I just finished my 3rd cycle and I'm at 24 already. Averaging 8 per cycle. I have spent quite a few merits to refresh my match ups and thats helped.
Try to only hit the bottom point earners. Don't try for position, find low point easy matchups to keep your rank down.
Tell us more about how we can control the game not matching us with only ones we have NO chance against.....
With the depth of crew that you should have by now with how long you've been playing, I find it hard to believe that you can't field a competitive lineup and find matches you can win (excluding the !@$!# called RNG) and win enough for this. For someone new, yeah this will be a show stopper but for the so called targeted audience of this one, you should be able to post enough wins. and believe me, I don't have the strongest Gauntlet crew out there.
Enter the gauntlet a day before & not play so you can drop as low as possible & have two seperate gauntlets
Leave two of your skill boxes empty
Always go for just double digits points if possible.
Refresh, refresh, refresh
Why are people arguing in favor of this? Sure, if you're experienced enough about gameplay to have tanked arena in preparation, already had a faction tanked, had merit resources saved up, and happened to have advanced enough ships and ship/gauntlet crew, finishing the event is within the realm of possibility - I'll likely finish myself, barring RNGeezus madness - but that hardly makes it a good event for the entire community.
Even the "successfully complete 20 shuttles" objective is a bit of a slog for an intermediate beginner who doesn't have 30-second factions anymore. The idea of having to set timers in the middle of a week leading into a weekend Faction event... come on, now. This pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is delusional in the face of an uneven playing field; the lack of empathy is appalling, but the defense of poor game design is inexplicable.
I remember when Daily Rewards had a 3 Voyage Dilemma requirement. People lost their **tsk tsk** at the difficulty of it. I was like isn’t getting Dilemmas 75% of the game? Some people will complain about anything.
It took me 3 days to tank my Arena rating. 20 shuttles is a nothing task for anyone with 4 shuttles. I typically get 15-20 Gauntlet wins a day. I could easily get more but Gauntlet doesn’t excite me that much and I try to preserve my merits so I can buy Merit packs to get more honour.
1) start the first gauntlet the day before. Then you get two gauntlets during the event.
2) don't play until the event, then you are way down the rankings.
3) build a hole, tank two skills, then occasionally other players will get an easy win against you, pushing your score down. It helps them as well.
4) choose low scoring battles, so that your chances of meeting stronger players stays low.
5) only play the battles you can win. If you cannot win, then refresh.
6) if you lose a battle, you lose the card until the next cycle, whereas you can use the same card 2-3 times early in your gauntlet, maybe 1-2 times later.
I am on my third cycle, I will have about 30 minutes for the fourth before the end of the gauntlet. I hope to get at least 8 more wins in that, meaning I will need 5 wins tomorrow.
I have spent about 6000 merits, or 8 merit pulls. Consequently this is not something I plan on doing too often in the future.
Why are people arguing in favor of this? Sure, if you're experienced enough about gameplay to have tanked arena in preparation, already had a faction tanked, had merit resources saved up, and happened to have advanced enough ships and ship/gauntlet crew, finishing the event is within the realm of possibility - I'll likely finish myself, barring RNGeezus madness - but that hardly makes it a good event for the entire community.
Even the "successfully complete 20 shuttles" objective is a bit of a slog for an intermediate beginner who doesn't have 30-second factions anymore. The idea of having to set timers in the middle of a week leading into a weekend Faction event... come on, now. This pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is delusional in the face of an uneven playing field; the lack of empathy is appalling, but the defense of poor game design is inexplicable.
The key with the successful completion of 20 shuttles is to save some completed shuttles aside prior to the objective event start. I saved shuttles for 2 days and instantly had that objective completed.
The other option is to tank shuttles.
Are these good game design? No. You would think WRG wouldn’t want to encourage tanking anywhere in game, but it’s a better option than spending.
Why are people arguing in favor of this? Sure, if you're experienced enough about gameplay to have tanked arena in preparation, already had a faction tanked, had merit resources saved up, and happened to have advanced enough ships and ship/gauntlet crew, finishing the event is within the realm of possibility - I'll likely finish myself, barring RNGeezus madness - but that hardly makes it a good event for the entire community.
Even the "successfully complete 20 shuttles" objective is a bit of a slog for an intermediate beginner who doesn't have 30-second factions anymore. The idea of having to set timers in the middle of a week leading into a weekend Faction event... come on, now. This pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is delusional in the face of an uneven playing field; the lack of empathy is appalling, but the defense of poor game design is inexplicable.
