Player Burnout and How to Avoid It
Travis S McClain
✭✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
The purpose of this thread is not to gather a list of complaints and reasons why they're burning out. There are already a zillion of those threads. The purpose of this thread is instead to hopefully solicit some helpful advice from players who have avoided burning out.
Time and again, we get manifestos posted by players who are quitting the game, detailing why they've decided to do that. It's nothing new; it was already a thing when I started playing just four months after the game launched. There are two recurring themes:
1 They gorged on everything as quickly as they could, spending obscene piles of cash to do it, and then ran out of things to chase to feed that high they got from accruing everything all at once. They were all of a sudden confronted with the fact there wasn't much left for them to buy, and that left just playing in the now-weekly events as something to do.
2 They were strictly VIP 0/F2P and came to resent the penalizing limitations and how success was kept behind a paywall, and they couldn't keep up with the now-weekly events as something they had to do.
We have, however, several prolific players in this community who have played since the beginning and have committed some big time resources to it without burning out. We also have F2P players who have been able to work within those confines and have an enjoyable--even competitive!--experience.
So, how about it? What advice were you given that you've found helpful? Have you become burnt out but then regenerated your interest and enthusiasm? If so, how'd you do it? What changes have you made in how you play that you think have helped stave off burnout?
Time and again, we get manifestos posted by players who are quitting the game, detailing why they've decided to do that. It's nothing new; it was already a thing when I started playing just four months after the game launched. There are two recurring themes:
1 They gorged on everything as quickly as they could, spending obscene piles of cash to do it, and then ran out of things to chase to feed that high they got from accruing everything all at once. They were all of a sudden confronted with the fact there wasn't much left for them to buy, and that left just playing in the now-weekly events as something to do.
2 They were strictly VIP 0/F2P and came to resent the penalizing limitations and how success was kept behind a paywall, and they couldn't keep up with the now-weekly events as something they had to do.
We have, however, several prolific players in this community who have played since the beginning and have committed some big time resources to it without burning out. We also have F2P players who have been able to work within those confines and have an enjoyable--even competitive!--experience.
So, how about it? What advice were you given that you've found helpful? Have you become burnt out but then regenerated your interest and enthusiasm? If so, how'd you do it? What changes have you made in how you play that you think have helped stave off burnout?
Fleet Recruitment - 20 vacancies as of 17 July 2022 | My Timelines Wish List | Editable STT Trait Audit Spreadsheet
12
Comments
Choose Your Battles
You simply won't be able to be competitive at everything. Not at first at least. So concentrate your resources to one thing. For RuneScape I decided I was gonna be the best damned miner there was, and that ended up being a solid in-game cash flow that allowed me to eventually level up other abilities. In STT, I started strong with the Galaxy Events. That's where I got most of my early crew. I also concentrated on FF'ing the 2* and 3* crew I got, so I spent a lot of credits on the Basic Portal at first. Those were my choices, and they worked for me. These days maybe I would have tried to get crew that would be great at Voyages, but those weren't a thing early on. Now, I'm still F2P but can get event scores in the top 1000, do 6-8hr Voyages and have a decent crew roster with 125+ immortalised crew after ~7 months.
Don't try to be the best at everything. Don't spread yourself too thin.
Figure Out In-game Currencies
This one requires some leg work. You should be figuring out in-game currencies. That means determining their sources, their uses, spend some time accruing and see if you can get an idea of how fast you can expect things to accumulate. Talk to veteran players too, they'll have some good insight.
Then once you've figured out how/when/where you get and spend the currencies, do your best to figure out the most efficient uses and sources of them. Adjust your playstyle to match. F2P is all a balancing act and an exercise in efficiency. If you deviate from your efficiency plan, that's fine, you're probably just having some fun, but be aware of what you are losing/gaining so it's an informed choice. F2P means you can't easily replenish resources.
Find a Community
Whether it's a Fleet, the forums, Reddit, Discord, whatever. Communities help keep your spirits up, offer encouragement, tips and offer a little extra friendly competition. It helps keep the game fresh, and gives you more non-grinding-related reasons to log in.
Do You Really Want to be F2P?
This is the most important part. F2P means grinding. It means time. I'm used to these things and I kind of like them. Others don't. If you're not into that style of game play, then be prepared to spend some amount of money, or find another game that fits your style more.
