Loot Tables: Ideas for change

[10F] Belle'Anna

With the portal pools becoming stale for some people and the increased number of cards in the game, I am wondering how to divvy up the crew in the portal. Giving players choice in their "premium pulls". People have mentioned separating them into groups based on age, but with stat creep that seems as if most people will likely be heading for newer crew.

But what if we divvy them out based on skill? Say, a player is looking for Command crew, they head to the Command portal and make a pull there. To make sure the pool isn't too limited (as the case might be for engineering, science and medical in particular) it wouldn't be based on primary stats but just crew who have that stat, even if it's quite low.

I don't know if DB would be willing to add that kind of thing, but wondering what the player base might think about the idea, or if anyone had any better ones.

Thoughts anyone?

Pallidyne

Skill would be good.. I'd think by show/era would be good as well.

Some folks really do play to see their favorite characters... I think the DS9 pack was pretty popular due ot the show being popular, etc.

Travis S McClain

As it stands, there are 71 3* crew in the game, out of 493 total. Only 67 of that 493 are Common or Uncommon and therefore not in circulation in the Premium Time Portal. That works out to about 16% of all the crew who are in circulation in the Premium Time Portal are 3* crew, but 3* crew are also somewhere around 75% of the contents of a given Premium 10x pull.

To be honest, I think the only practical thing to do going forward will be to compensate for the proliferation of 4* crew by increasing their drop rate and putting more of them into circulation in the average pack. It would need to be a guarantee of at least two, if not three, 4*'s or 5*'s per 10x to make a 10x worth gambling on again.

I'm sure that would be immediately rejected as undermining the perceived value of the contents of those packs. I would counter that the staleness of those packs has already done that, and will only continue to do that as more players reach the critical mass point of dismissing more than they keep with each subsequent pack they get.

[Also: the rest of the ship schematics need to be properly circulated already. It's ridiculous that even now, the only schematics that drop are the same ones that were in circulation at launch.]

[10F] Belle'Anna

Maybe the pool could be expanded with honor drops, making at least the blues drop less frequently. And as you say, put different ship schematics in the pool. The trouble is, that the pool is very large for newer players and has all been worked out by older players. I think DB needs to throw more rare and less crew into the mix instead if bringing out 2 golds and purples almost weekly.

I feel the whole crew thing needs rebalancing but we may be beyond that point now.

One of the things I like about voyages is the limited crew drops, I know they're all going to be older cards and that narrows the pool a lot.

Maybe the older cards should all stay in voyages and the newer crew only in the portal?

Pallidyne

[10F] Belle'Anna wrote: »

Maybe the pool could be expanded with honor drops, making at least the blues drop less frequently. And as you say, put different ship schematics in the pool. The trouble is, that the pool is very large for newer players and has all been worked out by older players. I think DB needs to throw more rare and less crew into the mix instead if bringing out 2 golds and purples almost weekly.

I feel the whole crew thing needs rebalancing but we may be beyond that point now.

One of the things I like about voyages is the limited crew drops, I know they're all going to be older cards and that narrows the pool a lot.

Maybe the older cards should all stay in voyages and the newer crew only in the portal?

That's a very interesting idea. It would serve for a while at least having two pools--- it would buy time at least, but at the current rate we'd end up with 2 diluted pools. Makes it a tough nut to crack. I'd like to see more beholds as the pool gets so large though... at least player choice gets expanded some.

Or would Voyages just keep getting expanded with Premium pulls having only a limited number of crew that graduate to Voyages as more come in?

Travis S McClain

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

[10F] Belle'Anna

Or all super-rares are beholds at least. Single drops can be such a let-down

Banjo1012

Travis S McClain wrote: »

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

Yes! This would be awesome!

[10F] Belle'Anna

Enterprise Was Best wrote: »

Travis S McClain wrote: »

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

Yes! This would be awesome!

You would really feel you were getting value for money that way. I think there could be variations in how the event pack works versus the premium portal, because the event pack is so much more valuable it makes the premium portal feel very ordinary imo. I think beholds for premium portals and single drops for event packs would even the balance a bit. Replicator rations, honor and chrons would feel a lot better than a list of 3 stars we've all seen a hundred times already!

Banjo1012

[10F] Belle'Anna wrote: »

Enterprise Was Best wrote: »

Travis S McClain wrote: »

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

Yes! This would be awesome!