The old objective events were dumb. It was pointless busy work for pointless rewards. I didn't like the push to spend DIL this time, but I'm glad to see players have found ways around it. At least this event has a 10x pull and citation as rewards, not merits or components we didn't need in other events,
In terms of difficulty this event:
Shuttles: If you're trying for gauntlet you're logging in roughly at 7am,11am,3pm,7pm,11pm,7am,11am,3pm,7pm,11pm. That's 10 rounds separated by 4+ hours. You can run 40 shuttles and only need 20 to succeed. So you only need a 50% success rate. That's easy enough even without tanked shuttles.
Gauntlet: You have those same 10 rounds, so you need to average 5 wins each. Because of a guantlet ending it's really 7,11,3,7,11,3,7,8,12 so 11 rounds. If you were up for the start and timed a gauntlet round to end at 1:10 you could have squeezed in 2 more rounds and gotten to 13. You now only need 3.8 wins/round. That's easily doable if you have the crew and are willing to refresh.
Arena: Everyone has explained how to do it above and plenty of people are 10/10 so far.
So, no this event wasn't impossible.
Would I like to see things tweaked, yes. Would I like to see an event that doesn't encourage tanking, yes. But am I happy they're trying something new compared to the previous objective events, absolutely.
Why are people arguing in favor of this? Sure, if you're experienced enough about gameplay to have tanked arena in preparation, already had a faction tanked, had merit resources saved up, and happened to have advanced enough ships and ship/gauntlet crew, finishing the event is within the realm of possibility - I'll likely finish myself, barring RNGeezus madness - but that hardly makes it a good event for the entire community.
Even the "successfully complete 20 shuttles" objective is a bit of a slog for an intermediate beginner who doesn't have 30-second factions anymore. The idea of having to set timers in the middle of a week leading into a weekend Faction event... come on, now. This pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is delusional in the face of an uneven playing field; the lack of empathy is appalling, but the defense of poor game design is inexplicable.
It was announced as being geared toward advanced players. Players pointing that out isn't a villainous act. Personally, I think they did go a step far on the arena. There's workarounds though. Pointing that out is not defending poor design. It's helping players out. Especially after the devs said that no changes would be made.
Tonight, I plan to leave a couple skills with no proficiency in gauntlet. If a fleet were to do the same and join at the same time, they could help each other out.
Good luck to all. I'm trying to help out and clear my objectives at the same time. Hope there's enough like-minded players out there.
Why are people arguing in favor of this? Sure, if you're experienced enough about gameplay to have tanked arena in preparation, already had a faction tanked, had merit resources saved up, and happened to have advanced enough ships and ship/gauntlet crew, finishing the event is within the realm of possibility - I'll likely finish myself, barring RNGeezus madness - but that hardly makes it a good event for the entire community.
Even the "successfully complete 20 shuttles" objective is a bit of a slog for an intermediate beginner who doesn't have 30-second factions anymore. The idea of having to set timers in the middle of a week leading into a weekend Faction event... come on, now. This pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is delusional in the face of an uneven playing field; the lack of empathy is appalling, but the defense of poor game design is inexplicable.
Why? Freedom of speech(different opinions? And if i don t find it too hard,
i still shall voice the opposite just to please someone else?
You can t expect that they hand out a 4* citation for a 1min total of in game time.
Yes, this Event might not be for a new LV20 player. But i highly doubt that we have too many new players these days and ppl complaining here are mostly experienced players, that just wanna invest as little time and strategy into completing the rewards. Thats fine, then just skip the event.
This event was announced as being specifically designed for more experienced players. I have no problem at all with the number of shuttles or gauntlet rounds. It is, indeed, challenging. That is the point. It may even require some use of merits; however, we get merits for free (basically), so I don't have any real issue. Challeng is good. I do have issue with the requirement to win 20 arena battles, since the dilithium for that is not free (though easier to manage now than when I began). But the players have joined forces and made even the arena possible. No, this kinda bites for new players, but it is not made for them. It was made to get experienced players to buy extra resources. Fortunately, the player base has mostly crushed that and made it possible. Hard, but possible.
My two fake meaningless Federation monies would be this…
Perfect 20 out of 20 Arena battles is pretty ludicrous for the overwhelming majority of people.
