December Production Update Follow-up
Admiral Prince
✭✭✭
Hello everyone,
I know there’s been some questions regarding the changes I mentioned in my last production update, as well as details in the release notes, so I wanted to explain those things in greater detail.
The short version is that circumstances changed between when I wrote my last update and when the update went live, and I didn’t account for those changes.
For example, I wrote that we intended to reduce Training Holoprogram drops during Voyages. However, after analyzing the overall drops in Voyages we decided against making that change. We made sure that the release notes had the correct information, but I didn’t amend the production update to reflect that. That was an oversight on my part.
I also realized we weren’t as clear as we needed to be when we explained the changes to Voyages. We made this change because the amount of chronitons being earned from Voyages was disproportionately benefiting the strongest players in the game and allowed many of those players to dominate Galaxy events. We felt this was unfair to the majority of players, especially our newest players.
We also want you to know that while the frequency of Chronitons drops during Voyages has decreased, the quantity of Chronitons you receive in each drop has actually increased. The overall impact is that for shorter Voyages, you are more likely to end up with a few more Chronitons than before. Longer Voyages, meanwhile, are more likely to earn fewer Chronitons than previously. This reduction in Chronitons earned kicks in after you’ve hit the 4-hour mark.
To be clear: We are not reverting the Chronitons change to Voyages. But over the next couple of months we will continue to add additional crew to the loot table, including some of your favorite crew that haven’t appeared in Voyages yet. We are also continuing to monitor the gameplay impact of these changes, and will make adjustments as needed, which we will communicate to you.
We fell short of our goal of being completely transparent in explaining changes to the game, but we are committed to improving in that area with each release.
Please continue to send us your feedback on Voyages and other aspects of STAR TREK TIMELINES. We built this game for you, and we want to keep providing a great experience in the universe you love.
LLAP,
Admiral Prince
I know there’s been some questions regarding the changes I mentioned in my last production update, as well as details in the release notes, so I wanted to explain those things in greater detail.
The short version is that circumstances changed between when I wrote my last update and when the update went live, and I didn’t account for those changes.
For example, I wrote that we intended to reduce Training Holoprogram drops during Voyages. However, after analyzing the overall drops in Voyages we decided against making that change. We made sure that the release notes had the correct information, but I didn’t amend the production update to reflect that. That was an oversight on my part.
I also realized we weren’t as clear as we needed to be when we explained the changes to Voyages. We made this change because the amount of chronitons being earned from Voyages was disproportionately benefiting the strongest players in the game and allowed many of those players to dominate Galaxy events. We felt this was unfair to the majority of players, especially our newest players.
We also want you to know that while the frequency of Chronitons drops during Voyages has decreased, the quantity of Chronitons you receive in each drop has actually increased. The overall impact is that for shorter Voyages, you are more likely to end up with a few more Chronitons than before. Longer Voyages, meanwhile, are more likely to earn fewer Chronitons than previously. This reduction in Chronitons earned kicks in after you’ve hit the 4-hour mark.
To be clear: We are not reverting the Chronitons change to Voyages. But over the next couple of months we will continue to add additional crew to the loot table, including some of your favorite crew that haven’t appeared in Voyages yet. We are also continuing to monitor the gameplay impact of these changes, and will make adjustments as needed, which we will communicate to you.
We fell short of our goal of being completely transparent in explaining changes to the game, but we are committed to improving in that area with each release.
Please continue to send us your feedback on Voyages and other aspects of STAR TREK TIMELINES. We built this game for you, and we want to keep providing a great experience in the universe you love.
LLAP,
Admiral Prince
8
Comments
"Heads up -- we’re going to be rebalancing the Voyages loot table. This will be the first change since the feature launched. We’ll have more details about this later, but these are small adjustments and not drastic changes. You’ll earn slightly fewer Chronitons and Trainers, but you’ll earn a little more Credits, and have a greater chance of getting crew (including all-new Voyages-exclusive crew). Stay tuned."
do we actually have a greater chance at crew or like the notes say less 1* crew and more voyage exclusive crew but not really a "better chance"? Clarification would be appreciated
DB: Do Better.
Member of Starship Trista.
While I’m not casting doubt on the altruistic intent of balancing voyages towards newer players, I would suggest that it does not achieve the stated aim and In fact penalizes them. If easy access to chrons via dilithium extension of voyages is removed it is more likely that those benefiting in galaxy events will be the established players who have deep inventories of common items.
Furthermore, should you be incentivizing newer players by penalizing established players in any case? I would suggest that that is not the ideal behavior in a pay game model.
