Way too many shuttles. Made it feel like an event. I don’t want objective events to be too difficult to complete or require multiple things done at multiple times or it will make the game much less fun and much more burnout.
Way too many shuttles. Made it feel like an event. I don’t want objective events to be too difficult to complete or require multiple things done at multiple times or it will make the game much less fun and much more burnout.
I agree with this. I’d add that the number of shuttles likely renders it difficult for lower level players to fully benefit.
I like this - and it's certainly a step up from temporary achievements. Bottom line, I'm quite happy with this as a beta, and looking forward to the first full event!
Shuttles
The number of shuttles doesn't bother me, but I'm a little surprised they're in the middle since it's the longest portion. The pacing is fine, but I agree it must be like hitting a brick wall for newer players. But for myself, having shuttles followed by a quicker activity providing tokens is a nice touch.
Rewards
The gold boosters in this event aren't something I find terribly compelling. But I still appreciate boosters and tokens rewarded right before a hybrid Faction event.
I think this format will be great for bigger giveaways, like we had for the recent Spock and Paris. I see nothing wrong with more routine objective events fairly mundane rewards. If I skip them sometimes because I don't need the rewards, that's fine.
UX
I'd prefer more concrete information to percentage bars in the main menu: 80% just isn't as useful as 16/20. That latter information is available in the pop-up, and it's not like I can't do the math in my head, but for a quick glance I'd perfect to know how many more steps I need to take.
There's a lot of information in that screen, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's important UX reasons for the current setup. Supporting so many devices must be quite the handful for UX.
Six degrees in Inter-species Veterinary Medicine. Treating all manner of critters, from Tribbles to Humans.
2. If I was just given the rewards and didn’t have to work at it that means it’s a charity and not a game.
Rewards in exchange for work could also be described as a job. Or possibly as a chore. It only becomes a game if it's fun, and I'm not convinced these new events qualify.
2. If I was just given the rewards and didn’t have to work at it that means it’s a charity and not a game.
Rewards in exchange for work could also be described as a job. Or possibly as a chore. It only becomes a game if it's fun, and I'm not convinced these new events qualify.
I will completely agree with that, but I find pure Faction events to be stupid misery. Some players love them. I am personally fascinated by the Gauntlet and other players detest it.
This is new and odd enough that it has caught my attention, especially since it is a work in progress and our input is actively being sought.
Nothing is pure ecstasy and reward all the time, or at least it shouldn’t be.
Part of a challenge is doing the the things that aren’t necessarily easy or that you don’t particularly want to do.
I did it in less then half the time ... It wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be!
I leveled up a Crew to get the Away Missions needed ..
I then sent out 3 rounds of 4 Shuttles @ 1 1/2 Hours .. Then 2 more rounds @ 3 hours ...
* Next time .. I will be sure not to open my overnight Shuttles before I begin!
Saving Boosts ... AND/OR Tanking!
While running the Shuttles .. I entered the Gauntlet so that the timer would leave me with 12-15 minutes to do the first 10 .. Then it reset to do the last 10 ...
Was it worth it to me!? Absolutely! Sure ... I used 12 - 1 1/2 Timers ... But with all the Premium Boosts that I was awarded .. Surely I will gain that back and then some!?
I am very fortunate to have 4 Shuttles to run ...
Less is not a good way to introduce the newer peeps to the OE's ..
But then again ... It gives those that can't quite finish .. Something to shoot for!?
* My 2 Cents ...
I know that this is just a test, so it's hard to have an opinion on it, but here's my experience:
I spent more merits on shuttle missions and gauntlet refreshes than I will get out of the event.
I used 8 time boosts on shuttles (which wouldn't have been necessary, but I wanted to have some margin and not have to set timers or worry about the gauntlet objective). I will get 9 higher rarity boosts and 3 shuttle tokens in return for them. Maybe 10 if one of the pulls gives me a time boost.
All other rewards, including the shuttle boosts, are worthless to me. I have hundreds of skill boosts.
My gauntlet crew refreshes in 20 minutes, so I will probably complete all objectives with 10 hours left to go (it wasn't difficult to do, at least not for a long-time player with a flexible schedule and who isn't in a disadvantaged time zone).
This is the kind of feature that appeals to completionists and that's fine, but the rewards need to be worth more than the resources, time and/or thought invested into the event, otherwise it will just be a chore and lead to more frustration and burnout.