There is no way I am going to hit that, but I am not losing any sleep over it.
If the intention was to get me to spend dilithium on extra Arena Tickets, well…
20 shuttles completed without using my tanked factions, 8 were launched yesterday, and had one failure.
I had a streak of 47 wins, spending lots of merits. My losing round was a gamble which lost, but did not matter because the other 4 crew were fatigued.
Just a couple of wins on the next gauntlet and I'm done.
Edit:
Done, and I have set up a gauntlet with 3 tanked skills, which should be interesting.
Gauntlet finished. Just gotta wait for my shuttles to come back & run about 5 a piece of 4 tanked factions as I need to get back to tanking 12 sec31 before the event starts
And honestly, tanking just one faction for cases like this is pretty easy IMO. Most minor factions will only take a few days. You can see the progress by linking at datacore
It's when you get to the heavy hitters that the work starts when it takes over a month
Thanks for this post. I came to the forum specifically to find out how people were dealing with the gauntlet because all the talk is about the arena.
So far I haven’t had to use any merits. You just need 50 wins not 50 in a row. I can lose a few and still hit the goal I think. I’m ok with spending Merits for one refresh every cycle. I just wish the spend Chronitons was not locked.
Thanks for this post. I came to the forum specifically to find out how people were dealing with the gauntlet because all th talk is about the arena.
So far I haven’t had use wny merits. You just need 50 wins not 50 in a row. I can lose a few and still hit the goal. I just wish the spend Chronitons was not locked.
I just slammed out like 25 Wins with Merit refreshes and a few heals of key Crew. Happened to get into first place doing it. There is time to go it slower and still be able to do the final Task. 400 Chronitons can be used quickly. That is a positive. Once that final Task is unlocked, it can be done in a few minutes. Just find stuff you need for Crew and grab stuff to build it.
What if I told you not every single nit needs to be picked literally to death?
Just my opinion, but I think the Gauntlet portion of this event lands firmly in the "pick a struggle" ballpark. To clarify, if you are in both "the game is boring now" and "I am unhappy that this objective event is forcing me to spend merits", pick one please and be happy with your choice.
The Gauntlet requirement is a reasonable challenge, and therefore fun (relative to Gauntlet, lol). It seems perfectly reasonable to me that one be asked to use an increase in merits in pursuit of that challenge.
Just my opinion, but I think the Gauntlet portion of this event lands firmly in the "pick a struggle" ballpark. To clarify, if you are in both "the game is boring now" and "I am unhappy that this objective event is forcing me to spend merits", pick one please and be happy with your choice.
The Gauntlet requirement is a reasonable challenge, and therefore fun (relative to Gauntlet, lol). It seems perfectly reasonable to me that one be asked to use an increase in merits in pursuit of that challenge.
You have given me an interesting insight into how other players approach the game!
It hadn’t occurred to me that there are folks that would simply never consider spending merits in the gauntlet even if they want to win rounds; I run with that as a baked in CODB in gauntlet-land and do it constantly.
But then, I am one of those weirdos that is fascinated by the gauntlet and actually enjoys it. 😬
Just my opinion, but I think the Gauntlet portion of this event lands firmly in the "pick a struggle" ballpark. To clarify, if you are in both "the game is boring now" and "I am unhappy that this objective event is forcing me to spend merits", pick one please and be happy with your choice.
The Gauntlet requirement is a reasonable challenge, and therefore fun (relative to Gauntlet, lol). It seems perfectly reasonable to me that one be asked to use an increase in merits in pursuit of that challenge.
I am in "the game is boring now" camp. I do not think that I am alone here.
"In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game." — Nicky Case, The Evolution of Trust
Thanks for this post. I came to the forum specifically to find out how people were dealing with the gauntlet because all th talk is about the arena.
So far I haven’t had use wny merits. You just need 50 wins not 50 in a row. I can lose a few and still hit the goal. I just wish the spend Chronitons was not locked.
I just slammed out like 25 Wins with Merit refreshes and a few heals of key Crew. Happened to get into first place doing it. There is time to go it slower and still be able to do the final Task. 400 Chronitons can be used quickly. That is a positive. Once that final Task is unlocked, it can be done in a few minutes. Just find stuff you need for Crew and grab stuff to build it.
