I was referencing the Q and A before this one that he talked about it some months ago. In that one he stated that boss battles is being used in a way that wasn’t intended.
If I am missing something someone please explain it to me. Are people exploiting a glitch or hack to get surplus rewards over what the Rewards Table indicates they should get per FBB?
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
If I am missing something someone please explain it to me. Are people exploiting a glitch or hack to get surplus rewards over what the Rewards Table indicates they should get per FBB?
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
No glitch or extra rewards. But someone who gets max rewards on each boss can really start to pile up the honor. 8 hards a day, two ultras, and one each of the other four can really add up. That is what they call resource hoarding.
If I am missing something someone please explain it to me. Are people exploiting a glitch or hack to get surplus rewards over what the Rewards Table indicates they should get per FBB?
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
No glitch or extra rewards. But someone who gets max rewards on each boss can really start to pile up the honor. 8 hards a day, two ultras, and one each of the other four can really add up. That is what they call resource hoarding.
But they actually are fighting the FBBs? And are able to do all that every day? We alternate between NM and UNM and that is plenty for us to deal with. If someone is completing the FBBs they certainly should get the completion rewards. Otherwise, the "sketchy" thing would be the company saying "You should not receive the rewards you were promised up front."
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
If I am missing something someone please explain it to me. Are people exploiting a glitch or hack to get surplus rewards over what the Rewards Table indicates they should get per FBB?
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
No glitch or extra rewards. But someone who gets max rewards on each boss can really start to pile up the honor. 8 hards a day, two ultras, and one each of the other four can really add up. That is what they call resource hoarding.
But they actually are fighting the FBBs? And are able to do all that every day? We alternate between NM and UNM and that is plenty for us to deal with. If someone is completing the FBBs they certainly should get the completion rewards. Otherwise, the "sketchy" thing would be the company saying "You should not receive the rewards you were promised up front."
Oh yeah. Remember, anyone can open any boss battle. When your fleet are all at level 20, it doesn’t matter anymore. So for 300 or some days 500 dilithium per day, one can accrue enough honor to get a legendary citation about every four days. And that’s not including honor obtained from regular game play like voyages, fleet participation, and such. It is quite the honor farm if you do it wisely and patiently throughout the day. They see this and they really do not like it
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or not profiting enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, the people who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (probably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this game and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
Founding ADM - PoF family of fleets (POF, POF2 & POF3) - Dear TP: Non sequitur. Your facts are uncoordinated.
If I am missing something someone please explain it to me. Are people exploiting a glitch or hack to get surplus rewards over what the Rewards Table indicates they should get per FBB?
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
No glitch or extra rewards. But someone who gets max rewards on each boss can really start to pile up the honor. 8 hards a day, two ultras, and one each of the other four can really add up. That is what they call resource hoarding.
But they actually are fighting the FBBs? And are able to do all that every day? We alternate between NM and UNM and that is plenty for us to deal with. If someone is completing the FBBs they certainly should get the completion rewards. Otherwise, the "sketchy" thing would be the company saying "You should not receive the rewards you were promised up front."
Oh yeah. Remember, anyone can open any boss battle. When your fleet are all at level 20, it doesn’t matter anymore. So for 300 or some days 500 dilithium per day, one can accrue enough honor to get a legendary citation about every four days. And that’s not including honor obtained from regular game play like voyages, fleet participation, and such. It is quite the honor farm if you do it wisely and patiently throughout the day. They see this and they really do not like it
And whose pocket does the money for the Dilithium that is bought go into? Sounds like they are upset by something that would increase their income if they leave it alone. That is a poor business model.
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
Feels like when Marvel Future Fight used to have videos for updates to the game on YouTube. Their "long-time game player" doing the video went to demonstrate a new Tier Three Skill and sat looking at the screen watching the Tier Three charge up at a rate of 0.5% per second. If this person actually played the game, they would know that for most characters, two cycles of the basic skills charges the Tier Three in about twenty seconds. They stopped the videos soon after that one blew their cover.
Every game company should have at least one person involved who actually plays the game. You don't even have to hire people. Engage active players to be part of the testing process. That exists for a reason.
