New Event Rewards Table NEEDED
Commander Sinclair
✭✭✭✭✭
in The Bridge
I know this subject has been tossed around in various other threads, buts lets make it official to let DB hear what we WANT.
Given that this week's event went something like:
...around 8 hours for ALL 3 Community Rewards completed
Thresholds (for me) were done in about 18 hours (and galaxy events are my least favourite.)
Sarina Douglas was acquired only with VP through event, leveled to 100 in 4 hours, and FF in <24 hours, whilst still maintaining top 2K on the leaderboard, with no event purchases whatsoever.
As for rewards table:
We get copious amounts of trainers in Voyages, and Supply Kit boost when used. Trainers are great as individual threshold rewards, especially for newer or lower level players.
I don't mind the bonus Replicator rations from Squad rewards, but Credits are very low.
Chrons are NEVER in the final reward table, and should be a reward, as should Honor!
What are your thoughts?
Given that this week's event went something like:
...around 8 hours for ALL 3 Community Rewards completed
Thresholds (for me) were done in about 18 hours (and galaxy events are my least favourite.)
Sarina Douglas was acquired only with VP through event, leveled to 100 in 4 hours, and FF in <24 hours, whilst still maintaining top 2K on the leaderboard, with no event purchases whatsoever.
As for rewards table:
We get copious amounts of trainers in Voyages, and Supply Kit boost when used. Trainers are great as individual threshold rewards, especially for newer or lower level players.
I don't mind the bonus Replicator rations from Squad rewards, but Credits are very low.
Chrons are NEVER in the final reward table, and should be a reward, as should Honor!
What are your thoughts?
I want to become a Dilionaire...
2
Comments
That means we will need to bring a good series of arguments what is wrong precisely with the current reward structure and what you would like to see instead.
For instance, you mention the community rewards are too easy. Is that a problem? Why exactly? And would you want either a higher difficulty? (More VP to reach the same rewards) or more reward tiers?
If anything, I think squad or fleet rewards could use an upgrade. The rewards for squadron are mostly useless, not giving us any incentive to work as a squad. A nice honor bonus instead of replicators for instance would help.
Hardly a game-changer, but adds a nice little progress reward throughout the event, instead of three days of nothing.
There's a good portion of my point, "3 days of nothing". This is also a point I think DB should be considering. If a player gets all their rewards in the first day, what motivation do they have to continue, unless they ONLY want the 5* crew in the top 1K?
Also, the rest of it is the top 2K rewards tier is a joke. You only gain merits and trainers. For those who consistently finish in the top, say 1500, there is effectively NO DIFFERENCE in the rewards between 76th place, and 1000th place. That's a HUGE spread of negated value. With the small exception of needing Achievement awards in the top 100, if I make top 1K, I stop playing and reward myself with what chrons or whatnot I have leftover that I don't have to spend on the event.
I would suggest 3 things:
1) There are generally 2 phases of every event. Make EACH Phase have a separate rewards tier, and if you don't get the top rewards from the first phase you lose them. I love the merit idea @PenguinJim !It's like a little pat on the back to yourself for achieving something along the way.
That gives incentive to play at least 2-3 days...
2) Restructure Community rewards. The higher level players are helping the low level players here. If a low level player knows they cannot achieve where they want to finish, they only have to play to what they want and wait for other people to unlock the community rewards for them. Perhaps combined with the Threshold Rewards, you have to obtain a certain amount of solo rewards to also unlock you access to the community rewards.
3) Restructure Top tier rewards from around 2000 on up. Currently DB is saying a bump from 200th place to 75th place earns 100 extra Merits and 15xGold Trainers vs. 50 4* Trainers, and that is an achievement worthy of top 75 vs. top 76-200 (All other rewards are the same). I just believe anyone playing these days earning the top 2K spots very likely doesn't need trainers, so why not up the Merits slightly, and change trainers to Honor? THAT would put some motivation in getting the top spots, guaranteed!
The Event Rewards percentages on this chart was designed when the Events started over 2 years ago, and has not evolved with the game. That chart probably worked quite well for 5,000 players, but now we have probably 10-20 times as many.
Part of my actual job for the last 15 years has been tournament rewards structure for real life tournaments, and I have had to constantly adapt the rewards to fit the appropriate number of players. It's not that hard, because I would reprogram my charts in my computer program for the tournaments all the time.
Also, you can't take this event as a signifier of what Galaxy is like now. Active folks got 15k+ chrono worth of farm during skirmishes.
Before Discovery, there were no voyages. Chrons were a lot scarcer.
Of course having chrons as a more plentiful resource has increased the number of people able to complete thresholds in a galaxy event.
If anything, if they were to update the rewards table to make it more relevant to recent changes in game mechanics, they would spread out thresholds, thus making it more difficult to obtain them, without adding anything extra to thresholds.
let's put it this way - there are many times more players 'actively participating' in events now compared to this time last year - say during they came from the holodeck 3 or 2nd battle of new york 2.
I'm not sure if anyone here has or can gather any hard data such as number who got top threshold for those events, but it feels around 3x. Nod was the person who cared about this sort of data. Not sure how much he would release were he still employed. But he might say something like 'significantly more are completing all thresholds.'
And of course DB isn't going to change anything. They feel that the free gold for megas is the prize for the masses - and maybe that is fair. But to deny there are more people actively competing is just silly.
I showed what data I have in another thread. Long story short: in sept 16, around 72k active event participants, May 18, 79k. Galaxy difference at the 5k VP level went up 2k players from March 17 to march 18.
Also showed the scoring increase increments as scores inflated with the shuttle rework (less 5 slots, easier overall), leader bonuses, then with mega event crew (players having 4/5 and 5/5 who didnt before), fail vp, VIP 0 getting shuttles from achieves, etc.
Scores are up overall, and the pool of competitive players are up because of that. Instead of the top 5% of players being top 1k possible, its now like the top 10-15%. It used to be if you had three shuttles and the crew to make it and stay on 4k missions, even if going 2/4 and 3/4 often, you were safely top 500. Now, my level 41 Alt with one 4/4 and welfare 1/5s and a mega bashir rode 4ks the whole time.
The mechanic and reward changes we have seen have tightened the top grouping, and it appears to be intended by DB as they continue to make changes that tend towards that trend.
It is easier to be competitive than ever before, and harder to distance from the pack. Ranking in shuttles now revolves around how many 4ks you can speed up. Voyage chronos outpace regular chrono generation now, and are easier to get rolling with mega 4/5s. So it's incredibly easy to clear galaxy thresholds now.
TL:DR The game is easier in general, so harder to separate from the pack. Players are up about 10% in event participation over the last 2 years, and about 5% high above the first character threshold. All of this appears to be intentional on DBs end (the play mechanics, im sure they would love more growth).
Normally the community rewards are finished by thurs late evening EST. But one of the recent events, it didn't happen until overnight fri morning or early fri. A far contrast from the 6 hours or so it took this past weekend.
I have a feeling this was more attributed to people having higher rate success percentages (Darth Bashir being FF, Drone 7 being a previous character), rather than a change in gameplay by the community, or desirability of species 8472.
Lol do you remember the times we didn't even hit the Community Rewards?
I think adding another item on top (Maybe schems since ships in skirmishes and voyages actually mean something now) or something equally helpful but not game breaking would not be a bad thing. Encourage people to keep trying (and in some cases spending) longer.
I suspect the skirmish event flooded people with enough chrons/supplies to make this event super easy. I'm at the point now where I can clear the threshold without needing to farm anything.