Changes in Ranked Rewards...
Spocktoberfest
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I am of a mind that the changes in rewards for rankings are not great. The 3 star crew is gone (that’s up to 300 honor lost, and perhaps most importantly, that’s one avenue for introducing new three star crew closed down!) and the single pulls are gone (which is either more lost honor, or worse, lost potential beholds!). The addition of “ISM” isn’t nearly equal to this loss, in my opinion.
Granted, I am scanning a good amount, but not too many times a day due to ISM being somewhat limited... but the value isn’t really there, I am thinking. More ISM is just marginally more constellations. More random constellations are great... but random. It’ll mean marginally more polestars, but not necessarily useful ones of course. And retrieval is still limited by Quantum, so it’s a long process of improvement...
The guaranteed honor was useful, as were new 3*s to collect, and the chance of beholds from single pulls was one of the reasons I play the game, lol. I liked the chance of greatness, little slot machine pulls!
Overall, preferred the old rewards. Though 75 dilithium guaranteed to like everyone IS a real good addition!
Granted, I am scanning a good amount, but not too many times a day due to ISM being somewhat limited... but the value isn’t really there, I am thinking. More ISM is just marginally more constellations. More random constellations are great... but random. It’ll mean marginally more polestars, but not necessarily useful ones of course. And retrieval is still limited by Quantum, so it’s a long process of improvement...
The guaranteed honor was useful, as were new 3*s to collect, and the chance of beholds from single pulls was one of the reasons I play the game, lol. I liked the chance of greatness, little slot machine pulls!
Overall, preferred the old rewards. Though 75 dilithium guaranteed to like everyone IS a real good addition!
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I think the changes, as a whole, are GREAT!
The shrinking of the tiers means there is much less “wasted effort”. They have dil drops for just about everyone who participates. They have the 2nd 5* drop at a much better level (750 now vs 15 before?).
I think we saw by the amount of completion this week that it was likely a huge boon for TP as well.
I have been very critical of TP this morning, but I gotta give it to them on the reward rework. WELL DONE!
Definitely disappointed in the Constellations. The 4 copies of the 5* are a great improvement though along with other changes.
I think net-net it’s a positive change to rewards tables.
What I don't like is the fact that rarity constellations require a top 1000 rank and skill constellations are out of reach for most players. Not only because it implies that a rarity constellation is worth more than a new guaranteed 1/5*, but also because those have an 80% chance of being completely useless for anyone who is able to rank high enough to get them.
If they had switched the rarity constellations with the skill ones, I would like it better. But then maybe the top 250 players would complain about it
I am glad you are digging it. The changes at the top were indeed much needed. But the expansion of the tiers at the top has resulted in reduction in value at the bottom. While everyone gets 75 dilithium (great for all lower level people), I question if that’s worth losing the additional rare crew or even honor, and the 1x pulls (worth nominally 72dil each)...
And I really want them to add more 3* crew, and this was the easiest way!
How else can you get skill polestars by the way? I've only got some from the initial packs. Do they drop from searching too, as I've only ever had traits?
Delighted to get 2x 5* on my first top 750, but getting a single "common" polestar was a bit pointless, unless I can convert it to quantum in the future...
So looking at above responses, they must have finished above 751.
I think this is about right. It’s not that the changes are terrible or anything. Just definitely a step down for those not placing very high. I guess this will encourage competition... and I am not looking forward to the next skirmish, lol. It was already a challenge to get in the top 1500!
I took it as a given the new reward structure would encourage heavier competition in the higher ranks - at least in my experience vs the last galaxy where I ranked high (for myself) this time I ranked 100 spots lower while scoring 1.5x more VPs.
As for skirmishes I’m more of a clear the threshold rewards then I’m done player so I’ll be watching the bloodbath while waiting for the next galaxy event.
I would suggest that the constellations should just be random ones, just like with scanning. So you get either skill, rarity or trait constellations.
As a mostly F2P player (played for over three years now at VIP level 8, to give you an idea of frequency of spending), I am not certain I agree! But yeah, 75 dilithium is good, and an appreciated change. That wasn’t a compliant, I think that the increase in availability of dilithium over the last year or so has been FANTASTIC.
But, I suggest that at a certain point in your STT career, the more than 5 weeks of saving up event dilithium to net you a single post mega pack which may get you just like 800 honor anyway, the 5 weeks of 300 honor and 10-15 single pulls is preferable. That’s the boat I am in anyway. And now of course, with the INCREASED competition I am now afraid will be required to even SNIFF a top 1500 spot... it’s regrettable that the bottom ranks actually get a bit less, in my opinion anyway.