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
If I am missing something someone please explain it to me. Are people exploiting a glitch or hack to get surplus rewards over what the Rewards Table indicates they should get per FBB?
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
No glitch or extra rewards. But someone who gets max rewards on each boss can really start to pile up the honor. 8 hards a day, two ultras, and one each of the other four can really add up. That is what they call resource hoarding.
But they actually are fighting the FBBs? And are able to do all that every day? We alternate between NM and UNM and that is plenty for us to deal with. If someone is completing the FBBs they certainly should get the completion rewards. Otherwise, the "sketchy" thing would be the company saying "You should not receive the rewards you were promised up front."
Oh yeah. Remember, anyone can open any boss battle. When your fleet are all at level 20, it doesn’t matter anymore. So for 300 or some days 500 dilithium per day, one can accrue enough honor to get a legendary citation about every four days. And that’s not including honor obtained from regular game play like voyages, fleet participation, and such. It is quite the honor farm if you do it wisely and patiently throughout the day. They see this and they really do not like it
And whose pocket does the money for the Dilithium that is bought go into? Sounds like they are upset by something that would increase their income if they leave it alone. That is a poor business model.
up until about a month ago, from mine to theirs. Then the lay offs came. Hhhmmmmm…..
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
Thats also a really good point. I wont pretend that i know exactly how long it would take for some of the things that seem like they would be simple fixes, but i do really agree that it seems like they are just kicking the can down the road instead of trying to be more responsive and reactive to these issues.
The more i think about it, the more i am convinced that there is basically no way that the game has years and years of life, like ben claimed. I hope im wrong.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
I dont know how anyone who claims that tng is their favorite series of trek cant remember how to pronounce that name.
I often get it wrong and I watched the original series as a kid when first released and have watch all series multiple times. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Just a note on Crew Retrieval, it's a very well-implemented twofold solution for a very mature Gacha. It drives revenue via engagement. It was essential to extend this product's lifecycle.
First, it serves to further lower barriers to entry.
From a perspective of raw power-level, Mega and Objective Event golds do reward players with a nearly-maxed card after about a month's loyalty. However, CR permits players to be more effective in Gauntlet, FBB, and even retrieve specific named crew in anticipation of their weekend events. Having no real access to these avenues of play usually means they become ignored; now players can retrieve some older but still competitive cards to begin playing. As they play more, they will naturally gain a depth of understanding, and better appreciation for the game's premium offerings.
Second, it deals with the issue of an extremely large portal.
Instead of becoming a weakness, with the cornerstone reward (the Premium 10x) biannually devalued by an increasingly watered-down pool, it instead turns this into a strength. Here's the breadth of available characters, and you can own any of them - for free - but at a slow trickle. Own a full bridge bunch of your favorite PNGs, or focus on a single one to max out; it's the player's choice. Now you don't have to just play with your lucky "Dosi" drops.
Just a note on Crew Retrieval, it's a very well-implemented twofold solution for a very mature Gacha. It drives revenue via engagement. It was essential to extend this product's lifecycle.
First, it serves to further lower barriers to entry.
From a perspective of raw power-level, Mega and Objective Event golds do reward players with a nearly-maxed card after about a month's loyalty. However, CR permits players to be more effective in Gauntlet, FBB, and even retrieve specific named crew in anticipation of their weekend events. Having no real access to these avenues of play usually means they become ignored; now players can retrieve some older but still competitive cards to begin playing. As they play more, they will naturally gain a depth of understanding, and better appreciation for the game's premium offerings.
Second, it deals with the issue of an extremely large portal.
Instead of becoming a weakness, with the cornerstone reward (the Premium 10x) biannually devalued by an increasingly watered-down pool, it instead turns this into a strength. Here's the breadth of available characters, and you can own any of them - for free - but at a slow trickle. Own a full bridge bunch of your favorite PNGs, or focus on a single one to max out; it's the player's choice. Now you don't have to just play with your lucky "Dosi" drops.
