I’ll preface this by saying that it was my choice to not try to win this OE, so I’m not crying over it. But… I’m opposed to the notion that deliberately tanking as a community is something to be encouraged. I’m happy it worked for many of you (seriously, congrats!) - I just don’t think the event should be designed to produce this group strategy. Maybe that wasn’t the goal, but the genie is out now. (Tanking shuttle factions is different in my mind - that is a purely individual behavior that neither affects nor requires anyone else.)
I guess we just see things differently? At no point did it ever enter my mind that this required tanking or deliberate bad play to succeed, I saw this as a challenge to overcome. This was life giving us a bunch of lemons and it was very satisfying to be a part of the process of finding the best recipe for lemonade. This was the game giving us all round pegs and realizing that the best way to fit them through was to turn them on their side and pass them through the rectangular hole.
If it helps to think of this in Star Trek terms, this event was like all those times various ships played dead in a semi-hopeless combat situation to lull the opponent into a false sense of security, only to surge back to full power and win. It's not how they teach it at the Academy, but victory required a creative solution.
Failed on all 3 accounts. Mainly because my main account I just thought it was to compete in Admiral not win. On my second, I was battling before people were putting lower level ships in. Once I lost on my second battle, I just auto ran the rest going 5 for 5. Both accounts managed to complete gauntlet 15 minutes before end. Not going to bother to spend dil. on arena tickets.
My third account, went 20/20 Thanks to level 7 and lower ships auto ran these.
But fell short 48/50 on gauntlet.
I'm with Bylo on this one...I actually rather like the idea of future development that relies on the community working together to accomplish goals - not just mindless grinding to meet various thresholds, but situations like this that require a bit of actual thought. Not that I think that's what WRG had in mind here...but I like the effect it's had nonetheless. The community target drone strategy seems to have worked well; certainly it helped me hit 20/20 in the arena.
Of course, I'd still prefer to see some kind of margin for error/RNG in future events.
For all those who have complained about climbing too fast in the gauntlet: you know you can refresh opponents with merits, right? And that the minimum number of trophies offered will change with that refresh? So, for instance, say you're looking at a panel of opponents you can easily beat, but the lowest number of trophies you'll get is 125. Refresh, and that will drop, say, to 75. Refresh again, and maybe it's 30. So you can use merits to slow your rise up the ranks as well as to cycle through looking for easy opponents.
I spent about 2000 merits and could easily have finished the gauntlet in the first 24 hours with a few more (as it was, I was at 47/50 at that point and decided to wait a day rather than spend more merits). As it turns out, I overspent, but I was erring on the side of caution early on and besides, 2000 merits was a worthwhile investment for me to not have to worry about gauntlet after the first day.
I made it relatively comfortably in the end. 2x nervy ship battles, and 60 dil spent in gauntlet to get an extra 4 wins early on (didn't need to in the end, but figured it was acceptable price to pay to get the rewards).
Only issue is the arena tanking might cost me completion of Proton's ship. I need 1165 schematics, and would usually collect 100 a day, but I'm well down on that now. I'm hoping I won't slip too much after my 10 a day, and can still finish it, but think people might push towards end of the month to get position for Phoenix schematics... odds on me finishing 5 schematics short?!
I'll summarize my final opinion on this: I'm more than ok with more challenging events/task and the rewards that come with them. I didn't have much trouble completing it, since I was prepared thanks to the announcement, so to me, this worked out great. What I don't like is, those players that are not up to the challenge (those that wouldn't fit the description of "more seasoned" I believe it was), are completely left out and have no alternative. No midweek event for them. An regular objective event, and easier path within the event, something like that would be needed. And the other thing is regarding "challenging" and "preparation": It wasn't really that challenging, as they were simple tasks that only required proper time management for shuttles and gauntlet, and praying in Arena for no surprises. The closes thing I did to "strategy" was tanking my Arena rank, to minimize the chance of RNG ruining my day, and stomp on level 4 ships with my level 10 CAp Proton ship with Killy, Ardra and co. I don't like it when "strategy" is playing the game in a counter intuitive way (tanking, which is a lot to not actually playing). The event wasn't challenging, as it was actually time consuming.