You would really feel you were getting value for money that way. I think there could be variations in how the event pack works versus the premium portal, because the event pack is so much more valuable it makes the premium portal feel very ordinary imo. I think beholds for premium portals and single drops for event packs would even the balance a bit. Replicator rations, honor and chrons would feel a lot better than a list of 3 stars we've all seen a hundred times already!

I had to have airlocked 1000 racquetball Bashirs by now

Jhamel

The problem is that the time portal is only being updated once a year ... at the rate of getting new event crew, a monthly portal update would be necessary, so we could actually get more recent event crew (from let's say respectively 3 months ago) every new month.

Since this is most likely not gunna happen anytime soon, I have ceased buying new portals. I have every possible 4* that is in the current portal fully-fused or repeatedly airlocked (such as Sela and Tomalak and KDF Gowron and Fesek and a few more no-use 2-skill usual SEC-DIP-CMD whatever).

[10F] Belle'Anna

Yes it's very stale for people who have been playing a long time, and too full for people who haven't. It needs to be broken up somehow. Personally, I really feel skills bases is great because it gives you more focus on what you'd like, and gives a fair bit of choice. Time based is okay but it may be that more cards were added in 2016 than 2017 and it would have to be broken up into 6 monthly lots or something, which means a new lot would be added every six months for crew going back 6-12 months which is a very long time to wait.

It needs to be updated more frequently, monthly would be ideal from a player perspective, especially since we aren't guaranteed immediate drops of crew we want to finish off. It makes new cards unique for at at least a month, that way.

From my perspective, I have 2/4s and 3/4s going back 6 months since I started playing and quite honestly they're pretty much useless as crew and it seems like they will be for ages. But the time I finish them off stat creep will mean they go straight into cryo for the most part.

I like to use my crew, I'm less a collector than a player, but still. I like my Dax's and I like my DS9 crew and I have my favourites (like Ruk) I just don't want to throw out. I want them doing stuff!

JeanLucKirk

ErisTheVorta wrote: »

The problem is that the time portal is only being updated once a year ...

They sure have gotten lazy with that. The "original plan" was every 3 months. Last time happened after 6. This time?

NemoTheBlue

I posted this suggestion on the old forums a year and a half ago. I still feel like something along those lines would be fair

Webberoni

Travis S McClain wrote: »

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

Moving 3* crew from the premium pulls to the standard pulls is a great idea.

Another way that DB could really make its loyal consumer base happy would be to filter out fully fused crew from beholds. There is nothing worse than getting excited as the behold window pops up, only to be met with three options that are all honor fodder.

The Great Gornholio

Webberoni wrote: »

Travis S McClain wrote: »

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

Moving 3* crew from the premium pulls to the standard pulls is a great idea.

Another way that DB could really make its loyal consumer base happy would be to filter out fully fused crew from beholds. There is nothing worse than getting excited as the behold window pops up, only to be met with three options that are all honor fodder.

I wonder how much more they would make if you could re-roll a behold? Maybe something like 100 Dil for a Purple and 300 for a Gold?

Webberoni

The Great Gornholio wrote: »

Webberoni wrote: »

Travis S McClain wrote: »

Maybe it's time to move the 3*s to the Standard Time Portal. Because of the cadet challenges, 3*s have more in common with 1*s and 2*s now than they really have with 4*s and 5*s anyway. That would establish a pool of 140 crew for the Standard pulls.

Then let the Premium Time Portal 10x pulls populate with 4*s, sporadic 5*'s, schematics, and maybe some other things like replicator rations or just some straight up Honor or chronitons.

Moving 3* crew from the premium pulls to the standard pulls is a great idea.

Another way that DB could really make its loyal consumer base happy would be to filter out fully fused crew from beholds. There is nothing worse than getting excited as the behold window pops up, only to be met with three options that are all honor fodder.

I wonder how much more they would make if you could re-roll a behold? Maybe something like 100 Dil for a Purple and 300 for a Gold?

I don't think it should even cost that much, if anything at all.

A lot of this stems from the fact that the honor exchange rate is so horrendous. A 4* citation costs a player 18,000 honor, yet receiving a ff 4* in a pack paid for by dil/$$$ only nets the player 200 honor. If the intent of a premium pack is to bestow a free 4* crew on the player, either make the crew useful, or improve the honor exchange rate so that the useless 4* crew can be more efficiently turned into a useful 4* crew/citation (or multiple useless 4* crew can be turned into a useful 5* crew/citation).

It doesn't make sense that I would have to get 90 useless 4* crew, in order to convert them into a useful 4* crew.