I just recently started the game all over again. With the starter pack I can retrieve Klingon West. At captains level 15, I’m close to the 5 million credits to retrieve him. And they start you with 1000 quanta. He’s gonna be a big help
I think the issue they had with FBB is how quickly we all figured out how to beat it. I believe that their intention was to create something that would take a complete and active fleet nearly the full 24 hours to beat and most fleets would need to buy extra valor. Indeed, thus was the result near the beginning. But everyone figured out the best setup perameters, and they used retrieval and such to get good crews. Now no one needs to buy valor. Or, very few do. In my fleet we went back to rotation of Nightmare and Ultra Nightmare because a few member had been stuck behind, but we can easily knock out three bosses in two days with questionable participation from some members. I've spent dilithium at the beginning, but not in a long time. Yes, the massive amount of honor that one can accru affects the game economy. And fleets being mean to members (which my fleet has mostly avoided) is bad. But I believe that the real problem with it is that they can't make money from it anymore.
I suppose there is also the massive issue that it leaves any potential new players hopelessly in the dust if they missed the beginning of FBB.
I think the issue they had with FBB is how quickly we all figured out how to beat it. I believe that their intention was to create something that would take a complete and active fleet nearly the full 24 hours to beat and most fleets would need to buy extra valor. Indeed, thus was the result near the beginning. But everyone figured out the best setup perameters, and they used retrieval and such to get good crews. Now no one needs to buy valor. Or, very few do. In my fleet we went back to rotation of Nightmare and Ultra Nightmare because a few member had been stuck behind, but we can easily knock out three bosses in two days with questionable participation from some members. I've spent dilithium at the beginning, but not in a long time. Yes, the massive amount of honor that one can accru affects the game economy. And fleets being mean to members (which my fleet has mostly avoided) is bad. But I believe that the real problem with it is that they can't make money from it anymore.
I suppose there is also the massive issue that it leaves any potential new players hopelessly in the dust if they missed the beginning of FBB.
I think this is pretty accurate.
The problem all boils down to wrgs intended behavior not matching with the actual behavior.
With fbb, had the lead designer actually been present with mid-top tier fleet performance, they may have known that their challenging experience of fbb was actually easy.
This is skmilar to when ben foirst started joining timelines talks and had his “puzzles” in tow. They were solved wayyyyyyyyyyyyy before he intended. I just got the sense that he thinks hes really smart, and im sure he is. But the folks playing this game, holy smokes. Collectively he had no chance. And i feel like hes always been trying to outsmart us. And he never needed to.
Crew retrieval is great. A little complicated but been very helpful to me. FBB is interesting but not letting players get nodes after they have unlocked one in a chain makes it very hard for fleets that don’t have multiple long term players. I frequently have to let others go first or pick the most obscure crew to ensure we don’t get stuck. Even then I don’t have every crew in game. There needs to be a way for a fleet to finish a chain if they don’t have that crew person or crew persons. The update will help some with that. The biggest issue with boss battles was the 24 hr clock to try to monetize boss battles and force spending. That killed so many fleets and got so many people to give up. If instead the quicker you finished the boss the better the rewards would have increased spending without punishing small to mid lvl fleets.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
It's a pretty common occurrence that the groupthink of the player base will come up with a way to maximize a game feature or mechanism that was not foreseen by the developers. The two most common ones are tanked shuttles and hoarding super rares in Galaxy events until phase 2/near the end of the event. This time, surely they've realized well-coordinated and motivated fleets are farming FBB for scads of in-game resources, which is now knocking the precious game economy askew.
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or notbprofitable enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, thebpeople who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (0provably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this fame, and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
I think the issue they had with FBB is how quickly we all figured out how to beat it. I believe that their intention was to create something that would take a complete and active fleet nearly the full 24 hours to beat and most fleets would need to buy extra valor. Indeed, thus was the result near the beginning. But everyone figured out the best setup perameters, and they used retrieval and such to get good crews. Now no one needs to buy valor. Or, very few do. In my fleet we went back to rotation of Nightmare and Ultra Nightmare because a few member had been stuck behind, but we can easily knock out three bosses in two days with questionable participation from some members. I've spent dilithium at the beginning, but not in a long time. Yes, the massive amount of honor that one can accru affects the game economy. And fleets being mean to members (which my fleet has mostly avoided) is bad. But I believe that the real problem with it is that they can't make money from it anymore.