I wouldn't mind a balance of rewards - having something like this which gives you something low-stakes to do between events is kinda nice, but I am looking forward to ones with higher stakes as well. A four week objective event, maybe during a non-Mega month, where you have a two day window to earn a star each week on a new gold could be a fun challenge and a good use of this type of event.
To be fair to people in ALL timezones, Objective Events (and everything else in the game) should last integer multiples of 24 hours (ie 24, 48, 72, etc).
With 30 hours (=24+6) some timezones will be at a disadvantage as those 6 hours will fall in the middle of their night.
To be fair to people in ALL timezones, Objective Events (and everything else in the game) should last integer multiples of 24 hours (ie 24, 48, 72, etc).
With 30 hours (=24+6) some timezones will be at a disadvantage as those 6 hours will fall in the middle of their night.
I'm guessing the times for this beta test were designed to have it start and stop during WRG work hours, in case there were glitches. Perhaps once it is working smoothly, the times could be adjusted.
The rewards need to be better correlated with the effort. I don't mind the number of shuttles or even more shuttles if the reward is worth it. Give me an exclusive good 5* crew and I'll put in the effort. If it's some random shuttle boosts, why bother? I'd be intrigued by other potential rewards that would be useful. Beholds, schematics for hard to get ships, etc...
I'll echo the earlier comment that I want to see progress in numbers not percentage. I want to know that I'm at 8/20 shuttles or gauntlet rounds. Telling me I'm at 40% is meaningless and forces me to do the math to convert back to number of shuttles.
The rewards don't equal the risks. Sorry bout 20 shuttle runs, Yep not happening without spending tokens, something I am sort on that I will need for the regular even. I get hey we need to sell more stuff, but honestly this event was not fun, and being forced into the Gauntlet, not fun either I try to go and kill people who's numbers are way under mine and still loose a match is driving me crazy. I hated running the Gauntlet because the RNG does bad things, and its a bad luck for me. Also gating some of the stuff saying you need to complete running the shuttles in order do do stuff, oh well. Put real wards in and I might actually try but the rewards we got with this, meh!
Ended up using 8x 30 min speed ups on the shuttles and finished before midnight.
Finished the Gauntlet part in two sets. It was also my first gauntlet with Balok. Needless to say he died twice after losing two 65%vs25% crit chance fights.
I came, I saw, I pushed a few buttons. Felt like I did my dailies twice and got a similar amount of loot.
Since the OE began, I’ve noticed a significant increase in the frequency of “server calls”, which on my phone (iOS) manifests as a “spinning dots” display. I’ve been on the latest version of the client for a week, so it’s not the update but rather seems specifically tied to the event. The event ends soon, so I guess I’ll see if that stops it, but I thought it was an observation worth mentioning. Is it just me?
As for the event itself... goals should be workable in parallel (I know it was the bug - just reiterating); timezone fairness issues necessitate 48hr durations; X of Y status is better than Z% complete. The rest is fine - folks seem to be forgetting that this was a beta test for the structural design of the event. The final version of these might be substantially different in terms of tasks and rewards. Let’s see what they do with it.
I personally think this should have been an Alpha test.. the next should have been the beta and then roll event.. I think its a good idea but needs fixed.. I think its too separated if you can get things working at the same time its going to be a lot better.. I can't finish this event because of the gauntlet at the end my team died and it would have cost me dil to revive to finish the event.. I hope some thought is given to that
My gauntlet wins aren't counting. I did 5 gauntlet fights, went to check the event status and still shows 0. Restarted the game, still 0. Now I won't be able to finish in time.
Definitely needed more internal testing before it went to public testing.
Not impressed with all the shuttles that needed to be sent. Admittedly, I started the event late, but it would be difficult to complete the away mission, shuttles, and gauntlet in the time allotted. Not something that adds to my game.
Greetings ~ so we made it up to the gauntlet rounds but there simply isn't enough time to complete it. Not without spending dilithium that is. And at 30 dilithium per crew member. Five crew members times 2 to complete, I'm not a math wiz but that's a lot 😄
Same here, hit a brick wall at the gauntlet. To be honest, I did start a bit late since it wasn't immediately obvious to me where to find the Objective Event. After I did a bit of hunting yesterday afternoon to find it in the Event tab, I started working on it. However, with the shuttles I had to send and the gauntlet requirements, I simply ran out of time. The rewards were underwhelming, so I opted not to spend dilithium to revive my gauntlet crew to finish it.
