Just putting it out there: Just because new crew get added doesn't mean they need to be collected.
I'm a bit of a hypocrite on this, because I'm in a comfortable grind of 'grab the 4*, level the 4*, freeze the 4*' regardless of who the 4* is, but we're long since past the point where a lot of these characters are redundant for gameplay purposes. Dr. Gillian Taylor isn't likely to show up in a lot of events, her stats are meh and there's a whole world of other SCI/MED combo 4*s.
Having said all that, I enjoy having at least one existing crew in events most weeks. If I have the crew, great, I get to use him/her! If I don't, I get to fill a gap in my collection! There's no downside.
The problem I have with this is the New cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, Mirror Picard for example ranks very high for voyages and gauntlet - in order to get the best out of my voyages I will therefore inherently have to keep or FF/FE these new cards in order to get the best out of my voyages/gauntlet etc. whilst facing the distinct possibility of airlocking cards I have worked very hard at levelling up for nothing. So far Boomer Mayweather to level 40 has been my only faux pas, but at this rate it won't be long before a 2/3 or 1/3 high levelled card will be added to this list.
[was on Sabbatical/Hiatus] Currently a trialist at Galaxy SquadronSTAY SAFE and KBO
Well, they said that they will be keeping it "around" the 52 new crew mark per year. I am interested to see what the deviation from that statement will be. Say, in %?
Not familiar with that statement, was that in the production notes?
So we're up to 9 so far this year with 4 being added this week. And no events other than reruns having existing crew since Christmas---- so 52 will come quick.
(That will take us to 13 which is 25% of 52)
As Frank noted quite correctly, it was on the old forums, but then again, it's a new year and I am certain things will change. I was also posting that a bit tongue-in-cheek, because I am expecting a sizeable growth of crew because that's what makes the money for DB. I am expecting a 200% "deviation" at this rate.
I have gone the other way on this - I have been leveling and vaulting all the 3* cards I have left as quickly as possible just free space and get the immortal points. Even Florist Q went yesterday, because he's just worthless in the big picture. I only have 5 saved out for the Cadet missions for the weekend. (Lwaxana, Saavik, Vash, Viceroy and Raq Bashir)
I ended up vaulting 3 more 4* crew the other day to make space for Gillian and this week's event gains.
I would go back to spending money on this game if they would let us put fully equipped crew into the vault instead of just immortalized crew. I can fully equip 1/5 crew, but I can't possibly immortalize them at the rate DB churns them out!
My crew is slowly reaching the point of a 'yellow death', similar to the eventual thermal death of our universe where all crew are yellow legendary crew with nothing changing or able to be changed. feels a little like how Q described the continuum...
facing the distinct possibility of airlocking cards I have worked very hard at levelling up for nothing. So far Boomer Mayweather to level 40 has been my only faux pas, but at this rate it won't be long before a 2/3 or 1/3 high levelled card will be added to this list.
No 3* or lower crew has any long term use outside of cadet challenges. So any resources spent on them is either for temporary gain, or progress towards achievements. That's no different than any game with different rarity characters.
I do enjoy the mega crew events however the repeat events are really nice as they give people a breather. Mega events usually introduce 2-3 new crew each week but then there is an constant flow of new non-Mega events after.
Just putting it out there: Just because new crew get added doesn't mean they need to be collected.
I'm a bit of a hypocrite on this, because I'm in a comfortable grind of 'grab the 4*, level the 4*, freeze the 4*' regardless of who the 4* is, but we're long since past the point where a lot of these characters are redundant for gameplay purposes. Dr. Gillian Taylor isn't likely to show up in a lot of events, her stats are meh and there's a whole world of other SCI/MED combo 4*s.
Having said all that, I enjoy having at least one existing crew in events most weeks. If I have the crew, great, I get to use him/her! If I don't, I get to fill a gap in my collection! There's no downside.
The problem I have with this is the New cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, Mirror Picard for example ranks very high for voyages and gauntlet - in order to get the best out of my voyages I will therefore inherently have to keep or FF/FE these new cards in order to get the best out of my voyages/gauntlet etc. whilst facing the distinct possibility of airlocking cards I have worked very hard at levelling up for nothing. So far Boomer Mayweather to level 40 has been my only faux pas, but at this rate it won't be long before a 2/3 or 1/3 high levelled card will be added to this list.