I suppose there is also the massive issue that it leaves any potential new players hopelessly in the dust if they missed the beginning of FBB.
I think this is pretty accurate.
The problem all boils down to wrgs intended behavior not matching with the actual behavior.
With fbb, had the lead designer actually been present with mid-top tier fleet performance, they may have known that their challenging experience of fbb was actually easy.
This is skmilar to when ben foirst started joining timelines talks and had his “puzzles” in tow. They were solved wayyyyyyyyyyyyy before he intended. I just got the sense that he thinks hes really smart, and im sure he is. But the folks playing this game, holy smokes. Collectively he had no chance. And i feel like hes always been trying to outsmart us. And he never needed to.
The reality is that as a group we understand Timelines better than they do, as a group we can commit more time to it than they can, and we may now have more people with coding skills than they do. Thus, the players have at least as good a handle on things such as how things changed, how to work around in game shortcomings (e.g., using Discord instead of in game chat), and how to strategize. We can communicate so that people can compare notes.
The big problem for them is that they can spend months designing some new aspect of the game and we can figure out the most efficient way to win in a fraction of the time that they spend on it.
To be successful, they’ll need to find ways of making small tweaks that cause us to have to rethink things.
Fleet Boss Battles wasn't even on the list of things to say we liked about the game. It felt like an old copy/paste list that hadn't been updated in a while.
Although it was an answer that was present on a prior survey as well, I think the one that said something about "cooperating with our fleets" would cover the FBB scenario. Just my head cannon for this survey. I agree it should have been specified.
Re: honor farming from FBB.
Assuming that's an issue - which it really shouldn't be, since you only get rewards if you're putting in the work - I'll offer two counterpoints.
First, the post-level 20 bridge reward is weaksauce (I'm trying to be nice here). A 1x premium for the equivalent of 6 defeated UNM bosses? If it were a 10x premium, I'd be ok with that. So considering that particular reward is so poor, there's gotta be something else to keep us going. Ya know, like honor.
Second, as I posted recently in another thread, I need around 690 5* citations to FF my current 5* roster. Not ALL the 5* crew in the game, just the ones I own. As it happens, I own 509 of them, meaning there's still 146 crew (as of today) that I'm not even considering here. By back of the napkin math, it will take me (checks notes) the rest of my lifetime to complete that particular task. Honor farming? Our fleet is pretty effective at taking down multiple bosses per day, and there is no current scenario that will make enough of a dent to be economy-breaking. Outside of a handful of players (and kudos to you! ), I imagine most of us are in a similar state of it'll-never-be-done. (I can't even fathom what it looks like from the perspective of a newer player.)
Comments
I was referencing the Q and A before this one that he talked about it some months ago. In that one he stated that boss battles is being used in a way that wasn’t intended.
Except they DO blame us REPEATEDLY for playing the game they put out. They were the ones who set up the Rewards Table, not us.......
Word
If the FBB is dropping more Rewards than intended, that is also a "them" problem and should be fixed. Blaming the players for them having a coding issue is the perfect example of blaming "us" for a "them" problem.
No glitch or extra rewards. But someone who gets max rewards on each boss can really start to pile up the honor. 8 hards a day, two ultras, and one each of the other four can really add up. That is what they call resource hoarding.
But they actually are fighting the FBBs? And are able to do all that every day? We alternate between NM and UNM and that is plenty for us to deal with. If someone is completing the FBBs they certainly should get the completion rewards. Otherwise, the "sketchy" thing would be the company saying "You should not receive the rewards you were promised up front."
I know of many players who came into the last Honor Sale with much more honor than ever before as a result of this. Unsure how the developers will address this, but almost surely that's the "negative behavior" that was mentioned.
My other thought was that the "negative behavior" has to do with movement between fleets and how many players were getting dismissed from fleets by admirals who wanted FBB to be played a certain way. It's probably not good for player retention if you're a somewhat casual player who gets kicked from your fleet for doing the "wrong thing" in FBB.