I understand that it was a beta test...but it was a bit underwhelming and didn't seem like WRG considered the actual time to complete the various portions of the Objective event (especially on things that reset on a timer).
While I did enjoy having something a bit different to do mid-week, the tight time to complete everything in felt like a lot of pressure, especially when I was at work for 15 of the 30 hours and asleep for another 8. My personal STT "cadence" works very well with the weekend events: during the week, I can keep things fairly casual, logging in before work, at lunch and after work and keeping everything ticking over with dailies, chrons and honor rolling in from voyages at a decent rate, etc.; and then I take a bit more time over the weekend to participate in the events (I have a strong preference for galaxy and skirmish over faction because I have much more control of when I put that time in). Like many others, I think 48 hours would have worked much better, though I agree with @Microhopper that these timings are almost certainly about the beta test aspects so hopefully it will be different in future. Longer-running Temporary-Achievement-style events I can see working fine, and a shorter midweek one with less repetitive and grindy objectives I can imagine it being a lot more fun (I'm hoping for offbeat hyper-specific things like "send a Bajoran shuttle staffed with crew with the Bajoran trait").
On the achievability side of things, I did finish on my main and alt with hours to spare despite not trying very hard on those. Instead, I put most of my effort into trying it on my new Nightmare Mode alt because I wanted to see if it could be done (I will freely admit that I made otherwise poor decisions in terms of expending resources that would have served me better elsewhere). I was very surprised to find myself only 2 gauntlet rounds away in the end. If I'd been able to start immediately rather than being at work, or had understood that "completing" shuttle missions meant I could leave some to be claimed, or just had slightly nicer RNG on rolling up gauntlet opponents before I ran out of merits, I would have got there. (Admittedly, I could also have set an alarm to wake myself up in the night to turn around shuttles and shaved some time off that way, but that is a line I am not willing to cross.)
The only other mobile game I play even semi-regularly is Pokémon Go, and I can see Objective Events working similarly to "Timed Research" there, which I do enjoy. I would say that in those, there's a set of three (often quite different) objectives at a time to work on simultaneously, which then get replaced when they're all achieved with the next tier. I would have found something like that a lot more fun than the purely sequential nature of this, but again it may just be part of the nature of the beta test. (I have to admit that it's not 100% clear to me what exactly the bug is; my read is that everything worked as intended except that the text showing what would unlock the next bit was showing the current level of the previous objective, rather than the final one?)
In summary: cautiously optimistic about what's coming next, and pleased with how close I came even with one hand tied behind my back, but as an experience in and of itself this was mostly a chore that intersected badly with my work week.
If they are taking feedback from the Beta Testers {US!} I would suggest real Events being not just a little bit better laid out as to progression and completion requirements, but also maybe a 48 hour schedule. {Maybe Monday night at Reset, so people can do the Event while working on Daily Chores.}
Why was Vicki not expelled from Greendale after she literally stabbed Pierce in the face with a pencil?!?!?
Apologies if mentioned earlier but it was impossible to see how many gauntlet battles were needed (percentage did not refresh) once started. I cleared the major threshold but since I did not keep perfect track of the number of battles, I was just guessing it.
The timing for this was absolutely horrible. If you didn't log in right at the refresh time, it was impossible to finish the event without speedups.
And this was supposed to be the "easy" version for beta testing? What's the hard version?
So since I failed to log in right at every refresh/shuttle completion, I spent some shuttle speedups to ensure that I had enough time to fit in the 2nd round of gauntlet battles.
Then the event ended early... So I didn't get to finish my gauntlet battles and lost out on the 5* speedups.
So I burned the 3* speedups bc the event ended early. On an "easy" beta test.
Since Premium Pulls were removed from Ranked Rewards and replaced with ISM and Dilithium, perhaps Objective Events can provide some 10x Premium Pulls again.
As for suggestions about the format, perhaps a tutorial or story structure might help the dryness of the objective event game play. Have an O'Brien card pop up and explain tanking to newer players for the Faction Shuttle portion, or Jellico can beg you to run Shuttles to help mine a Nebula. Admiral Janeway can deploy you to fight Space Battles in a certain area of the Mission Map to bring that into play. Admiral Alynna Nechayev sends you on Away Missions. Nhan and Worf walk you through Gauntlet battle training. Etc...