The flip side is, the new cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, meaning you can take a pass on this week's card you don't really care about because in two weeks, there'll be a stronger one you will.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order. I'm sure I'm not alone in having several I'd love to use regularly, but are just too deficient to choose over crew with stronger stats. Offhand:
Ambassador Spock
Enterprise-E Picard
General Martok
Weyoun Clone 4
Spock and Picard at least turn up in events often enough that they get some use then. Martok benefits from being a Klingon from time to time. Poor Weyoun, though!
Just putting it out there: Just because new crew get added doesn't mean they need to be collected.
I'm a bit of a hypocrite on this, because I'm in a comfortable grind of 'grab the 4*, level the 4*, freeze the 4*' regardless of who the 4* is, but we're long since past the point where a lot of these characters are redundant for gameplay purposes. Dr. Gillian Taylor isn't likely to show up in a lot of events, her stats are meh and there's a whole world of other SCI/MED combo 4*s.
Having said all that, I enjoy having at least one existing crew in events most weeks. If I have the crew, great, I get to use him/her! If I don't, I get to fill a gap in my collection! There's no downside.
The problem I have with this is the New cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, Mirror Picard for example ranks very high for voyages and gauntlet - in order to get the best out of my voyages I will therefore inherently have to keep or FF/FE these new cards in order to get the best out of my voyages/gauntlet etc. whilst facing the distinct possibility of airlocking cards I have worked very hard at levelling up for nothing. So far Boomer Mayweather to level 40 has been my only faux pas, but at this rate it won't be long before a 2/3 or 1/3 high levelled card will be added to this list.
The flip side is, the new cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, meaning you can take a pass on this week's card you don't really care about because in two weeks, there'll be a stronger one you will.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order. I'm sure I'm not alone in having several I'd love to use regularly, but are just too deficient to choose over crew with stronger stats. Offhand:
Ambassador Spock
Enterprise-E Picard
General Martok
Weyoun Clone 4
Spock and Picard at least turn up in events often enough that they get some use then. Martok benefits from being a Klingon from time to time. Poor Weyoun, though!
That reminds me: we're long overdue for a Chancellor Martok. Given the story arc on the Klingon mega-event, he really should have been the recurring 5* instead of Kortar.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order.
That will never happen. If they rebalance old crew there would be no need for players to spend money to buy the new crew. That's the whole purpose of the power creep, get people to buy new crew to replace the obsolete older crew.
One exception to this is Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. They constantly (and surprisingly) rebalance older crew.
I think it would be interesting if Crew worked like the way the Vault does, just in terms of it being a list of literally everyone in game. No duplicates, no freezer, no limited slots, just you've either got a toon or you haven't. I realize this would remove a huge amount of the benefit of VIP and the need to purchase crew slots, so DB will never do it, but I still think it would be nifty.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order.
That will never happen. If they rebalance old crew there would be no need for players to spend money to buy the new crew. That's the whole purpose of the power creep, get people to buy new crew to replace the obsolete older crew.
One exception to this is Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. They constantly (and surprisingly) rebalance older crew.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order.
That will never happen. If they rebalance old crew there would be no need for players to spend money to buy the new crew. That's the whole purpose of the power creep, get people to buy new crew to replace the obsolete older crew.
I think there's a safe middle ground for that.
Captain Scott is an excellent candidate for a buff. Adding a moderate amount of DIP and/or CMD to him wouldn't break the game since he's fairly weak right now.
There's also checking characters whose stats are incorrect. Ambassador Lwaxana's 5* Dress still has the same stats as her 4* Dress. This would make her already hellacious DIP proficiency even higher but its still the right thing to do.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order.
That will never happen. If they rebalance old crew there would be no need for players to spend money to buy the new crew. That's the whole purpose of the power creep, get people to buy new crew to replace the obsolete older crew.
I think there's a safe middle ground for that.
Captain Scott is an excellent candidate for a buff. Adding a moderate amount of DIP and/or CMD to him wouldn't break the game since he's fairly weak right now.
There's also checking characters whose stats are incorrect. Ambassador Lwaxana's 5* Dress still has the same stats as her 4* Dress. This would make her already hellacious DIP proficiency even higher but its still the right thing to do.