What I don't like is, those players that are not up to the challenge (those that wouldn't fit the description of "more seasoned" I believe it was), are completely left out and have no alternative. No midweek event for them. An regular objective event, and easier path within the event, something like that would be needed.
I think an easier path within the event would be a good option, similar to the month long events we get every now and then. For example, instead of making it 20 wins or nothing, put three different thresholds within that objective. Maybe 10, 15 and 20 wins. Gauntlet wins and shuttles could be done like that as well. That way, nobody is completely left out.
1. I have "only" spent thousands of bucks from year one on for this game. Much more than a World of Warcraft player would spend for a monthly subscription. But I am not a whale¹³ or a whale⁶⁶⁶, and thus I won't sugarcoat.
Under these circumstances I won't abort the next such a midweek event, I won't even start it. Only possibly taking the stuff I finish by accident. Too much work and even paying for it. No work and paying packs straightaway for less resources are the better option.
2. Seeing how low I dropped in the Admiral's Division every morning the days before, while and after this midweek event, I would have expected more players would participate in the Admiral's Division. Predicting from my finished rank positions, the opposite happened. So the sugarcoating from the genetically enhanced super duper whales doesn't impress me at all.
It's impressing what is understood as seasoned players. But this event was only for the very top peak of the iceberg, hence the decline in participation.
Currently I am more interested what the Campaign's new third track will add to the game...
I did finish this OE and like challenges, especially when the rewards are worth the effort.
Having said that, here is my feedback that I hope will be taken into account when designing future OE:
1. I don't like gameplay that directly or indirectly encourages people to play against the spirit of the game (ie: tanking shuttle factions, tanking arena battles, etc...)
2. I don't like objectives that are so heavily reliant on RNG, especially with absolutely no margin for error
3. I don't like rewards that require spending (real money or in-game currency) to acquire, since they don't feel like earned rewards when you have to effectively pay for them (noted that it was possible to complete this OE without spending)
Shuttles 20/20
Gauntlet 46/50 (real life got in the way)
Arena 10/20 (as expected, but didn’t care)
I’ll preface this by saying that it was my choice to not try to win this OE, so I’m not crying over it. But… I’m opposed to the notion that deliberately tanking as a community is something to be encouraged. I’m happy it worked for many of you (seriously, congrats!) - I just don’t think the event should be designed to produce this group strategy. Maybe that wasn’t the goal, but the genie is out now. (Tanking shuttle factions is different in my mind - that is a purely individual behavior that neither affects nor requires anyone else.)
I’ll note that I believe in playing all 3 arena divisions every day, so I was already self-limited to 16 possible wins. Yes, I know it takes 14 days to become unranked, so skipping 2 days is not a big deal. And yet… in my experience, it’s far easier to stop doing something than it is to start. If I skip commander and captain for 2 days, will I even bother to resume them? Is it wise to encourage players to stop playing parts of the game, or to play other parts of it backwards?
Kudos to WRG for trying to build a challenging OE. I just don’t think this was the right design. Just my 2 credits. It’ll be interesting to see if any adjustments are made for future 5-pip OEs.
I don't believe the community tanking helped as much as people think it did. I saw some ghost ships, but not a lot. What I think helped more was individual tanking that brought your rank low enough to play against newer players using level 3-5 ships. Especially during the Q month long objective event, I saw a lot of players using the artifact to get their ship battles in even if their ship wasn't strong enough to compete.
That being said, I dislike all of the events that encourage tanking of some form. That includes tanking rank in arena, tanking shuttles, and delaying leveling/fusing crew. The events should encourage gameplay, not encourage anti-play to make an event easier later. I do all of them myself because that's what you need to do to finish the events, but I wish the events didn't encourage this kind of gameplay.
I’ll preface this by saying that it was my choice to not try to win this OE, so I’m not crying over it. But… I’m opposed to the notion that deliberately tanking as a community is something to be encouraged. I’m happy it worked for many of you (seriously, congrats!) - I just don’t think the event should be designed to produce this group strategy. Maybe that wasn’t the goal, but the genie is out now. (Tanking shuttle factions is different in my mind - that is a purely individual behavior that neither affects nor requires anyone else.)
