what I'm doing because it all goes by so fast, whereas before I could just pay attention to other things while blindly tapping ... I've almost lost a couple of times now because I didn't realise the Auto-tap had apparently missed, or been turned off again, by my chunky fingers.
... like 'em for Arena though.