I would like to see expeditions, the main thing that needs to improve is crew sorting, with an option to sort by event crew.
There are a few smaller improvements I would like to see.
Indicators on crew showing which ones are event crew. This would be something on their portrait, showing up in all parts of the game, so I can see them when e.g. selecting crew for voyages.
Sorting voyage ships by AM, so my bonus ship is always first.
Allowing tick boxes on voyage crew selection, to select bonus trait crew, and legendary only crew.
I understand why folks are voting for a new game mode, but since it is almost certainly not going to happen for a long while, I rolled with tweaking and reintroducing Expeditions. Less work for the devs, so far more likely. The rewards would definitely need to be overhauled, though, to make it worthwhile and enjoyable.
at some point, QoL and bug fixes will not retain bored players. This game has been around for 5.5 years ... it has no future if there's nothing new to keep players engaged.
I just want the blasted thing to work like it should. I can literally spend more time relaunching the thing than playing. I can't type. Antimatter notices don't work. Make it work right, then I can decide what I think should be added next.
I agree 100% Fix what is broken in the game before adding new stuff. Sometimes I have to restart before every ad-warp that I do. I don't use the game chat at all because it is crap. And fleets would be so much more efficient if we had just basic control over them.
I would like a new event type and more single-player non-event content, rather than just more ways to pay for card collecting.
Having said that, I would gladly accept a month or two of re-run events (maybe old mega events for newer players and to help get and/or add stars to old mega 5* crew) if it gave developers a chance to finally deal with so many of the outstanding QoL improvements and outright bug fixes that have been requested.
Have to accept the fact of finite resources and prioritize... for now. If you get that replicator tech working so society can spend more time on games, let us know.
Definitely love the Lower Decks input. @Captain Idol 's Streets of Rage idea is a welcome name drop. Lower Deckers vs Borg Drones would be pretty sweet. Every so often they adapt and you have to make a SCI, ENG, or MED check to overcome the adaptation.
What if they adjusted the points on an expedition to match galaxy event points so people could choose expedition or galaxy and the two ran simultaneously with players choosing to do one or the other but couldn’t do both?
The issue with expeditions as far as TP is concerned, is that they are difficult to produce and balance. It is a lot of work for one event.
If they made a duel event, it would be even more work, so I doubt will happen.
The last bunch of expedition events were basically copy/paste of the map anyway. The issue is engagement is lower and they sell less tickets than they do chrons/shuttle speedups so they make less money. They need to find a way to make players want to play expedition events and drive more sales.
I primarily want more things to do with crew, and a change of pace from the usual events. With a new game mode off the table, Expeditions fit the bill in both respects.
I have 70 immortalized gold crew. I have 500 more crew unfrozen, half of which are golds of various fuse level, only a handful of which are unleveled. 90% of the purple crew I have unfrozen are immortalized. I don't say this to brag; others have far more than I. I say (write) this to show the futility of expedition events. Even with half as many as I have, newer players cannot compete. I could probably ace expedition events without bonus crew.
This says nothing about if the events are good or tedious drudgery. It says they are the least fair of all the events. With galaxy and skirmish events, a bit of saved chronitons and a little more time spent and you can do alright. Faction events are biased for veteran players as well, but carefully saved time reducers and diligence in timing can compensate enough.
Expedition events are well loved by some people, but they for many they are either completely unobtainable or they are a challangeless click-fest just like every other event.
I don't recall anyone ever putting forth a way to improve expeditions. If they can improve them, good luck. Otherwise, they are just putting energy into something inherently problematic.
I say better to start something completely new than try to fix what no one knows how to fix.
The simplest fix I've seen for expeditions is the search function (which was present on the last expedition) and loot boxes (like skirmish) to make it worth our while.
What I want is to be able to set my shared crew for faction events a day early. Wednesday the packs go live and we should be able to set our shared crew for the squad a whole 24 hours in advance. period!
“What's a knockout like you doing in a computer-generated gin joint like this?”
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
A new game mode would be good and all, if it it gave me something else to do in the game after dailies are done and in a way that utilizes my roster.