I guess we just see things differently? At no point did it ever enter my mind that this required tanking or deliberate bad play to succeed, I saw this as a challenge to overcome. This was life giving us a bunch of lemons and it was very satisfying to be a part of the process of finding the best recipe for lemonade. This was the game giving us all round pegs and realizing that the best way to fit them through was to turn them on their side and pass them through the rectangular hole.
If it helps to think of this in Star Trek terms, this event was like all those times various ships played dead in a semi-hopeless combat situation to lull the opponent into a false sense of security, only to surge back to full power and win. It's not how they teach it at the Academy, but victory required a creative solution.
I remember this one episode of TNG where Councilor Troi was completing her command training. The test required her to command (hologram) La Forge to go into some Jeffrey's tubes to fix something, even though he would certainly die. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made. Maybe it's counterintuitive after you've watched 600+ episodes of Star Trek and only like 5 main cast have died, but if you watch the right episodes, you'll see what I mean.
1. I have "only" spent thousands of bucks from year one on for this game. Much more than a World of Warcraft player would spend for a monthly subscription. But I am not a whale¹³ or a whale⁶⁶⁶, and thus I won't sugarcoat.
Under these circumstances I won't abort the next such a midweek event, I won't even start it. Only possibly taking the stuff I finish by accident. Too much work and even paying for it. No work and paying packs straightaway for less resources are the better option.
2. Seeing how low I dropped in the Admiral's Division every morning the days before, while and after this midweek event, I would have expected more players would participate in the Admiral's Division. Predicting from my finished rank positions, the opposite happened. So the sugarcoating from the genetically enhanced super duper whales doesn't impress me at all.
It's impressing what is understood as seasoned players. But this event was only for the very top peak of the iceberg, hence the decline in participation.
Currently I am more interested what the Campaign's new third track will add to the game...
I am also interested in the third track. I've talked myself into buying it, I think.
As to your anecdotal arena experience, I think there's two factors not considered. First, those of us who ghosted would not be there to drop you. Those left in your neighborhood were probably looking for easy wins and your setup did not fit their desired targeting parameters.
1. I have "only" spent thousands of bucks from year one on for this game. Much more than a World of Warcraft player would spend for a monthly subscription. But I am not a whale¹³ or a whale⁶⁶⁶, and thus I won't sugarcoat.
Under these circumstances I won't abort the next such a midweek event, I won't even start it. Only possibly taking the stuff I finish by accident. Too much work and even paying for it. No work and paying packs straightaway for less resources are the better option.
2. Seeing how low I dropped in the Admiral's Division every morning the days before, while and after this midweek event, I would have expected more players would participate in the Admiral's Division. Predicting from my finished rank positions, the opposite happened. So the sugarcoating from the genetically enhanced super duper whales doesn't impress me at all.
It's impressing what is understood as seasoned players. But this event was only for the very top peak of the iceberg, hence the decline in participation.
Currently I am more interested what the Campaign's new third track will add to the game...
So you don't want to spend but are interested in what spending will get you?
As to your anecdotal arena experience, I think there's two factors not considered. First, those of us who ghosted would not be there to drop you. Those left in your neighborhood were probably looking for easy wins and your setup did not fit their desired targeting parameters.
Okay, arguments accepted. But like AviTrek described well before you, anti-play isn't the holy grail and even scare people away from playing.
And in a different thread solely about the Gauntlet, others, who achieved the goal, admitted they threw their merits like candy. What I wasn't willing to do.
As to your anecdotal arena experience, I think there's two factors not considered. First, those of us who ghosted would not be there to drop you. Those left in your neighborhood were probably looking for easy wins and your setup did not fit their desired targeting parameters.
Okay, arguments accepted. But like AviTrek described well before you, anti-play isn't the holy grail and even scare people away from playing.
And in a different thread solely about the Gauntlet, others, who achieved the goal, admitted they threw their merits like candy. What I wasn't willing to do.