The reason I wish the Chronitons was unlocked is because I don’t plan on hitting all the requirements to unlock it. I can’t hit the 20 arena wins without spending. I don’t like the arena and barely play it. I probably could have hit it if I used some of the strategies but I generally just avoid the parts of the game I don’t like. Also I view this as beta 1.0. No need to go hard because they’ll be another one soon.
This event was announced as being specifically designed for more experienced players. I have no problem at all with the number of shuttles or gauntlet rounds. It is, indeed, challenging. That is the point. It may even require some use of merits; however, we get merits for free (basically), so I don't have any real issue. Challeng is good. I do have issue with the requirement to win 20 arena battles, since the dilithium for that is not free (though easier to manage now than when I began). But the players have joined forces and made even the arena possible. No, this kinda bites for new players, but it is not made for them. It was made to get experienced players to buy extra resources. Fortunately, the player base has mostly crushed that and made it possible. Hard, but possible.
Literally EVERY event is designed for more experienced players. In Skirmish there are tiers titled Normal, Elite and Epic. Factions benefit those with a larger, diverse crew complement. Galaxies give greater bonuses to those with better crew and collection/Starbase bonuses.
The difference is, with other events, there's an on-ramp for lower level and beginner players - this midweek event starts right at the vertical cliff-face.
Comments
Try to only hit the bottom point earners. Don't try for position, find low point easy matchups to keep your rank down.
Tell us more about how we can control the game not matching us with only ones we have NO chance against.....
With the depth of crew that you should have by now with how long you've been playing, I find it hard to believe that you can't field a competitive lineup and find matches you can win (excluding the !@$!# called RNG) and win enough for this. For someone new, yeah this will be a show stopper but for the so called targeted audience of this one, you should be able to post enough wins. and believe me, I don't have the strongest Gauntlet crew out there.
Merits are there to refresh matches you don’t like.
I over spent on merits already because I’m still trying to build streaks so I can get my 5th Balok. Just finished my 3rd cycle and sit at 25 wins.
Again I’m baffled that people do poorly at the gauntlet. You can retrieve most of the better crew until you get a chance to get the actual rewards.
Leave two of your skill boxes empty
Always go for just double digits points if possible.
Refresh, refresh, refresh
Even the "successfully complete 20 shuttles" objective is a bit of a slog for an intermediate beginner who doesn't have 30-second factions anymore. The idea of having to set timers in the middle of a week leading into a weekend Faction event... come on, now. This pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is delusional in the face of an uneven playing field; the lack of empathy is appalling, but the defense of poor game design is inexplicable.
It took me 3 days to tank my Arena rating. 20 shuttles is a nothing task for anyone with 4 shuttles. I typically get 15-20 Gauntlet wins a day. I could easily get more but Gauntlet doesn’t excite me that much and I try to preserve my merits so I can buy Merit packs to get more honour.
It’s an optional event not a free loot piñata.
2) don't play until the event, then you are way down the rankings.
3) build a hole, tank two skills, then occasionally other players will get an easy win against you, pushing your score down. It helps them as well.
4) choose low scoring battles, so that your chances of meeting stronger players stays low.
5) only play the battles you can win. If you cannot win, then refresh.
6) if you lose a battle, you lose the card until the next cycle, whereas you can use the same card 2-3 times early in your gauntlet, maybe 1-2 times later.
I am on my third cycle, I will have about 30 minutes for the fourth before the end of the gauntlet. I hope to get at least 8 more wins in that, meaning I will need 5 wins tomorrow.
I have spent about 6000 merits, or 8 merit pulls. Consequently this is not something I plan on doing too often in the future.
The key with the successful completion of 20 shuttles is to save some completed shuttles aside prior to the objective event start. I saved shuttles for 2 days and instantly had that objective completed.
The other option is to tank shuttles.
Are these good game design? No. You would think WRG wouldn’t want to encourage tanking anywhere in game, but it’s a better option than spending.
The old objective events were dumb. It was pointless busy work for pointless rewards. I didn't like the push to spend DIL this time, but I'm glad to see players have found ways around it. At least this event has a 10x pull and citation as rewards, not merits or components we didn't need in other events,
In terms of difficulty this event:
Shuttles: If you're trying for gauntlet you're logging in roughly at 7am,11am,3pm,7pm,11pm,7am,11am,3pm,7pm,11pm. That's 10 rounds separated by 4+ hours. You can run 40 shuttles and only need 20 to succeed. So you only need a 50% success rate. That's easy enough even without tanked shuttles.
