The Post-Waddle Winter Season
NoNameNamer
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Am I the only one completely disappointed with crew releases in the past 4-5 months?
Let's begin by looking at 2020 data of new 3-skill legendary crew, in chronological order.
This is a scatter graph of their debut voyage ranks. The blue straight line is a trend line. While trend was slightly going up (meaning we were getting progressively worse crew), we were also constantly getting top 100 voyagers. The running total of new top 100 voyagers are represented by the red triangles -- see the right vertical axis.
Note: In the first 7 months of 2020, only 3 crew were introduced with a voyage rank above 100. After that, we were still getting them at a steady pace as you can clearly draw a straight line through all triangles. With a single exception, the longest streak of no new top 100 voyager was 2 crew.
Here are the median and average voyage ranks based on how they were obtained:
Let's take a look at 2021 data.
The first 4.5 months were, up to Klingon West, already turbulent. It's only during the Waddle mega that we had anything resembling 2020. And then the winter came. The blue trendline not only crossed the vrank 100 line, it's going above 150. While you could still draw a more or less straight line through the red triangles in the first 4.5 months, you can almost draw a flat one in the time since then. The longest streak of no new top100 voyager was 7 crew, followed by 5 crew - twice.
Here are the equivalent median and average voyage ranks for 2021:
Edit: For emphasis, here are the new crew releases with a voyage rank over 150, 2020 vs 2021 (Year-to-date), represented by blue dots:
Edit: Here's another data point that includes year over year power creep of 3-skill golds, on average, highlighted in red. Given the current trend, that negative number will continue to fall. All data is normalized for today's stat boosts.
To reach the power creep level of last year, which is the lowest ever recorded, we'd have to get new crew with an average score of 4411 for the rest of the year. That means that all 3-skill golds released for the rest of the year would need to have an average voyage rank of what is now #3.
What is going on? Am I the only one troubled by these new trends?
Let's begin by looking at 2020 data of new 3-skill legendary crew, in chronological order.
This is a scatter graph of their debut voyage ranks. The blue straight line is a trend line. While trend was slightly going up (meaning we were getting progressively worse crew), we were also constantly getting top 100 voyagers. The running total of new top 100 voyagers are represented by the red triangles -- see the right vertical axis.
Note: In the first 7 months of 2020, only 3 crew were introduced with a voyage rank above 100. After that, we were still getting them at a steady pace as you can clearly draw a straight line through all triangles. With a single exception, the longest streak of no new top 100 voyager was 2 crew.
Here are the median and average voyage ranks based on how they were obtained:
Let's take a look at 2021 data.
The first 4.5 months were, up to Klingon West, already turbulent. It's only during the Waddle mega that we had anything resembling 2020. And then the winter came. The blue trendline not only crossed the vrank 100 line, it's going above 150. While you could still draw a more or less straight line through the red triangles in the first 4.5 months, you can almost draw a flat one in the time since then. The longest streak of no new top100 voyager was 7 crew, followed by 5 crew - twice.
Here are the equivalent median and average voyage ranks for 2021:
Edit: For emphasis, here are the new crew releases with a voyage rank over 150, 2020 vs 2021 (Year-to-date), represented by blue dots:
Edit: Here's another data point that includes year over year power creep of 3-skill golds, on average, highlighted in red. Given the current trend, that negative number will continue to fall. All data is normalized for today's stat boosts.
To reach the power creep level of last year, which is the lowest ever recorded, we'd have to get new crew with an average score of 4411 for the rest of the year. That means that all 3-skill golds released for the rest of the year would need to have an average voyage rank of what is now #3.
What is going on? Am I the only one troubled by these new trends?
9
Comments
That made my head hurt....
There's definitely something to say about that too. Most of the top voyagers added this winter season were CMD/DIP/SEC. WRG was reluctant to give us anything in top 100 that didn't have an awful skill set. No wonder then that one of the biggest values we've got was Chuft-Captain, released as a Tuesday 6-pack, despite breaking top 100 only just.
Not counting Scapegoat O'Brien, we've had 3 crew in top 70 this winter season. Two are CMD/DIP/SEC and the other is the next worst thing, CMD/DIP/SCI.
We've had 7 crew in top 100 released as event rewards. 4 are CMD/DIP/SEC, 1 CMD/DIP/SCI and the other 2 are Kal'Hyah Bashir (debuted at #87) and Tribble Quark (#92).
Thank you. I have made the correction.
These are important because:
1. The fact that we can draw straight lines means we're getting top100 voyagers at a regular pace, and the pace is given by the steepness of these lines
2. We can identify changes in the rate at which we're getting them if the straight line is broken
The beginning of the post-Waddle winter season is perfectly visible here. We've had 23 top100 voyagers in the first 4.5 months of this year, followed by 9 top100 voyagers in the following 4.5 months.
2020 had a perfect straight line, no trend changes and a much regular pace of releasing top 100 voyagers.