Can't have your cake and eat it too. You chose to keep your merits over spending them on the objective. I respect that decision. You may call it anti-play, but I just call it resource management, or your own style of play.
As to your anecdotal arena experience, I think there's two factors not considered. First, those of us who ghosted would not be there to drop you. Those left in your neighborhood were probably looking for easy wins and your setup did not fit their desired targeting parameters.
Okay, arguments accepted. But like AviTrek described well before you, anti-play isn't the holy grail and even scare people away from playing.
And in a different thread solely about the Gauntlet, others, who achieved the goal, admitted they threw their merits like candy. What I wasn't willing to do.
Then don’t throw away your merits like candy. Make reasonable decisions on when to spend. I overspent on merits and by overspent I mean spent about 1000 merits in total. I mostly did it so I could secure over 20 wins in my first two cycles. In retrospect I should’ve preserved more merits because I only finish rank 21 when the gauntlet ended.
I finished by Wednesday morning. I did get up in the middle of the night to go visit the Captains Chair and squeezed in an extra gauntlet round. I probably upped my win total to about 75 wins over two days.
I finished one of the three unlocked objectives. I'm bothered far less than my OCD self would normally be and I'm actually happy with that.
Arena was my own fault. I goofed and, when I realized I was so behind in Gauntlet, i decided not to buy tickets to finish it.
Gauntlet... sigh. I'm working on it. I will probably finish equipping a few crew for Gauntlet next week. Sec and Dip are my weak spots. Sec just needs equipment. I have five of the top six. Dip is lacking, which is why I'm looking forward to Laris.
I'm completely okay with using drone mode in Arena. I'm not pushing for something I don't need, when someone else actually does. Next month I'll play. This month...I got enough schematics for the replicator. Frankly, I get enough replicator fodder from Dabo. When will the schematic table get updated? You can get crew that aren't available anywhere else yet from Dabo, but you can't get ships that have been in game longer than I have?
My take away- it was meant to be tough. I tried. I failed. I learned.
*I learned that I shouldn't rushed to do things when I first wake up. I am not a morning person and I'm functioning more on reflex and habit than thought. It cost me the Arena Objective.
*I need to build my Gauntlet roster. It's my main weakness right now. Med is solid. Com is getting there. EV Picard needs gear and, then, I'll have most of the top crew there. I have most of who I need for Sec. They just need gear. The other three skills lack the crew and that includes three Gauntlet exclusives. I have to build who I have. Play more bouts and hope for crew to drop. There are a couple I might consider Retrieving later in the year if I don't get them before and don't have anyone else picked out.
One object lesson and one area to work on. I'll take it. It's its own reward.
W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
You may call it anti-play, but I just call it resource management, or your own style of play.
Shame on me that I compared this midweek event with the normal full events.
1. For a Skirmish Event you spend only your time.
2. For Shuttle Events you only need the time savers and additional shuttles, if you want to compete for the ranks. You don't need these resources for any other things, and you get them for free through normal gameplay.
3. For Galaxy Events you need chronitons. From all events this may hurt the most, because chronitons are needed for crew leveling. But you get a good bunch of them through the threshold rewards. It doesn't hurt me a lot, if I invest additional chronitons worth a Voyage haul for the last new super rare crew. It only starts to hurt, if I want to compete.
And now this new midweek event comes around the corner, demanding a resource worth more. In my opinion buying a 10× premium pull straightforward is the better resource management, because you get more for it this way than throwing merits like candy. And additionally you don't waste your time.
In my humble opinion this new event type is even worse than the old Expedition Events.
Requiring perfection in the arena is too much. Even with people tanking, you're not guaranteed one as an opponent even with repeated refreshing. For this OE, giving say 5 tokens as they gave transmissions for the current event would be fair. Shuttles are doable if you have 4. Gauntlet, I don't have strong enough crew to get 50 wins in 2 day without spending dil, which could buy more slots. For the difficulty, a legendary citation is justified.