Also, can I just say how glad I am for the respectful and measured responses? Thank you all so far for humoring me and sharing your views!
Sorry, not sure I understand!
- The tier changes are good above 1500.
but for the average player like me, the changes are not good.
- I miss the 300 Honor from airlocking the 3*
- I miss the 2-3 single premium pulls that sometimes gave me great stuff (additional 4*s, once in a blue moon 5*) ... it was hope ... it was something (also ... where am I going to get those last flippin' 150 schematics for the Breen Command Warship now?! or those other 4* and 5* ships that never make it into Arena awards).
The only thing I care about is improving my crew I own and that is only done through Honor to buy citations/Honor sale stuff or through random crew drops from pulls.
So, they've basically taken both those two things away.
- I couldn't care less about 75 Dil to be honest ... I don't put money into the game and the time it will take for that Dil to become remotely useful is weeks and weeks of playing to be able to get a 390 pack or 450(?) ... heh, I hardly ever buy them.
I'm swamped in empty crew slots because I know how to manage crew from the very early days (2016-2017) ... I'm swamped in Voyage revival tokens because I've obtained all the voyage exclusive 4* crew.
--> I'm down value because a single Premium pull costs 72 Dil ... and I used to get 2-3 for free. And WRG has given me back half the value of 3 3* airlocks (300 Honor) with a pitiful 150 Honor. I now have even less reason to dedicate more time to the game than getting 350k VP each event (400k for reruns).
Outside of elite positions, this is not a good step forward.
I ranked sub 750, so I got 2 copies of Wyatt Earp. And that was all that was of value to me (I got an uncommon polestar and some ISM which I blew on scanning... And got nothing of any use). For the amount of time and resources I put in, and I doubt I will rank there for a while... I feel a bit hollow.
And anything below rank 1500 is quite disappointing.
Never mind - still get my purple pull at threshold every week.
All very fair. As an aside I just want to point out that the rarity polestars are absolute junk. I wasted ISM opening them.
@Xoiiku was an early advocate for changes to the structure of ranked rewards. They also coined the term “honor debt”. This is from the before-WRG times.
EDIT: Here is a link to the before-times STT Forums. Please note that you may need to go “incognito” to avoid a glitch.
https://forums.disruptorbeam.com/stt
But I do agree with others that the 3 star and Single Premium pulls should be returned to the rewards. Yes I know they put honor in it's place, but there is always a chance of a behold in the blue portals, and that made them more fun.
The big downfall for ranks 750 and higher is the polestars for various strength crew (common to legendary). Once you can rank that high: 1-3* polestars just take up space. I’d suggest making them straight legendary polestar drops or random polestars instead.
Agreed. I finished inside the top 250 and appreciated the change to get a 2nd copy of the ranked 5*.
However, I found myself disappointed at not getting 5 or 7 (or whatever it used to be around that rank) single premium pulls.
I also didn't even bother opening my constellations yet. I still have polestars for all 6 skills (a few have multiple copies already) and also have an unused 5* polestar (I have a 60% chance of getting a completely useless polestar from the rarity constellation), so those prizes are pointless at the moment at least.
I came away feeling underwhelmed at the changes. Even if the constellation/polestar prizes were better, it will be weeks before I have enough quantum anyway (the initial fun at retrieval has died off significantly).
No issue with removing the three rares - given there aren't many of them, and they're not often added, they tend to just fly out the airlock. I would, however, have preferred honour equivalent to their loss - ie 300, not 150.
As for the dil, I suppose it's of some use even in small increments (I tend to use it on crew slots, so it'll take 20 weeks to get enough for 5 slots on sale), but getting an incremental amount of a currency feels like a lot less of a reward than premium packs.
It's silly, because most single premium packs will result in little of value, but getting packs you can open immediately feels like more of a tangible reward than something which will just slightly tick up the amount of a currency.
old:
new:
Separate from those changes, they have also made going for rank much more enticing by greatly increasing the value of the ranked 5* crew, which is a change people have been asking for for a VERY long time.
I love the new changes (and this is coming from somebody who just opened 6 Rarity Constellations from the last event and got ZERO 5* Polestars and only one 4*! - seriously those Rarity Constellations as they currently function are incredibly disappointing), because I really like the Crew Retrieval system and this updated ranked rewards table makes using it better.
As someone who usually ends up 3000-5000, the changes are disappointing. I pushed for a high finish this time, but the changes mean if I'm not aiming for top 1500, I'll probably put in a lot less effort.