If you are concerned about power creep as far as it impacts this data, and the expanding number of crew, I can draw these same graphs using voyage rank percentiles at the time of their debut to normalize for total number of crew and the pictures would tell the exact same story.
EDIT: this % represents the percentage of crew that are below that voyage rank, taking into account the pool of available crew at the time.
This winter:
vs Waddle mega
vs early 2021
vs some other periods in recent years (too many to choose from):
And my favorite:
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!
@TP do better!! ~Colli~ (PoF) , welcome to the meta-game, LOL. Now, can I interest you in a spreadsheet? 😉
For the tl;dr crew, here's a simplification. Red/white color bad, green color good. On the left is what we've been getting recently, on the right is what we used to get at some point.
This can't be a revelation to anyone paying any attention to this game. This has also been a topic of discussion for months now in other communities.
It's not just the downward trend for voyages but the overall use of a crew. How many 1/5s do we have that were event one offs, destined for a large base in the one trait match they get once a year, or have terrible stats bordering on utterly useless (looking at you Tribble Chekov) but forfill a very difficult, if not impossible collection.
Where is the MEDaissance of mid 2019 where we had bangers like God Q, Dr Pollard, Mycelial Culber. Where are the strange but useful crew like Dr. Bones McCoy or niche Gauntlet crew like Twilight T'Pol.
Where are the crew that interesting to talk about, like Korby, Prisoner Kim, Homesteader Janeway or EV Suit Nhan. Since Barry Waddle, Dexa, Human Saru It's just been a long run of straight up boring crew intersected by the odd powerhouse.
Oh, do you want something new to do with your crew? Hm, maybe you could ask @WRG Ben about that. 😉
To reach the power creep level of last year, which is the lowest ever recorded, we'd have to get new crew with an average score of 4411 for the rest of the year. That means that all 3-skill golds released for the rest of the year would need to have an average voyage rank of what is now #3.
Regency Riker has poor stats because he is two skilled but no one gets that Riker for the stats, you get him for the art.
Wrong!
Even for 2 skill crew his stats is poor.
2021 it should be 1300+ for skill 1 and 1050+ for skill 2,
and not 1100/100!
For me, the bigger picture is the point made by @Captain Idol that the crew themselves have been mundane. I'll scrutinize stats and traits in a behold, but never for an event. In fairness to WRG, it was inevitable that after five years most everyone who would excite me would already be added. Even being among the remaining DS9 pool isn't enough to guarantee my excitement.
On that note, I would add that it is disappointing when a crew member does excite me, but seldom use once I have them. One thing that would at least help with that would be to expand the pools of crew with certain skill combinations, or traits. Right now, for instance, there are only six MED Mavericks. Only two are 5*'s: Kelis (added last November) and Delta Flyer Paris (added back in 2016). Of the remaining four, one is 2* Nurse Paris. Two candidates occur to me offhand: Crusher when she organized that summit that went wrong, and Bashir when he and O'Brien infiltrated Sloane's mind. I'm sure there are others. I realize this would make it harder to narrow down specific crew in the retrieval portal but that's a price I'm willing to pay to rejuvenate my interest.
Not wrong at all. Not many 2021 two skilled legendaries to compare him against but he has comparable to a lil better voyage scores than 2020 two skilled legendaries. It is correct his shuttle use would be more limited than other
Not wrong at all. Not many 2021 two skilled legendaries to compare him against but he has comparable to a lil better voyage scores than many 2020 two skilled legendaries. It is correct his base stats are worse so shuttle use would be more limited than other two skilled legendaries but you are ignoring his great proficiency stats. He has the #2 com-dip gauntlet pairing with him only behind Balok.
But I also have to admit I've only pursued ranked legendaries twice since the Waddle Mega, where I ranked all four times. While I may not share the level of concern that many here have . . . I'm also not pursuing recent crew.
I don't need someone to be a top 50 voyager to pique my interest. Usually it's a character I really like, although it definitely grabs my attention when someone is a voyager with a rare skillset, or are a two-skill shuttle powerhouse.
Starport
This is true for me as well. I have zero regrets about ranking for this Wesley. He clowns up my crew inventory and once in a blue moon he gets a voyage. It’s RARE, but it happens. I mostly just enjoy looking at the goofy kid.
Along those lines, I'm still giddy over Off-Duty Stamets. I mean, my dude is in his pj's, brushing his chompers. Did I do anything with him other than tinker with some bridge crew scenes before freezing him? Nope. But that alone made him one of my top 10, maybe even top 5, crew that year. I love that guy.
There’s not much more to it.
Probably because people buy them regardless?
Plenty of "collectors" out there that don't care as much about stats.
I meanwhile doubt they have any clue about stats. We‘re seeing a stats deflation.
Dexa, Saruman, Spork … all good things …
🖖
Proud member of Patterns of Force
Captain Level 99
Played since January 2017
TP: Do better!!!