Greetings ~ so we made it up to the gauntlet rounds but there simply isn't enough time to complete it. Not without spending dilithium that is. And at 30 dilithium per crew member. Five crew members times 2 to complete, I'm not a math wiz but that's a lot 😄
Yeah that was tough, for me I looked to see when my last shuttles would be done then started a gauntlet round but didn’t do any battles a little more than four hours before that time was. Then when my shuttles came back I could do that round plus the next round when it refreshed to next round 20 minutes later. It was a tricky thing and without it I might not have finished either. Such a trick should not be required for success.
Comments
Now I want Action-Figure-Time Quark
I agree with this. I’d add that the number of shuttles likely renders it difficult for lower level players to fully benefit.
It’s a good start though.
Moogie was so proud when he charged Rom just to look at them…
However many hours it has been.......
Shuttles
The number of shuttles doesn't bother me, but I'm a little surprised they're in the middle since it's the longest portion. The pacing is fine, but I agree it must be like hitting a brick wall for newer players. But for myself, having shuttles followed by a quicker activity providing tokens is a nice touch.
Rewards
The gold boosters in this event aren't something I find terribly compelling. But I still appreciate boosters and tokens rewarded right before a hybrid Faction event.
I think this format will be great for bigger giveaways, like we had for the recent Spock and Paris. I see nothing wrong with more routine objective events fairly mundane rewards. If I skip them sometimes because I don't need the rewards, that's fine.
UX
I'd prefer more concrete information to percentage bars in the main menu: 80% just isn't as useful as 16/20. That latter information is available in the pop-up, and it's not like I can't do the math in my head, but for a quick glance I'd perfect to know how many more steps I need to take.
There's a lot of information in that screen, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's important UX reasons for the current setup. Supporting so many devices must be quite the handful for UX.
Starport
I will completely agree with that, but I find pure Faction events to be stupid misery. Some players love them. I am personally fascinated by the Gauntlet and other players detest it.
This is new and odd enough that it has caught my attention, especially since it is a work in progress and our input is actively being sought.
Nothing is pure ecstasy and reward all the time, or at least it shouldn’t be.
Part of a challenge is doing the the things that aren’t necessarily easy or that you don’t particularly want to do.
It’s a fine line.
Good Hunting, Captain!
I did it in less then half the time ... It wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be!
I leveled up a Crew to get the Away Missions needed ..
I then sent out 3 rounds of 4 Shuttles @ 1 1/2 Hours .. Then 2 more rounds @ 3 hours ...
* Next time .. I will be sure not to open my overnight Shuttles before I begin!
Saving Boosts ... AND/OR Tanking!
While running the Shuttles .. I entered the Gauntlet so that the timer would leave me with 12-15 minutes to do the first 10 .. Then it reset to do the last 10 ...
Was it worth it to me!? Absolutely! Sure ... I used 12 - 1 1/2 Timers ... But with all the Premium Boosts that I was awarded .. Surely I will gain that back and then some!?
I am very fortunate to have 4 Shuttles to run ...
Less is not a good way to introduce the newer peeps to the OE's ..
But then again ... It gives those that can't quite finish .. Something to shoot for!?
* My 2 Cents ...
::: Franks N Beans = Recruiting :::
This is the kind of feature that appeals to completionists and that's fine, but the rewards need to be worth more than the resources, time and/or thought invested into the event, otherwise it will just be a chore and lead to more frustration and burnout.
With 30 hours (=24+6) some timezones will be at a disadvantage as those 6 hours will fall in the middle of their night.
I'm guessing the times for this beta test were designed to have it start and stop during WRG work hours, in case there were glitches. Perhaps once it is working smoothly, the times could be adjusted.
Nevermind
.
I'll echo the earlier comment that I want to see progress in numbers not percentage. I want to know that I'm at 8/20 shuttles or gauntlet rounds. Telling me I'm at 40% is meaningless and forces me to do the math to convert back to number of shuttles.
Finished the Gauntlet part in two sets. It was also my first gauntlet with Balok. Needless to say he died twice after losing two 65%vs25% crit chance fights.
I came, I saw, I pushed a few buttons. Felt like I did my dailies twice and got a similar amount of loot.