But one thing that I want the most is, I want a new difficulty level on all levels in the game. Normal - Elite - Epic - ________.
This uses the same story, episodes, distress calls etc (though a new episode would be GREATLY appreciated) but increases the difficulty to account for the power creep in the game and adds new loot tables to that tier. I enjoyed playing through the game so much, and then it was over... I want to get back to the gameplay that hooked me as a newer and growing player and not sit idle between events, or megas to catch my interest. To me this was the core of the game, and I miss it.
If the development focus is not on something like that, then I hope it is something as expansive and engrossing as that. Because I am lvl96, I have done almost everything in the game I want to... hook me again WRG, please.
This is very well stated. Once you finish all the missions there's literally nothing to do aside from events. Adding this extra tier would give everyone something to aim for plus as you said wouldn't be nearly as much work.
Adding onto your idea, it might be fun to have a rolling series of these as a challenge mode. So they wouldn't all be available all the time. Each week a new mission would have it's Ultra tier unlocked and you have a week to get through it and get the rewards large quantities of good stuff like chrons (1-5k), honor (5-15/20k), single (5+) or 10x pulls, etc. (not garbage like ISM, credits, shuttle boosts [premium 10x might be okay], or 10x basic portal pulls). You could do the same drops each week so there's more room to grow and we get some actual good loot.
If you wanted to engage newer players you could have a whole distress call of these with different tiers. Lower tiers give you crappier rewards but still something to aim for. To keep it easy, I'm thinking the missions would have no story and all be the same shape from week to week. You'd randomize the skills and traits to spice it up.
There should be a moratorium on ANY new content until they can fix the existing bugs & other issues. Yet again today we had an Event that crashed during the start. Has it been going on a month now?
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
There should be a moratorium on ANY new content until they can fix the existing bugs & other issues. Yet again today we had an Event that crashed during the start. Has it been going on a month now?
I don't disagree. However, I think you need to define bug. There are several real bugs and lots of poorly developed/executed things we call bugs. I'm genuinely interested in what you consider the bugs.
There should be a moratorium on ANY new content until they can fix the existing bugs & other issues. Yet again today we had an Event that crashed during the start. Has it been going on a month now?
I don't disagree. However, I think you need to define bug. There are several real bugs and lots of poorly developed/executed things we call bugs. I'm genuinely interested in what you consider the bugs.
The Events never starting right now would be the main thing. An issue for one Event, or maybe two in a row is one thing. But it feels like this has been a thing for like a month's worth of Events at least. Whatever they have to keep doing to fix it, maybe code that into the code? So it doesn;t happen again the next time?
I am sure there must be other issues, that would be related to coding problems. But it is 0220 here, and I haven't slept.
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
There should be a moratorium on ANY new content until they can fix the existing bugs & other issues. Yet again today we had an Event that crashed during the start. Has it been going on a month now?
I don't disagree. However, I think you need to define bug. There are several real bugs and lots of poorly developed/executed things we call bugs. I'm genuinely interested in what you consider the bugs.
The Events never starting right now would be the main thing. An issue for one Event, or maybe two in a row is one thing. But it feels like this has been a thing for like a month's worth of Events at least. Whatever they have to keep doing to fix it, maybe code that into the code? So it doesn;t happen again the next time?
I am sure there must be other issues, that would be related to coding problems. But it is 0220 here, and I haven't slept.
If they were coding something to fix the event problems I'm sure they would have made it permanent already. My guess is they don't have enough servers when everyone tries to play at exactly 12:00. They might not be doing anything to fix it each week. Just having people give up and try later reduces the peak load until their servers can handle it.
There should be a moratorium on ANY new content until they can fix the existing bugs & other issues. Yet again today we had an Event that crashed during the start. Has it been going on a month now?
I don't disagree. However, I think you need to define bug. There are several real bugs and lots of poorly developed/executed things we call bugs. I'm genuinely interested in what you consider the bugs.
The Events never starting right now would be the main thing. An issue for one Event, or maybe two in a row is one thing. But it feels like this has been a thing for like a month's worth of Events at least. Whatever they have to keep doing to fix it, maybe code that into the code? So it doesn;t happen again the next time?