A corollary to this is to establish the level of money you should spend, if you decide to go down that path. For STT, the monthly card can provide a lot of value, so maybe limit yourself to that. Personally, the only mobile game I spend money on is one that has semi-regular "sales" which I take advantage of from time to time. Your real life (presumably) has some sort of budget, so should your gaming life. And, if you previously did the efficiency exercise I mentioned before, determining the best way to spend your money shouldn't be too difficult. And if you've engaged with any sort of community, they can help too.
Anyways, those are just some insights I've had over the years, I hope they're helpful to somebody. Burning out on a game **tsk tsk**. Burning out on anything **tsk tsk**. So it's important to know how to avoid such things.
Cardassian wishlist:
Tora Ziyal - Thanks!
Natima Lang
Empok Nor Garak
Tekeny Ghemor
Mira
Makbar
Dejar
Ulani Belor
Solution I at most play gauntlet once a week and for only a day. I start my gauntlet in the afternoon. varying between 3 hrs before the end time of the previous gauntlet or just before.
Definitely has removed stress. And I now have time for other things then this game.
I also have now leveled all my crew on my main account and am getting close on my 2nd account , 21 more to go. This leveling may let me take part in gauntlet twice a week, I will wait until all are leveled in both accounts.
It definitely takes up a lot of time with two accounts. But in the past we did not have voyages or gauntlet. I was actually sitting and waiting the ten minutes for a cadet mission. Then sit and wait again.
I started two accounts to make a fleet of those two accounts because fleet rewards for events had just started. I really regretted my decision with the old expedition event. They gave tickets for event in threshold rewards. My best event for both accounts was expedition. I spent my whole weekend stuck on my iPad and iPhone (an account on each device) just barely getting all my tickets in.
I hated that old format of thresholds rewarding tickets and the way expeditions worked. You had to on each ticket clear the normal first, then elite, and finally epic. I do not think on the very first one they had time limits. I also think I had one account on that first one.
The next one I think I had two accounts. I also think they put the 1hour time limit in. The next version of expedition was the ability to do higher levels of missions if we starred them in a previous ticket. But, they did one implementation of a three phase expedition. This got the best reviews of any expedition event they ever did. This did not even inplement success on node guaranteeing crit of node.
I am of belief though the limitation of three tickets a day with no more period is the best thing they can do for expedition. With no ingame message giving any extra.
If they want to give extra tickets. They need to remove the daily reset. And any ingame message of tickets, needs to occur before event. If tickets are on the threshold rewards, we do not need to worry about losing them at end of day, because no reset of tickets. The total tickets should just be given at start of event. ( phased expedition has to have the reset)
They have tried many different things with expedition. They have improved it greatly. I would like to see a three phase expedition with the current things they have done, success on node gives crit and bonus crew multiply vp reward.
Immortalized: 140 x 5*, 221 x 4*, 74 x 3*, 47 x 2*, 27 x 1*
A few things have been key to maintaining my interest:
1) Finding a good fleet - don't underestimate the value of being able to laugh at a horrible portal pull with gaming friends or being able to ask questions or just chat
2) Not under/over investing - as someone else said, budgets apply no matter what you're doing
3) While I don't always agree with every decision, DB has added a lot to this game during the past year and most of it I've enjoyed - and it gives me new things to try
4) Growing stronger makes some things more fun (like gauntlet) so it's nice to see consistent progression
EVENT PARTICIPATION
One thing I've done for the past several months is to back off from feeling like I have to expend energy on every weekend event. I've gotten top 10 in a Galaxy, and top 50 in Faction events, but as my fleetmates can attest, recently I've been very choosy about which ones I will play. Instead I have focused on working toward other goals. Which brings me to the next point...
GOALS
I think it's important to always be looking forward to a goal. 5 months ago, that goal was finally getting all the episodes and distress calls cleared. After that, I set a goal of getting every single one of my crew fully-equipped (which I just accomplished last week). Right now I'm in a state of limbo, as I try to figure out what my next goal should be... I think the last goal was a bit of a grind, so I'm just enjoying doing nothing for a bit, but eventually I'll want to find something else to work toward.
NEW CHALLENGES
We started up a sister fleet a few months back, and I created a 2nd account to help get it set up and help keep it running smoothly (and then I created a 3rd account, sort of by accident, which I decided to keep VIP 0). For me, it has been very interesting to see how quickly and efficiently I can grow these two accounts, knowing what I know now — on the 2nd account I bought a monthly card, and that has grown a whole lot faster (which shouldn't surprise anyone), but even the F2P account is way beyond where I was at the same point when I first started playing STT. So, these fledgling accounts help keep me stimulated at times when my main account may be in periods of stagnation or quiescence.