Requiring perfection in the arena is too much. Even with people tanking, you're not guaranteed one as an opponent even with repeated refreshing. For this OE, giving say 5 tokens as they gave transmissions for the current event would be fair. Shuttles are doable if you have 4. Gauntlet, I don't have strong enough crew to get 50 wins in 2 day without spending dil, which could buy more slots. For the difficulty, a legendary citation is justified.
I like this idea of giving away a few of the resources needed for the event. Or maybe giving merits as the reward for the shuttles (since shuttles are easiest, followed by gauntlet), then give arena tickets for completing the gauntlet, then (as the did) chronitons for completing Arena. That would help offset the cost of gauntlet resets and given wiggle room in the arena.
Requiring perfection in the arena is too much. Even with people tanking, you're not guaranteed one as an opponent even with repeated refreshing. For this OE, giving say 5 tokens as they gave transmissions for the current event would be fair. Shuttles are doable if you have 4. Gauntlet, I don't have strong enough crew to get 50 wins in 2 day without spending dil, which could buy more slots. For the difficulty, a legendary citation is justified.
I like this idea of giving away a few of the resources needed for the event. Or maybe giving merits as the reward for the shuttles (since shuttles are easiest, followed by gauntlet), then give arena tickets for completing the gauntlet, then (as the did) chronitons for completing Arena. That would help offset the cost of gauntlet resets and given wiggle room in the arena.
That's a great idea. I suggested giving extra arena tickets earlier. But adding in the merits also works well. It lets each objective build on each other and makes it a little easier for people to play without making it super hard.
As the developers look to the future with these events, I hope they take into consideration how hard it is for people right now with inflation and gas prices. It will certainly be affecting participation. Not just of events, but the game itself. And a lot of people are working two jobs or longer hours to make ends meet.
I do like that they thought about creating an event for the more seasoned players; But not at the exclusion of others. Why create resentment? I hope they make things easier for the new players, and those who can’t spend a lot of money or time on the game. It would be nice to see more retention of players than a constant revolving door within our fleet. I definitely like the idea of a parallel easier path within the event, with tiered rewards.
As the developers look to the future with these events, I hope they take into consideration how hard it is for people right now with inflation and gas prices. It will certainly be affecting participation. Not just of events, but the game itself. And a lot of people are working two jobs or longer hours to make ends meet.
I do like that they thought about creating an event for the more season players, but at the same time, I hope they make things easier for the new players, and those who can’t spend a lot of money or time on the game. It would be nice to see more retention of players than a constant revolving door within our fleet. I definitely like the idea of a parallel easier path within the event, with tiered rewards.
Objective events probably work best when there are two tracks for everyone to access. One track for lower level players and another for those who have the experience/time/desire to challenge themselves. Otherwise, there will be players who are left out. Also, no event should require perfection to achieve.
In all honesty, I am not a fan of objective events. I think I know what WRG is going for: to increase the incentive for people to spend money. However, because the rewards aren’t good enough to justify it, players are being creative to get the rewards with minimal effort. We delay fusing cards, immortalizing them, hold onto shuttles for days, and tank our performance in the arena and gauntlet. This seems like a bad way to maintain player engagement, no matter what your data is saying. The data don’t get to the point of whether players are enjoying things, just that they’re doing them. These are two separate things, and reading one for the other will lead to trouble.
In all honesty, I am not a fan of objective events. I think I know what WRG is going for: to increase the incentive for people to spend money. However, because the rewards aren’t good enough to justify it, players are being creative to get the rewards with minimal effort... The data don’t get to the point of whether players are enjoying things, just that they’re doing them. These are two separate things, and reading one for the other will lead to trouble.
Aye. The "lesser" objective events before I was also creative. But the amount of chronitons I got in the end was still larger than the amount spent. It was still insane work for it compared to a normal skirmish event, which is tedious too, but is still more enjoyable, because the only tedious factors are investing time and pressing the buttons, since I have my crew slots maxed out and I don't need to cycle my crew, because I have event crew members enough for winning any battles.
I was not looking forward to this OE, but the ideas in the forums and Discord did make it worthwhile.