As for the event itself... goals should be workable in parallel (I know it was the bug - just reiterating); timezone fairness issues necessitate 48hr durations; X of Y status is better than Z% complete. The rest is fine - folks seem to be forgetting that this was a beta test for the structural design of the event. The final version of these might be substantially different in terms of tasks and rewards. Let’s see what they do with it.
Definitely needed more internal testing before it went to public testing.
I understand that it was a beta test...but it was a bit underwhelming and didn't seem like WRG considered the actual time to complete the various portions of the Objective event (especially on things that reset on a timer).
While I did enjoy having something a bit different to do mid-week, the tight time to complete everything in felt like a lot of pressure, especially when I was at work for 15 of the 30 hours and asleep for another 8. My personal STT "cadence" works very well with the weekend events: during the week, I can keep things fairly casual, logging in before work, at lunch and after work and keeping everything ticking over with dailies, chrons and honor rolling in from voyages at a decent rate, etc.; and then I take a bit more time over the weekend to participate in the events (I have a strong preference for galaxy and skirmish over faction because I have much more control of when I put that time in). Like many others, I think 48 hours would have worked much better, though I agree with @Microhopper that these timings are almost certainly about the beta test aspects so hopefully it will be different in future. Longer-running Temporary-Achievement-style events I can see working fine, and a shorter midweek one with less repetitive and grindy objectives I can imagine it being a lot more fun (I'm hoping for offbeat hyper-specific things like "send a Bajoran shuttle staffed with crew with the Bajoran trait").
On the achievability side of things, I did finish on my main and alt with hours to spare despite not trying very hard on those. Instead, I put most of my effort into trying it on my new Nightmare Mode alt because I wanted to see if it could be done (I will freely admit that I made otherwise poor decisions in terms of expending resources that would have served me better elsewhere). I was very surprised to find myself only 2 gauntlet rounds away in the end. If I'd been able to start immediately rather than being at work, or had understood that "completing" shuttle missions meant I could leave some to be claimed, or just had slightly nicer RNG on rolling up gauntlet opponents before I ran out of merits, I would have got there. (Admittedly, I could also have set an alarm to wake myself up in the night to turn around shuttles and shaved some time off that way, but that is a line I am not willing to cross.)
The only other mobile game I play even semi-regularly is Pokémon Go, and I can see Objective Events working similarly to "Timed Research" there, which I do enjoy. I would say that in those, there's a set of three (often quite different) objectives at a time to work on simultaneously, which then get replaced when they're all achieved with the next tier. I would have found something like that a lot more fun than the purely sequential nature of this, but again it may just be part of the nature of the beta test. (I have to admit that it's not 100% clear to me what exactly the bug is; my read is that everything worked as intended except that the text showing what would unlock the next bit was showing the current level of the previous objective, rather than the final one?)
In summary: cautiously optimistic about what's coming next, and pleased with how close I came even with one hand tied behind my back, but as an experience in and of itself this was mostly a chore that intersected badly with my work week.
And this was supposed to be the "easy" version for beta testing? What's the hard version?
So since I failed to log in right at every refresh/shuttle completion, I spent some shuttle speedups to ensure that I had enough time to fit in the 2nd round of gauntlet battles.
Then the event ended early... So I didn't get to finish my gauntlet battles and lost out on the 5* speedups.
So I burned the 3* speedups bc the event ended early. On an "easy" beta test.
Thanks for nothing.
This would've been even more difficult for European players and impossible for Asian players.
That's how much this game cares about their players.
As for suggestions about the format, perhaps a tutorial or story structure might help the dryness of the objective event game play. Have an O'Brien card pop up and explain tanking to newer players for the Faction Shuttle portion, or Jellico can beg you to run Shuttles to help mine a Nebula. Admiral Janeway can deploy you to fight Space Battles in a certain area of the Mission Map to bring that into play. Admiral Alynna Nechayev sends you on Away Missions. Nhan and Worf walk you through Gauntlet battle training. Etc...
Yeah that was tough, for me I looked to see when my last shuttles would be done then started a gauntlet round but didn’t do any battles a little more than four hours before that time was. Then when my shuttles came back I could do that round plus the next round when it refreshed to next round 20 minutes later. It was a tricky thing and without it I might not have finished either. Such a trick should not be required for success.