I am sure there must be other issues, that would be related to coding problems. But it is 0220 here, and I haven't slept.
If they were coding something to fix the event problems I'm sure they would have made it permanent already. My guess is they don't have enough servers when everyone tries to play at exactly 12:00. They might not be doing anything to fix it each week. Just having people give up and try later reduces the peak load until their servers can handle it.
The servers crashing at the start of Factions was a problem a few years ago, as I recall. Lasted a few months before they finally patched it. Hopefully it'll be a bit quicker this time.
I'd love to see Voyages expanded, perhaps with the ability to send multiple voyages. Although whenever I think through how that would work, it seems awfully fiddly, and hard to balance.
Maybe rather than multiple voyages, WRG needs to expand the current system. Let's call these "Away Teams," an optional system attached to a voyage, but not impacting normal functionality. The goal would be to allow a larger crew investment, and greater rewards, without touching the current system.
Maybe there'd be a few "away teams" so you can choose which ones you want to invest in. An individual team would be smaller than a full voyage compliment, with a larger (or at least, somewhat different) trait pool to give more value to a wider range of traits. There would need to be limits on how they generate rewards so you can't just trawl with lots of low level groups, maybe they only get rewards with successful skill checks or something.
Just one random idea. In gaming ideas are easy, it's making ideas work with your existing framework and resources which is hard! And ultimately what I'm looking for is expanded voyages to better utilize my expanding crew. Maybe there's a clever way to make multiple voyages work which I couldn't figure out.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
I would love to see expedition events reworked and have tickets be good for the entire period without daily refills. Some kind of expedition + galaxy in parallel could be interesting. Instead of using normal items in the galaxy, you use special items that you farm by running the expedition event. And then tickets to play the expedition portion. But even that needs to deal with voyages locking up crew which didn't exist when expedition events were first created.
I really like the idea of expeditions farming unique items used in a galaxy even. Or alternatively, maybe you farm bonus galaxy items, shuttle boosters/tokens, and intel to be used in the second half.
I enjoy chapter missions, but once they're all completed there's no reason to do them. Expeditions should scratch that itch, but doing the missions over and over and over and over again is tedious. I'd fix this with the following:
Expeditions operate like limited edition Chapters: no tickets, no fatigue.
150k VP if you clear all nodes in all missions in all three difficulties. So, enough to get three stars on the SR, and their top tier equipment.
200k worth of VP as bonus on select nodes. Rather than an "all or nothing," there'd be several tiers on each, requiring higher and higher goals. Nothing too excessive, but you won't clear threshold without some solid crew.
If you've cleared all bonus VP from a node, you draw from a rewards pool similar to Skirmishes, with more difficult nodes provided larger amounts. This allows folks to go beyond 350k.
Probably works best as part of a hybrid, specifically the first part.
There's a problem here, monetization. We players may not care, but it's important for the game. And as written, there's nothing here other than chron purchases.
So let's add something new: boosters can be used to help complete nodes. This gives existing boosters more utility than shuttles and galaxy events, and could potentially be extended to normal chapters. It also means that you don't need lots of top tier crew to clear 350k VP as long as you're willing to use boosters.
Also, if Expeditions are limited to the first half of hybrid events, it means the second half will be heavily competitive for ranked rewards, which may also help with monetization.
Of course, even if this sounds cool, from the sounds of it Expeditions are a massive pain to construct, and if anything I've probably made them more difficult to construct and balance.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
The best new feature I can think of is to replace gauntlet with a real pvp feature with teams of characters fighting each other with animation like the ship battles. Other games do this and it can be a lot of fun, Unfortunately I think that is too much of an investment for this game with the current number of players.
Another idea would be to rework expeditions (stay with me) so that it would be a recurring mini event . You would just have to get through the missions once to earn the rewards so that it doesn't become a grind fest. Instead it would be crafted so that to clear all missions you would need a lot of specific immortalised crew matching the required traits. The rewards could be Quantum, ISM, Skill/Rarity constellations etc. This way players can build their crews to clear the missions the next time the mini event occurs and the time to create the missions isn't a one off for the amount of development time.