It would make sense on Mama Troi--- that being said, do y'all remember what it took to get Selar's uniform fixed?
I have been playing STT for just over a year and consider myself to be both a competitor and collector. I try to finish as high as possible in every event, or at least high enough to finish where I want, in order to ff all new 4* crew. I currently have all 165 crew slots full, with all 1-3* crew immortalized (130 frozen), 60 4-5* crew immortalized (34 frozen), and another 25 4-5* crew fully equipped. I will hit VIP-12 when I buy the 5* Cornwell double-up offer tomorrow, bringing me a much needed 20 new slots.
I definitely agree that some changes would be beneficial to make the game more enjoyable, since so many crew are either dismissed or frozen out of necessity, taking away the ability for players to actually utilize their favorite crew (or otherwise reduce their ability to compete in events, and maximize their crew on voyages, shuttles, gauntlets, etc...). As has been mentioned above, I foresee a day when my entire roster will be full of fully equipped 4-5* crew that are not fully fused.
If DB is going to continue adding new characters at such a high pace, then I think they should also be increasing the base number of free crew slots. They can do this without infringing on the benefit of paid (directly or indirectly via VIP level) acquisition of additional crew slots. I think the base number of crew slots should be a set % of total number of crew (ie: 15% means that when the total # of available crew reaches 500, the minimum number of free crew slots would hit 75). Basically, as the ceiling increases, so too should the floor, since this is a game about collecting.
I also think the cost to unfreeze crew should be removed, allowing more flexibility when it comes to crew use. DB is really squeezing the players by charging them to manage their crew, whether by shuffling players back-and-forth between the freezer, or for purchasing extra crew slots.
When it gets to the point that I have to start dismissing crew that I essentially paid for with cash/dil (ie: 1/4* and 1/5*), then the fun is sucked out of the game. To that end, I think there should be a variety of premium packs available, one with recent event crew and one without. My rationale is that I have played enough and paid enough over the last year to get pretty good, to the point that it has been many months since I left an event with a non-ff 4* crew. It has become increasingly difficult for me to find copies of older crew, to finish all the non-ff 4* and 5* crew that fill up so much of my roster. I would be more inclined to purchase packs if I felt I had a more reasonable chance of finding something useful, especially given the low exchange rate for honor.
It's not even just the simple increase in the crew pool, but also the recently added features that require different crew to be successful:
- shuttles require crew with high base stats
- gauntlet requires crew with high roll stats
- voyages require crew with high average stats (base + average roll), ideally with multiple skill coverage
- events require specific crew and/or traits
- challenges require a minimum number of cadets (6 at least, more if you want to enjoy challenges with flexibility of which missions you can complete every day)
There is definitely much room for incremental improvements that should be able to satisfy all types of players, without eroding DB's income stream. A player's council or more player polling via the forums would be a great start!
A player's council or more player polling via the forums would be a great start!
They had one once, didnt like what they heard from it, dissolved it saying theyd start another one, but never did and just hoped everyone would forget about the idea.
Aye, that players council lasted maybe 3 months. It sorta functioned as a playtest/quality control substitute, which I am sure you agree this game needs a lot of to catch the glaring errors they keep churning out. DB doesn't handle or listen to criticism well though. Certainly the latter.
Comments
The problem I have with this is the New cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, Mirror Picard for example ranks very high for voyages and gauntlet - in order to get the best out of my voyages I will therefore inherently have to keep or FF/FE these new cards in order to get the best out of my voyages/gauntlet etc. whilst facing the distinct possibility of airlocking cards I have worked very hard at levelling up for nothing. So far Boomer Mayweather to level 40 has been my only faux pas, but at this rate it won't be long before a 2/3 or 1/3 high levelled card will be added to this list.
As Frank noted quite correctly, it was on the old forums, but then again, it's a new year and I am certain things will change. I was also posting that a bit tongue-in-cheek, because I am expecting a sizeable growth of crew because that's what makes the money for DB. I am expecting a 200% "deviation" at this rate.
I ended up vaulting 3 more 4* crew the other day to make space for Gillian and this week's event gains.