Gauntlet: You have those same 10 rounds, so you need to average 5 wins each. Because of a guantlet ending it's really 7,11,3,7,11,3,7,8,12 so 11 rounds. If you were up for the start and timed a gauntlet round to end at 1:10 you could have squeezed in 2 more rounds and gotten to 13. You now only need 3.8 wins/round. That's easily doable if you have the crew and are willing to refresh.
Arena: Everyone has explained how to do it above and plenty of people are 10/10 so far.
So, no this event wasn't impossible.
Would I like to see things tweaked, yes. Would I like to see an event that doesn't encourage tanking, yes. But am I happy they're trying something new compared to the previous objective events, absolutely.
It was announced as being geared toward advanced players. Players pointing that out isn't a villainous act. Personally, I think they did go a step far on the arena. There's workarounds though. Pointing that out is not defending poor design. It's helping players out. Especially after the devs said that no changes would be made.
Tonight, I plan to leave a couple skills with no proficiency in gauntlet. If a fleet were to do the same and join at the same time, they could help each other out.
Good luck to all. I'm trying to help out and clear my objectives at the same time. Hope there's enough like-minded players out there.
Why? Freedom of speech(different opinions? And if i don t find it too hard,
i still shall voice the opposite just to please someone else?
You can t expect that they hand out a 4* citation for a 1min total of in game time.
Yes, this Event might not be for a new LV20 player. But i highly doubt that we have too many new players these days and ppl complaining here are mostly experienced players, that just wanna invest as little time and strategy into completing the rewards. Thats fine, then just skip the event.
Nothing is taken from you! 🤗
Perfect 20 out of 20 Arena battles is pretty ludicrous for the overwhelming majority of people.
There is no way I am going to hit that, but I am not losing any sleep over it.
If the intention was to get me to spend dilithium on extra Arena Tickets, well…
That Targ don’t hunt. 😂
Qapla’ !
I had a streak of 47 wins, spending lots of merits. My losing round was a gamble which lost, but did not matter because the other 4 crew were fatigued.
Just a couple of wins on the next gauntlet and I'm done.
Edit:
Done, and I have set up a gauntlet with 3 tanked skills, which should be interesting.
And honestly, tanking just one faction for cases like this is pretty easy IMO. Most minor factions will only take a few days. You can see the progress by linking at datacore
It's when you get to the heavy hitters that the work starts when it takes over a month
So far I haven’t had to use any merits. You just need 50 wins not 50 in a row. I can lose a few and still hit the goal I think. I’m ok with spending Merits for one refresh every cycle. I just wish the spend Chronitons was not locked.
I just slammed out like 25 Wins with Merit refreshes and a few heals of key Crew. Happened to get into first place doing it. There is time to go it slower and still be able to do the final Task. 400 Chronitons can be used quickly. That is a positive. Once that final Task is unlocked, it can be done in a few minutes. Just find stuff you need for Crew and grab stuff to build it.
The Gauntlet requirement is a reasonable challenge, and therefore fun (relative to Gauntlet, lol). It seems perfectly reasonable to me that one be asked to use an increase in merits in pursuit of that challenge.
You have given me an interesting insight into how other players approach the game!
It hadn’t occurred to me that there are folks that would simply never consider spending merits in the gauntlet even if they want to win rounds; I run with that as a baked in CODB in gauntlet-land and do it constantly.
But then, I am one of those weirdos that is fascinated by the gauntlet and actually enjoys it. 😬
I am in "the game is boring now" camp. I do not think that I am alone here.
The reason I wish the Chronitons was unlocked is because I don’t plan on hitting all the requirements to unlock it. I can’t hit the 20 arena wins without spending. I don’t like the arena and barely play it. I probably could have hit it if I used some of the strategies but I generally just avoid the parts of the game I don’t like. Also I view this as beta 1.0. No need to go hard because they’ll be another one soon.
Literally EVERY event is designed for more experienced players. In Skirmish there are tiers titled Normal, Elite and Epic. Factions benefit those with a larger, diverse crew complement. Galaxies give greater bonuses to those with better crew and collection/Starbase bonuses.
The difference is, with other events, there's an on-ramp for lower level and beginner players - this midweek event starts right at the vertical cliff-face.