Another example would be a series of ship battles that are actually hard to win and have traits such as only Ferengi ships and crew etc.
In the same vane you could have a number shuttle missions with difficult traits to fill. You might be able to get a high success percentage chance on the klingon shuttle mission but you keep failing the Andorian one so you need to recruit/strengthen that area of your crew.
These harder to complete mini-events could even be classed as something completely different like Section 31 missions. Access to this class of event could be locked until a player is more advanced such as having cleared all the missions on the Galaxy Map.
I hated the attempt to make a 6-day event that tried once in order to make a 3-parter.
But I would LOVE an event with Faction, Galaxy, Skirmish, and Expedition all 24 hours long.
Agreed, that 6 day deal was not enjoyable. I do like your idea of an event featuring each event mode to date. That would be fun and offer a little bit to everyone. And, varying the order of the modes could add to the interest as well.
“A committee is a cul-de-sac, down which good ideas are lured and quietly strangled.” —Mark TwainMEMBER: [BoB] Barrel of Bloodwine... We are recruiting and putting the “curv” in scurvy! Best Event Finish: #3 Honor Debt: Inconceivable...Honor Bank Account: Slowly building...
Update the prizes in Gauntlet and Voyage. Easy to do and would make a lot of people happy.
I prefer having credits and merit then crew training. I have 32767 intermediate command training and I'm still getting a lot of them... Useless. I have enough replicator rations.
I understand why folks are voting for a new game mode, but since it is almost certainly not going to happen for a long while, I rolled with tweaking and reintroducing Expeditions. Less work for the devs, so far more likely. The rewards would definitely need to be overhauled, though, to make it worthwhile and enjoyable.
I'm not sure this kind of tactical voting is useful. If WRG could see that the demand for a new game mode was very large, then they'd be more motivated to make it happen perhaps? I see any time they spend on anything else a waste of effort because the 'game' isn't getting any less stale.
Update the prizes in Gauntlet and Voyage. Easy to do and would make a lot of people happy.
I prefer having credits and merit then crew training. I have 32767 intermediate command training and I'm still getting a lot of them... Useless. I have enough replicator rations.
I have oodles of Training as well, despite also using them frequently for replication.
However, in the early game I was constantly starved for trainers. I ended up chucking most one and two star crew, because even as a VIP 0 I was struggling to complete my 3-5 star crew.
I suddenly flipped from severe depletion to an over-abundance super quick. I happened to get my fourth shuttle around the same time I brought my last faction to honored status, and suddenly I was living in Scrooge McDuck's Trainer Vault.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
Good choices to be sure. I'm a little saddened though by the lack of numbers hoping for fleet management to be overhauled. I guess as a prior XO and Admiral, I look at things differently than the average player. Being able to assign a new squadron leader without having to boot someone first or being able to recruit from a reasonable list of potential candidates, instead of the same ones over and over would be a good start. Fixing chat wouldn't make me flinch, as there are good options available outside of the game. So yeah, fleet management. Lol.
Apologies for bumping this up when it may have run it’s course, but I keep forgetting to say this:
It might not be a major project, and it’s certainly something we can live without, but I’ve always wanted some visual feedback when the boost applied to a galaxy build is the reason for a successful rare drop. Obviously, the percentage of time this occurs should exactly scale with the boost (2% for gray, 8% for blue, etc.), but I just think it would be a fun little thing to add to the outcome.
With respect to some ideas above, I really like the notion of an “ultra” level for the existing episodes. Instantly gives new value to power-creeping cards and various earned stat bonuses. Can potentially fill in some drop rate holes in the existing missions but at really high chron cost so we don’t instantly acquire hundreds of a previously hard to obtain items. Put a few trait-related bottlenecks in there to make targeting certain crew important (but decent crew so that we won’t mind retrieving them if necessary).
Comments
There are a few smaller improvements I would like to see.
Indicators on crew showing which ones are event crew. This would be something on their portrait, showing up in all parts of the game, so I can see them when e.g. selecting crew for voyages.
Sorting voyage ships by AM, so my bonus ship is always first.