AVOIDING THAT OVERWHELMING FEELING
Another thing I've done in the past several months, is to dump a lot of the crew I was working on that I didn't really care about having. I had kept so many one-off super-rares that I'd gotten from Voyages, mainly because I had the room, but also saying to myself, "Hey, they have this trait or are of this unique race, maybe that'll come in handy one day!" I airlocked a great deal of them, even ones that were FF. And y'know what? It felt so good. Looking at all of them and thinking about the time and effort and resources it would take to level and vault them got me overwhelmed. Long periods of being overwhelmed aren't good for avoiding a burnout. And since then, to keep from getting in the same boat, I don't keep any new crew that I don't really like (Legendaries being a possible exception). It's true that some of the crew I shoved out the airlock might've helped fill out a few cryo collections, but I'm still not regretting what I did. Which brings me to the final point...
NOT GETTING FRUSTRATED BY AS-YET UNATTAINABLE MILESTONES
Goals, as stated above, are of major importance to feeling fulfilled by a game such as this, I feel. But setting a goal that's too far away can lead to frustration. For example, I know that because of the way I've chosen to play this game, a great number of the cryo collections ("cryollections" for short) will not be ones that I'll complete for a very long time, if indeed ever. And that's okay. I'm fine with that. All that means is that there will still be things for me to work towards, even way down the line. I also know that I'll never "collect them all" — and frankly, I don't want to. But even if that's your goal, I don't think it's necessarily good to focus on that as a main goal if you're not pretty darn close to it already. Pick something smaller, like acquiring all Klingons, or all versions of main cast crew from a specific series, or something that's challenging yet within reach. If you see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, that's good. If you're stuck in the dark and don't know when you might possibly be able to reach the other side, you're risking burnout.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
I too am a chronic non-spender, and agree heartily with all his points.
I'll add- treat your Dil like gold. Other than achievements (and now collections) there's hardly any way to get it without spending. First priority should be getting your third and fourth shuttles, then crew slots. Nothing else will have the lasting benefit of those two items.
And speaking of crew slots, this is going to eventually be the main limiting factor for any f2p account. I'm at the ~14 month point now, and can reach top 1000 in nearly any event, easily-so in Galaxies. But there's no incentive to do it if you can't keep the rewards. So you need to be very strict on which unfused characters you're going to fight for and keep.
Galaxies are your friends, because this is where you can get a FF 4* just by finishing the thresholds. If you're strong enough to get top 2000, there's another one. Use these to grow your power, and then you have the freedom of freezing the ones you don't need to make space for that occasional event prize 1/5 that you really want.
1. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
2. These are not the droids you are looking for. Go about your business, move along.
3. Run! Run as fast and far away from this game as you can!
Actually, treat the game for what it is. A GAME. Free to play, or pay to play, the key word is GAME. It is an escape from real life! So just have fun.
Trista
The key for me has been detachment -- take what's still fun, lean into that, and forget the rest. I will still play events for rank sometimes, but as others have said, it's about picking and choosing what you want to do vs. trying to do everything. In a game without a ton of gameplay, there is a lot of time-consuming daily monotony to do if you try to do all of it. I find value mainly these days in the social aspects of the game -- the Discord server and my fleets -- so that's where I spend most of my focus.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
Don’t get too hung up on “I spent X number of dollars on packs and feel robbed!!!!” Think of spending on this game as a per-hour kind of thing rather than by per-legendary-crew-received. I’m about 20k points past VIP14 but I've also put a lot of hours into this game. Maybe even more than things like Skyrim, Fallout, or Civilization. With that kind of time logged, I’m still ahead on cost-per-hour compared to going to a movie in the theater, golfing, or a host of other expensive activities. With that kind of time logged, I don’t feel like I’m overspending, whereas I would feel that even with something like GTA V...I had to buy that twice (once for Xbox 360 and again for XB1) and felt vaguely cheated, despite spending a fraction of the money that I have here.
Subsequently I have looked long and hard at my roster, worked even harder on the backlog of 3* Crew and still kept up mostly with events.
Early on I realised voyages are incredibly important to the development of your crew this is coupled with shuttles.