My crew is slowly reaching the point of a 'yellow death', similar to the eventual thermal death of our universe where all crew are yellow legendary crew with nothing changing or able to be changed. feels a little like how Q described the continuum...
No 3* or lower crew has any long term use outside of cadet challenges. So any resources spent on them is either for temporary gain, or progress towards achievements. That's no different than any game with different rarity characters.
The flip side is, the new cards are inherently stronger than previous cards, meaning you can take a pass on this week's card you don't really care about because in two weeks, there'll be a stronger one you will.
Having said that, while I'm fine with the parade of new crew, I do also feel that another rebalancing of older crew is in order. I'm sure I'm not alone in having several I'd love to use regularly, but are just too deficient to choose over crew with stronger stats. Offhand:
Ambassador Spock
Enterprise-E Picard
General Martok
Weyoun Clone 4
Spock and Picard at least turn up in events often enough that they get some use then. Martok benefits from being a Klingon from time to time. Poor Weyoun, though!
That reminds me: we're long overdue for a Chancellor Martok. Given the story arc on the Klingon mega-event, he really should have been the recurring 5* instead of Kortar.
That will never happen. If they rebalance old crew there would be no need for players to spend money to buy the new crew. That's the whole purpose of the power creep, get people to buy new crew to replace the obsolete older crew.
One exception to this is Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. They constantly (and surprisingly) rebalance older crew.
Please no! That's exactly why I left GoH.
I think there's a safe middle ground for that.
Captain Scott is an excellent candidate for a buff. Adding a moderate amount of DIP and/or CMD to him wouldn't break the game since he's fairly weak right now.
There's also checking characters whose stats are incorrect. Ambassador Lwaxana's 5* Dress still has the same stats as her 4* Dress. This would make her already hellacious DIP proficiency even higher but its still the right thing to do.
It would make sense on Mama Troi--- that being said, do y'all remember what it took to get Selar's uniform fixed?
I definitely agree that some changes would be beneficial to make the game more enjoyable, since so many crew are either dismissed or frozen out of necessity, taking away the ability for players to actually utilize their favorite crew (or otherwise reduce their ability to compete in events, and maximize their crew on voyages, shuttles, gauntlets, etc...). As has been mentioned above, I foresee a day when my entire roster will be full of fully equipped 4-5* crew that are not fully fused.
If DB is going to continue adding new characters at such a high pace, then I think they should also be increasing the base number of free crew slots. They can do this without infringing on the benefit of paid (directly or indirectly via VIP level) acquisition of additional crew slots. I think the base number of crew slots should be a set % of total number of crew (ie: 15% means that when the total # of available crew reaches 500, the minimum number of free crew slots would hit 75). Basically, as the ceiling increases, so too should the floor, since this is a game about collecting.
I also think the cost to unfreeze crew should be removed, allowing more flexibility when it comes to crew use. DB is really squeezing the players by charging them to manage their crew, whether by shuffling players back-and-forth between the freezer, or for purchasing extra crew slots.
When it gets to the point that I have to start dismissing crew that I essentially paid for with cash/dil (ie: 1/4* and 1/5*), then the fun is sucked out of the game. To that end, I think there should be a variety of premium packs available, one with recent event crew and one without. My rationale is that I have played enough and paid enough over the last year to get pretty good, to the point that it has been many months since I left an event with a non-ff 4* crew. It has become increasingly difficult for me to find copies of older crew, to finish all the non-ff 4* and 5* crew that fill up so much of my roster. I would be more inclined to purchase packs if I felt I had a more reasonable chance of finding something useful, especially given the low exchange rate for honor.
It's not even just the simple increase in the crew pool, but also the recently added features that require different crew to be successful:
- shuttles require crew with high base stats
- gauntlet requires crew with high roll stats
- voyages require crew with high average stats (base + average roll), ideally with multiple skill coverage
- events require specific crew and/or traits
- challenges require a minimum number of cadets (6 at least, more if you want to enjoy challenges with flexibility of which missions you can complete every day)
There is definitely much room for incremental improvements that should be able to satisfy all types of players, without eroding DB's income stream. A player's council or more player polling via the forums would be a great start!
They had one once, didnt like what they heard from it, dissolved it saying theyd start another one, but never did and just hoped everyone would forget about the idea.