Allowing tick boxes on voyage crew selection, to select bonus trait crew, and legendary only crew.
at some point, QoL and bug fixes will not retain bored players. This game has been around for 5.5 years ... it has no future if there's nothing new to keep players engaged.
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I agree 100% Fix what is broken in the game before adding new stuff. Sometimes I have to restart before every ad-warp that I do. I don't use the game chat at all because it is crap. And fleets would be so much more efficient if we had just basic control over them.
Having said that, I would gladly accept a month or two of re-run events (maybe old mega events for newer players and to help get and/or add stars to old mega 5* crew) if it gave developers a chance to finally deal with so many of the outstanding QoL improvements and outright bug fixes that have been requested.
Have to accept the fact of finite resources and prioritize... for now. If you get that replicator tech working so society can spend more time on games, let us know.
Definitely love the Lower Decks input. @Captain Idol 's Streets of Rage idea is a welcome name drop. Lower Deckers vs Borg Drones would be pretty sweet. Every so often they adapt and you have to make a SCI, ENG, or MED check to overcome the adaptation.
The last bunch of expedition events were basically copy/paste of the map anyway. The issue is engagement is lower and they sell less tickets than they do chrons/shuttle speedups so they make less money. They need to find a way to make players want to play expedition events and drive more sales.
This says nothing about if the events are good or tedious drudgery. It says they are the least fair of all the events. With galaxy and skirmish events, a bit of saved chronitons and a little more time spent and you can do alright. Faction events are biased for veteran players as well, but carefully saved time reducers and diligence in timing can compensate enough.
Expedition events are well loved by some people, but they for many they are either completely unobtainable or they are a challangeless click-fest just like every other event.
I don't recall anyone ever putting forth a way to improve expeditions. If they can improve them, good luck. Otherwise, they are just putting energy into something inherently problematic.
I say better to start something completely new than try to fix what no one knows how to fix.
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
This is very well stated. Once you finish all the missions there's literally nothing to do aside from events. Adding this extra tier would give everyone something to aim for plus as you said wouldn't be nearly as much work.
Adding onto your idea, it might be fun to have a rolling series of these as a challenge mode. So they wouldn't all be available all the time. Each week a new mission would have it's Ultra tier unlocked and you have a week to get through it and get the rewards large quantities of good stuff like chrons (1-5k), honor (5-15/20k), single (5+) or 10x pulls, etc. (not garbage like ISM, credits, shuttle boosts [premium 10x might be okay], or 10x basic portal pulls). You could do the same drops each week so there's more room to grow and we get some actual good loot.
If you wanted to engage newer players you could have a whole distress call of these with different tiers. Lower tiers give you crappier rewards but still something to aim for. To keep it easy, I'm thinking the missions would have no story and all be the same shape from week to week. You'd randomize the skills and traits to spice it up.
I don't disagree. However, I think you need to define bug. There are several real bugs and lots of poorly developed/executed things we call bugs. I'm genuinely interested in what you consider the bugs.
The Events never starting right now would be the main thing. An issue for one Event, or maybe two in a row is one thing. But it feels like this has been a thing for like a month's worth of Events at least. Whatever they have to keep doing to fix it, maybe code that into the code? So it doesn;t happen again the next time?
I am sure there must be other issues, that would be related to coding problems. But it is 0220 here, and I haven't slept.
If they were coding something to fix the event problems I'm sure they would have made it permanent already. My guess is they don't have enough servers when everyone tries to play at exactly 12:00. They might not be doing anything to fix it each week. Just having people give up and try later reduces the peak load until their servers can handle it.
The servers crashing at the start of Factions was a problem a few years ago, as I recall. Lasted a few months before they finally patched it. Hopefully it'll be a bit quicker this time.
Lower Decks would be beyond awesome. So many interesting characters.
Oh, it's dead. Some of us masochists are trying to resurrect it. So I guess your position ought to be, "And STAY dead, Expedition!"
Maybe rather than multiple voyages, WRG needs to expand the current system. Let's call these "Away Teams," an optional system attached to a voyage, but not impacting normal functionality. The goal would be to allow a larger crew investment, and greater rewards, without touching the current system.