Therefore, save your dilithium for shuttles 4 shuttles turning in gives you more and more trainers, more importantly it gets you to the gold trainers sooner as well. So if you are going to spend a little shuttles is the best value in the game I would argue, it never becomes worthless and it is ever needed in the game.
Dabo- always do dabo it's always worth it 5k is cheaper than faction store so even if it is equipment that can be added to a crew member it was still worth it.
Faction store never buy 250k credit items (even the 50k can be too steep) - i'm learning this the hard way but it's better to replicate the damn thing (most likely), the 50 and 250 merits is more realistic to spend on items instead.
Use all the tools available to you in particular special mention to the:
Crew Level 100 Spreadsheet - big thank you to the creators and contributors to that workbook
Crew Cost finder - again big thank you to the creators and contributors
These 2 i use the most they are the best planning tools in my opinion - the Do not airlock list I don't use as much - because if I can help it I won't airlock (sorry Mirror Sisko won't happen again)
Voyage Estimator is also a useful tool to have around, so again thank you to the creators of those.
For me, the list looks something like this:
The common thread in all of these problems is that the issue is my level of expectation - either due to time or resource commitments, or simple RNG, there's a clash between what I expect to be able to do and what's realistically possible without spending more money or time than I really want to. The solution is recalibration: realigning my expectations with what's actually realistic given how much time and effort and resources I want to put into the game.
Or even more simply: Decide what you're willing to put into the game. Set your goals accordingly - and if you find something's bothering you, either cut it or change the way you look at it.
For the first few months you should take it slow and enjoy the game play, take the time to read the stories and put yourself in the shoes of your favorite captain and crew members. Enjoy the plot and creativity, immerse yourself in the wonderful world of Star Trek (assuming you are a long time fan of multiple series & movies), and don't even worry about your performance. The time will eventually come - far too quickly, most likely - when you're more concerned about clicking quickly and efficiently, than you are about agonizing over which path you would choose on a given mission.
Even if you don't want to spend, a single monthly card can be a huge benefit that is well worth the $5 investment. You can turn that 3,000 dilithium into 1 additional shuttle (750 dil) and 15 additional crew slots (350 / 700 / 1050 dil), once you spend 500,000 in-game credits to add your first 10 additional crew slots. A second monthly card would give you more than enough dilithium to get a 4th shuttle (2,500 dil), or you could wait until you are able to accumulate the missing 2,350 dilithium via in-game means.
The one point mentioned above, which was key to me, was setting goals for yourself. This is important to not only have something short-term to focus your efforts on, but also to avoid feeling disappointed by your event rankings. Some of my goals from my first 6-9 months or so were:
- acquire and immortalize all the 1* and 2* crew
- acquire and immortalize all the 3* crew
- complete (3-star) all the daily challenge missions (with shorter level-by-level goals)
- complete (3-star) all the missions from each chapter (with shorter chapter-specific and level-by-level goals)
- event placement goals that show your progression over time (I remember aiming for the 70,000 threshold goal in each event, to at least walk away with equipment for the new crew that I wouldn't have to spend chrons/credits/items building)
- progressive goals for voyages (ie: consistently hitting 4 hours, then 6 hours, then 8 hours)
- use personal achievements and collection achievements as additional personal goals (I had accomplished most of these before they were introduced, but I think they are awesome for helping new players prioritize and focus)
And finally, be smart. Don't waste merits on the Gauntlet (no matter how strong the temptation), and don't waste dilithium in the faction stores. Do make efficient use of the ad-warp feature, to help farm expensive items (first discover what missions are critical to 3-star, in order to be able to ad-warp them).
I agreed with this until I started a second account that I spend zero on. So I’m VIP 40 or so and VIP 0. They’re both fun in such different ways that it keeps me quite content...mostly with the free account
But another reason I enjoy playing is the social aspect of this game (I mentioned this in another thread recently). I found a great fleet (not trying to **tsk tsk** up here
It is just fun to chat with these people. It ranges from Star Trek chat, goofing around, to real life stuff. This is where things like the Ship "Themes" thread started.
An example:
Last night, I made a joke about my current voyage. I got a standard activity stating the Borg Queen and Data both got sick from the replicators ... twice in a row. Someone else (keeping anonymity) suggested they should be tested for Crohn's (check out the fleet name, it makes sense). I joked that the CMO on the voyage was Tourist Quark. This led to joking that it probably costs a strip of latinum just to see him. At that point, the language filter kicked in and censored "strip". Which then led to, "Since the filter wont allow us to use those, he's going to charge a bar just to see him". Someone else joked "That might be the most Ferengi thing ever". This went on for awhile.