Just my 1.75 credits (adjusted for balancing).
Check out our website to find out more:
http://tenforwardloungers.freecluster.eu
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
There we go. Now it makes sense to me. Thanks for the clarification.
Silver hit the nail right on the head!
I really wish we'd get an explanation on the reasoning behind this decision. For anyone who's been playing more than a few months, trainers are the most useless so-called-reward in the game. Between the endless stream of useless trainers in Gauntlet and Shuttles, trainers in Voyages just get ignored when I'm looking over the reward list; I literally don't even see them anymore.
So for me chromitons are more valuable in voyages than trainers or really anything else. But I'm only VIP 14 so I guess you can ignore my opinion and focus on new players only.
.. Your literally punishing players for playing longer and paying.(does not help player retention)
And ya know.. you could have incentivized it in different ways.
Instead of butchering the"top end" / bigger players longer Voyages, you could have left them as they were and just increased the bottom end.. so the newer players still gain more and we don't lose out for paying.
You could set the system to "slightly" increase the odds of 4* crew dropping after the first refill
Or set a special refill prize..
Ok, we're lowering paying players chronitons but with each refill here is a pack of shuttle boosts... Or 150 merits or.. something..
You do know that you want us to pay you right ?
And the goal is to get new non paying players to start paying. You should be making the top end even more rewarding .
Your definition & use of the word "Slight" is insulting and damages trust.
30 %ish, Is not slight
30% is considerable.
1-3 Is a tiny bit
4-8 is slight
9-13 is small
14-20 is noticable
21 - 25 is moderate
26-35 is considerable
36-50 is Major
51-75 is massive
Merry Christmas, thanks for the worf..
Constructive suggestion,
Want players to keep paying for Voyages after this cut ? Make 5*s apart of the prize pool after 8:00:00
This! I'm running out of reasons to pay for dilithium for voyages...
So what is it DB, do you care about new players? Or: I don't see how you can have it both ways.
Captain level 50, approaching 100 immortals
All you need to know about Disruptor Beam
Translation : F2P players were hoarding chrons for galaxy events and we were giving out 5/5 crew to people who haven't spent a cent since the game went live so we decided to change this and put these players through the ringer because we value 5/5 crew highly as you can see by our 2/5 crew deals for $99.99
This one doesn't wash. The result of the change is a diminishing return on chrons - shorter voyages may actually get more than before. This would have less impact on people who haven't spent a cent, and thus are less likely to spend dilithium on extending voyages.
Also, as others have already mentioned, the precise nature of the adjustments to crew drop rates was never fully addressed. There seems to have been no increase in rates for uncommon crew and up, so I am beginning to assume that the only real change is the addition of the dilemma-exclusive super rares. That’s not exactly ‘more likely to receive crew’ or some such, so a few additional details would be appreciated. If only so we can be sure of where we stand on the adjustments.
Squadron Leader - [TFA] Bateson’s Bulldogs
Yup. I'm not getting the notifications, and still not getting "shuttle return" notifications either
We need some way to convert useless items (useless for many of us. I know I can use them in the replicator, but I’m never going to run out of rations) like scematics, starbase components and trainers. Honor or credits would be perfect.
Whatever the motivation is, the lie was using "slight" as the descriptor.
If it was done because of that though,
I could have even accepted something like a 2% / 3% cost increase to refill and maybe a 5% chron reduction.
I could have accepted that with honesty.
But remember, we were still paying for extended Voyages.. the "Free" chronitons are what are staying put !
You are simply upset that you cannot recur any charges for the high level crew we already bought that can make us consistent chronitons.
You have reached the stage on your cash-making algorithm where the one-time profit from selling power-creep (1400+ sec on a Deanna Troi anyone?) is finally being outweighed by the recurring cost from those same crew netting us 8 hour voyages without refuel.
And so we lose. Again.
I 100% believe the chronitons for cash pack that you mentioned is completely accurate; however, what I would counter is that I don't think they are necessarily referring to pay-to-play other than players who have a built up crew and can get to 8+ hours without a refresh.
Now this may overlap in a lot of areas but I think the overall problem with the above statement is that fraction events specifically don't benefit newer players at all because of the lack of crew. Even newer players who pay would have an extremely hard time ranking in my opinion.
If DB wanted to quickly help newer players out they would fix the reward structure for events to help them build a more usable team faster.
In the end I do think they modified this to encourage more spending on galaxy events and it will be interesting to see if it happens.