Maybe there'd be a few "away teams" so you can choose which ones you want to invest in. An individual team would be smaller than a full voyage compliment, with a larger (or at least, somewhat different) trait pool to give more value to a wider range of traits. There would need to be limits on how they generate rewards so you can't just trawl with lots of low level groups, maybe they only get rewards with successful skill checks or something.
Just one random idea. In gaming ideas are easy, it's making ideas work with your existing framework and resources which is hard! And ultimately what I'm looking for is expanded voyages to better utilize my expanding crew. Maybe there's a clever way to make multiple voyages work which I couldn't figure out.
Starport
I really like the idea of expeditions farming unique items used in a galaxy even. Or alternatively, maybe you farm bonus galaxy items, shuttle boosters/tokens, and intel to be used in the second half.
I enjoy chapter missions, but once they're all completed there's no reason to do them. Expeditions should scratch that itch, but doing the missions over and over and over and over again is tedious. I'd fix this with the following:
There's a problem here, monetization. We players may not care, but it's important for the game. And as written, there's nothing here other than chron purchases.
So let's add something new: boosters can be used to help complete nodes. This gives existing boosters more utility than shuttles and galaxy events, and could potentially be extended to normal chapters. It also means that you don't need lots of top tier crew to clear 350k VP as long as you're willing to use boosters.
Also, if Expeditions are limited to the first half of hybrid events, it means the second half will be heavily competitive for ranked rewards, which may also help with monetization.
Of course, even if this sounds cool, from the sounds of it Expeditions are a massive pain to construct, and if anything I've probably made them more difficult to construct and balance.
Starport
Another idea would be to rework expeditions (stay with me) so that it would be a recurring mini event . You would just have to get through the missions once to earn the rewards so that it doesn't become a grind fest. Instead it would be crafted so that to clear all missions you would need a lot of specific immortalised crew matching the required traits. The rewards could be Quantum, ISM, Skill/Rarity constellations etc. This way players can build their crews to clear the missions the next time the mini event occurs and the time to create the missions isn't a one off for the amount of development time.
Another example would be a series of ship battles that are actually hard to win and have traits such as only Ferengi ships and crew etc.
In the same vane you could have a number shuttle missions with difficult traits to fill. You might be able to get a high success percentage chance on the klingon shuttle mission but you keep failing the Andorian one so you need to recruit/strengthen that area of your crew.
These harder to complete mini-events could even be classed as something completely different like Section 31 missions. Access to this class of event could be locked until a player is more advanced such as having cleared all the missions on the Galaxy Map.
Agreed, that 6 day deal was not enjoyable. I do like your idea of an event featuring each event mode to date. That would be fun and offer a little bit to everyone. And, varying the order of the modes could add to the interest as well.
I prefer having credits and merit then crew training. I have 32767 intermediate command training and I'm still getting a lot of them... Useless. I have enough replicator rations.
I'm not sure this kind of tactical voting is useful. If WRG could see that the demand for a new game mode was very large, then they'd be more motivated to make it happen perhaps? I see any time they spend on anything else a waste of effort because the 'game' isn't getting any less stale.
However, in the early game I was constantly starved for trainers. I ended up chucking most one and two star crew, because even as a VIP 0 I was struggling to complete my 3-5 star crew.
I suddenly flipped from severe depletion to an over-abundance super quick. I happened to get my fourth shuttle around the same time I brought my last faction to honored status, and suddenly I was living in Scrooge McDuck's Trainer Vault.
Starport
It might not be a major project, and it’s certainly something we can live without, but I’ve always wanted some visual feedback when the boost applied to a galaxy build is the reason for a successful rare drop. Obviously, the percentage of time this occurs should exactly scale with the boost (2% for gray, 8% for blue, etc.), but I just think it would be a fun little thing to add to the outcome.
With respect to some ideas above, I really like the notion of an “ultra” level for the existing episodes. Instantly gives new value to power-creeping cards and various earned stat bonuses. Can potentially fill in some drop rate holes in the existing missions but at really high chron cost so we don’t instantly acquire hundreds of a previously hard to obtain items. Put a few trait-related bottlenecks in there to make targeting certain crew important (but decent crew so that we won’t mind retrieving them if necessary).