Oh yeah. Remember, anyone can open any boss battle. When your fleet are all at level 20, it doesn’t matter anymore. So for 300 or some days 500 dilithium per day, one can accrue enough honor to get a legendary citation about every four days. And that’s not including honor obtained from regular game play like voyages, fleet participation, and such. It is quite the honor farm if you do it wisely and patiently throughout the day. They see this and they really do not like it
My take after reading the statement is that they didn’t like the negativity FBB created within fleets, and the negativity directed towards WRG about FBB dissuading people from playing in small fleets. That also lead to negativity in the forums, with players questioning if they would continue playing and arguing over playing the game your own way vs amalgamating into large fleets to survive.
If so, this was yet another example of WRG over-valuing their shiny new feature, and suffering from not actually playing the game. The negativity would be avoided if the game features were being designed by people who actively and passionately played the game, instead of by people trying to find new ways to milk the cash cow.
I’m always shocked by their surprised reaction to player responses to new features, when things happen exactly as I (or most active players / forum goers) could predict after giving five minutes consideration to those new features.
This is a really good analysis of whats been going on. And i agree completely with everything you said.
As one example, if fbb is not performing the way they want, or not profiting enough, they could have just looked at the fbb feedback thread. They could have given players what they wanted by letting people continue to unlock nodes instead of locking them out on each combo chain. This would have driven valor sales and would have helped their bottom line. Maybe it wouldnt have been what they wanted, but at least it would have been something.
Ever since wrg took over ive always had a nagging feeing that they were completely misunderstanding how people played the game. At some point, the people who had the vision for the game were replaced by people who were not able to comprehend why people play this game.
Looking at crew retrieval and celestial market, i have NEVER spent dilithium on these features. And i dont know how many people ever have. They took a lot of engineering tobdesign, and i just cant see how they made any money.
Even cre retrieval is poorly though out if they wanted people to spend dilithium , the bottlenecks of all the other resources make the whole thing a complicated and expensive mess if you want to expedite it.
I dunno. I think the reason we are where we are, with a recently jettisoned core team replaced by a (probably) overworked and spread to thin back up crew, is due to one and only one reason:
Whoever is in charge is not a player of this game and refuses to acknowledge that the feedback provided by players is beneficial. This is further demonstrated by the “players choice survey”, or maybe it should be called the “blow smoke up our ******” survey .
No one at WRG seriously plays the game. Look at the video Ben released to demo FBB. His account was like Level 21 or something. LOL really? And you wonder why they don't get it when someone tells them not being able to lock boss battles is killing their fleet, causing disfunction and frustration, bad feelings and people leaving the game? Did they NEED a new engine to lock battles? NO! They decided to roll it into a new engine with other features that 8 months later we are still waiting on.
You cannot truly relate to issues if you have not experienced them, and they have not, and never will.
And whose pocket does the money for the Dilithium that is bought go into? Sounds like they are upset by something that would increase their income if they leave it alone. That is a poor business model.
Feels like when Marvel Future Fight used to have videos for updates to the game on YouTube. Their "long-time game player" doing the video went to demonstrate a new Tier Three Skill and sat looking at the screen watching the Tier Three charge up at a rate of 0.5% per second. If this person actually played the game, they would know that for most characters, two cycles of the basic skills charges the Tier Three in about twenty seconds. They stopped the videos soon after that one blew their cover.
Every game company should have at least one person involved who actually plays the game. You don't even have to hire people. Engage active players to be part of the testing process. That exists for a reason.
up until about a month ago, from mine to theirs. Then the lay offs came. Hhhmmmmm…..
Thats also a really good point. I wont pretend that i know exactly how long it would take for some of the things that seem like they would be simple fixes, but i do really agree that it seems like they are just kicking the can down the road instead of trying to be more responsive and reactive to these issues.
The more i think about it, the more i am convinced that there is basically no way that the game has years and years of life, like ben claimed. I hope im wrong.
You do realize that was a test account on a test server? Ben may or may not play the game, but the account you saw was created to test and demo FBB not play regularly. FBB wasn't even live, so what he was showing you the game on their test servers. His dil there was pretty crazy too. All because it wasn't a real account. It was created for that test server so that he could show is FBB.