I went 19/20 in Arena. Much better than my average (I don't put much into Arena other than run the ten every day; I've had the same set-up for a year); I usually float around top 5000-7000. I did my part as well and sent out Level 1 ghost ships after my battles and dropped my rank to 18,000 the weekend before. So-- a "win" for the community for figuring out how to best accomplish this task. But like many other annoyances for OEs-- winning meant losing and losing and helping others by losing. I guess a win for me personally was that I played with other crew set-ups (because searching for the ones I usually use was so difficult; I have 400 crew slots, A LOT of scrolling. Why is there no search button?).
I managed to get the 50 wins in Gauntlet. I have a lot of the good gauntlet crew, but I am not great at playing them at the best times (I have tried the Big Book advice when I am near my laptop when setting the crew) -- and the RNG is a real buzzkill. I rarely give Gauntlet my energy. If I feel up for a little disappointment, I'll make a run until all five crew are fatigued a few times a day. I did spend some merits here (maybe a 1000), but I didn't have much better luck than usual (rarely get higher than a 9-win streak). After a while, using merits is just as disappointing as the Gauntlet is in general; wasting more resources to get yet another wall I can't beat. I did have to set a couple of timers to get more rounds in, so I guess it was a win (I played more, so got a few more treats-- and the game got some more activity from me).
Shuttles were easy enough. Half my factions are tanked. Wish I had realized that they needed to be successful. I saved shuttles from Monday (yet another work-around that defeats the purpose of the game) and none of them succeeded, so I had to just run more.
400 chrons spent is less than my usual daily spend, so no problems there.
In the end, I did spend 150 dil to get more arena tickets as I was just one win from completing the OE. I figured that was an acceptable price for a SR cite. But I waited until the end to do it. I wanted to be sure I could manage all the others.
I am curious to see what future OEs are like based on the results of this one; what was learned by WRG here (would love to know what the thoughts were behind this one). It was nice not holding crew to fuse (again-- going against bettering our crew right away to make it easier for an OE later)-- and I see we're back to that for next week's OE... Already wasting slots to fuse already-frozen crew just to make that easier next week.
Make it harder! Make it so you cant buy your way to the top, make it so the only way is to pay but, make it worth the time. Layer the event so everyone can do something. I enjoyed it. At level 99 I learned some new tactics. I believe its all doable with no more than 200 di with a little luck "free" its the time and as a reward for the dedication up the rewards at the top.
50 gauntlets are quite challenging to archive in fact very discouraging! I agree it should be hard but archievable. And spending Dilithium is not worth for that event.
Will this event be the standard 2 days? Winning 20 admiral battles in 2 days means going a perfect 20/20 or spending DIL on extra tokens. I love the new rewards and that they're different from before, but requiring perfect play or DIL is too much. The objectives should be hard but achievable, not impossible without DIL.
I managed to complete the event without spending any dil. I kept 150 free dil from the Campaign just in case, but the space battles were easy by refreshing until you found an easy adversary. Even winning gauntlets were easy with the merit refresh option. I liked the change of pace and having to think pre event. I also liked the citation. Please keep doing these.
Time to "tank" in the Admiral Arena (or at least low enough to be higher than 10000 in the rank). My empty 1/10 USS Excelsior is ready to be attacked !!!
Comments
I guess we just see things differently? At no point did it ever enter my mind that this required tanking or deliberate bad play to succeed, I saw this as a challenge to overcome. This was life giving us a bunch of lemons and it was very satisfying to be a part of the process of finding the best recipe for lemonade. This was the game giving us all round pegs and realizing that the best way to fit them through was to turn them on their side and pass them through the rectangular hole.
If it helps to think of this in Star Trek terms, this event was like all those times various ships played dead in a semi-hopeless combat situation to lull the opponent into a false sense of security, only to surge back to full power and win. It's not how they teach it at the Academy, but victory required a creative solution.
My third account, went 20/20 Thanks to level 7 and lower ships auto ran these.
But fell short 48/50 on gauntlet.
Of course, I'd still prefer to see some kind of margin for error/RNG in future events.