So while I enjoy the game itself, it is things like this that really elevates it for me.
[edit]
Additionally, if you look at my signature, this also came from our fleet chat. "If it wasn't for autocorrect, we wouldn't have Tuvok on a Giraffe". This originally came from another fleet mate who had tried to say he gotten Tuvok on a Voyage .. autocorrect had replaced Voyage with Giraffe. We ran with it
One other tool is the wiki. I use it daily to select the best missions for farming. More often than not that ship battle way down th list with one pip is a better mission than the top away mission with more pips.
Take a weekend or two off!
No one is forcing you to play them!
You will never collect all cards so don't get hung up on missing a few!
VIP 6. Player since the beginning. Level 65
This whole comment is really good, but this particular line reminded me of one other thing: be methodical about leveling up your crew. You're going to get a lot of them, especially at first, and it's tempting to jump from A to B to C to X.
Timelines got a lot easier for me when I forced myself to stick to working on two or three crew at a time (so that if I ran into a specific roadblock I still had a backup or two) and work them to completion.
This is especially important for F2P or newer players with limited crew space. The big jumps in ability occur at level 80 and 90 and 100. You don't want to spend resources on a crew you may need to airlock two weeks from now and you don't want to have a whole pile of so-so half-leveled crew who don't move the needle on missions or shuttles or gauntlet.
IMO, these are the most important 2 especially for f2p. My first 8 months, I was F2p until the 1st Convergence Day and then I splurged on some packs. After that, I switched to the monthly card with the occasional offer(10 for 10, or DYC) here and there.
At one point I started to go a little squirrely having to do all the events, and gauntlet every 3 hours so I stepped back a bit. Now, I mostly threshold-and-out the events that I like the characters or galaxies because they're a free 4/4 and gauntlet is down to maybe once a week for me. It's a lot more relaxed since I made the switch. It all comes down to finding which parts of the game you enjoy most and finding a good balance for you.
Goals are also a major point. I got overwhelmed and annoyed with having no crew space and the feeling of "I'll never get them all"(there were no achievements then and now that there are, they could do so much more with them to give something smaller to do than "Can you collect them all?") so I thinned the herd a bit. I started with all the cadets. as I'd vault one, I'd pick another standard 10-pull and work on the next(which got much easier after they added the trainers for shuttle fails). By the time I got through the cadets, I moved up to Level and vault my FF 4*s, now I'm down to 2/4*s.
Slow and steady and before you know it, Voyages go for 8 hours before you run out of AM and there's always someone(or 6) to level up.
27×1★; 45×2★; 72×3★; 121×4★; 14×5★
FE, not fused crew count:
0×2★; 0×3★; 18×4★; 21×5★
Think of STT as a casino slot machine that you have to build yourself before you can pull the lever. And it's a pretty stingy slot machine too. Scrounge for parts, build. Look on the floor for left over parts, build. Buy some more parts, build. Then finally pull the lever and watch the shiny wheels spin. Collect your winnings and start building the next slot machine using some of the parts you just "won".
I don’t go into a casino with the expectation of winning money, so I’m not devastated if I don’t win any money.
I’ve played other character collection games where the server actually lets you purchase the majority of characters without using premium game currency. It took me awhile to accept that this paradigm wasn’t likely to ever be adopted by timelines, but once I let it go, I found myself less bothered by it.
In another example, as a f2p, you learn really quick that acquiring all crew is not a particularly realistic goal. However, as I’ve setup more reasonable goals that are still challenging, ive staved off my own burnout.
Task Force Pike/Garrett's Giants, Founder
Task Force April, Fleet Founder Emeritus
Newfie Central, Squad Founder, In Memoriam
I still play because of my fleet, not wanting to waste all the time and money i put into this game.
The way I deal with the burnout is to be ok with doing a lot less.
I used to never miss dailys. Now if I miss them I don’t care. Faction I play hard (top 1000). Galaxy is just threashold. Immortalize 1-2 a week instead of 4+.
Basically I don’t take this game seriously anymore. When I have down time I enjoy it. When life is pressing on me I do the minimum.
I have all the green and blue Cards and currently Focus on Greys for the cryo achievement.
I currently have 64 legendaries who in total are missing 187 stars (out of 256). At this rate (say one star per month) I have them immortalised in 15.5 years.