And also, sometimes apple/android requires upgrades to submit new versions. The same way WRG tells us we need the new version before we can play, apple/android tells WRG they need to update their code before they can release a new version. They didn't have a choice, as they said they HAD to include the engine upgrade.
Ive noticed that his knowledge of star trek is questionable. He pronounces data’s name as “DAHTA” instead of “DAY-TAH”, and otherwise has said some strange things from time to time. I dont think hes a trek fan , let alone a player of the game. Which is fine, to each their own.
But id rather have a trek fan and player of timelines as the leader.
Precisely.
I dont know how anyone who claims that tng is their favorite series of trek cant remember how to pronounce that name.
I often get it wrong and I watched the original series as a kid when first released and have watch all series multiple times. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
First, it serves to further lower barriers to entry.
From a perspective of raw power-level, Mega and Objective Event golds do reward players with a nearly-maxed card after about a month's loyalty. However, CR permits players to be more effective in Gauntlet, FBB, and even retrieve specific named crew in anticipation of their weekend events. Having no real access to these avenues of play usually means they become ignored; now players can retrieve some older but still competitive cards to begin playing. As they play more, they will naturally gain a depth of understanding, and better appreciation for the game's premium offerings.
Second, it deals with the issue of an extremely large portal.
Instead of becoming a weakness, with the cornerstone reward (the Premium 10x) biannually devalued by an increasingly watered-down pool, it instead turns this into a strength. Here's the breadth of available characters, and you can own any of them - for free - but at a slow trickle. Own a full bridge bunch of your favorite PNGs, or focus on a single one to max out; it's the player's choice. Now you don't have to just play with your lucky "Dosi" drops.
I just recently started the game all over again. With the starter pack I can retrieve Klingon West. At captains level 15, I’m close to the 5 million credits to retrieve him. And they start you with 1000 quanta. He’s gonna be a big help
I suppose there is also the massive issue that it leaves any potential new players hopelessly in the dust if they missed the beginning of FBB.
I think this is pretty accurate.
The problem all boils down to wrgs intended behavior not matching with the actual behavior.
With fbb, had the lead designer actually been present with mid-top tier fleet performance, they may have known that their challenging experience of fbb was actually easy.
This is skmilar to when ben foirst started joining timelines talks and had his “puzzles” in tow. They were solved wayyyyyyyyyyyyy before he intended. I just got the sense that he thinks hes really smart, and im sure he is. But the folks playing this game, holy smokes. Collectively he had no chance. And i feel like hes always been trying to outsmart us. And he never needed to.
It's like how her older brothers keep calling Oh-Mee-Gah "Oh-May-Gah".......
The reality is that as a group we understand Timelines better than they do, as a group we can commit more time to it than they can, and we may now have more people with coding skills than they do. Thus, the players have at least as good a handle on things such as how things changed, how to work around in game shortcomings (e.g., using Discord instead of in game chat), and how to strategize. We can communicate so that people can compare notes.
The big problem for them is that they can spend months designing some new aspect of the game and we can figure out the most efficient way to win in a fraction of the time that they spend on it.
To be successful, they’ll need to find ways of making small tweaks that cause us to have to rethink things.
Re: honor farming from FBB.
Assuming that's an issue - which it really shouldn't be, since you only get rewards if you're putting in the work - I'll offer two counterpoints.
First, the post-level 20 bridge reward is weaksauce (I'm trying to be nice here). A 1x premium for the equivalent of 6 defeated UNM bosses? If it were a 10x premium, I'd be ok with that. So considering that particular reward is so poor, there's gotta be something else to keep us going. Ya know, like honor.
Second, as I posted recently in another thread, I need around 690 5* citations to FF my current 5* roster. Not ALL the 5* crew in the game, just the ones I own. As it happens, I own 509 of them, meaning there's still 146 crew (as of today) that I'm not even considering here. By back of the napkin math, it will take me (checks notes) the rest of my lifetime to complete that particular task. Honor farming? Our fleet is pretty effective at taking down multiple bosses per day, and there is no current scenario that will make enough of a dent to be economy-breaking. Outside of a handful of players (and kudos to you!