For all those who have complained about climbing too fast in the gauntlet: you know you can refresh opponents with merits, right? And that the minimum number of trophies offered will change with that refresh? So, for instance, say you're looking at a panel of opponents you can easily beat, but the lowest number of trophies you'll get is 125. Refresh, and that will drop, say, to 75. Refresh again, and maybe it's 30. So you can use merits to slow your rise up the ranks as well as to cycle through looking for easy opponents.
I spent about 2000 merits and could easily have finished the gauntlet in the first 24 hours with a few more (as it was, I was at 47/50 at that point and decided to wait a day rather than spend more merits). As it turns out, I overspent, but I was erring on the side of caution early on and besides, 2000 merits was a worthwhile investment for me to not have to worry about gauntlet after the first day.
Only issue is the arena tanking might cost me completion of Proton's ship. I need 1165 schematics, and would usually collect 100 a day, but I'm well down on that now. I'm hoping I won't slip too much after my 10 a day, and can still finish it, but think people might push towards end of the month to get position for Phoenix schematics... odds on me finishing 5 schematics short?!
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I think an easier path within the event would be a good option, similar to the month long events we get every now and then. For example, instead of making it 20 wins or nothing, put three different thresholds within that objective. Maybe 10, 15 and 20 wins. Gauntlet wins and shuttles could be done like that as well. That way, nobody is completely left out.
1. I have "only" spent thousands of bucks from year one on for this game. Much more than a World of Warcraft player would spend for a monthly subscription. But I am not a whale¹³ or a whale⁶⁶⁶, and thus I won't sugarcoat.
Under these circumstances I won't abort the next such a midweek event, I won't even start it. Only possibly taking the stuff I finish by accident. Too much work and even paying for it. No work and paying packs straightaway for less resources are the better option.
2. Seeing how low I dropped in the Admiral's Division every morning the days before, while and after this midweek event, I would have expected more players would participate in the Admiral's Division. Predicting from my finished rank positions, the opposite happened. So the sugarcoating from the genetically enhanced super duper whales doesn't impress me at all.
It's impressing what is understood as seasoned players. But this event was only for the very top peak of the iceberg, hence the decline in participation.
Currently I am more interested what the Campaign's new third track will add to the game...
I did finish this OE and like challenges, especially when the rewards are worth the effort.
Having said that, here is my feedback that I hope will be taken into account when designing future OE:
1. I don't like gameplay that directly or indirectly encourages people to play against the spirit of the game (ie: tanking shuttle factions, tanking arena battles, etc...)
2. I don't like objectives that are so heavily reliant on RNG, especially with absolutely no margin for error
3. I don't like rewards that require spending (real money or in-game currency) to acquire, since they don't feel like earned rewards when you have to effectively pay for them (noted that it was possible to complete this OE without spending)
I don't believe the community tanking helped as much as people think it did. I saw some ghost ships, but not a lot. What I think helped more was individual tanking that brought your rank low enough to play against newer players using level 3-5 ships. Especially during the Q month long objective event, I saw a lot of players using the artifact to get their ship battles in even if their ship wasn't strong enough to compete.
That being said, I dislike all of the events that encourage tanking of some form. That includes tanking rank in arena, tanking shuttles, and delaying leveling/fusing crew. The events should encourage gameplay, not encourage anti-play to make an event easier later. I do all of them myself because that's what you need to do to finish the events, but I wish the events didn't encourage this kind of gameplay.
I remember this one episode of TNG where Councilor Troi was completing her command training. The test required her to command (hologram) La Forge to go into some Jeffrey's tubes to fix something, even though he would certainly die. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made. Maybe it's counterintuitive after you've watched 600+ episodes of Star Trek and only like 5 main cast have died, but if you watch the right episodes, you'll see what I mean.
I am also interested in the third track. I've talked myself into buying it, I think.
As to your anecdotal arena experience, I think there's two factors not considered. First, those of us who ghosted would not be there to drop you. Those left in your neighborhood were probably looking for easy wins and your setup did not fit their desired targeting parameters.
So you don't want to spend but are interested in what spending will get you?
And in a different thread solely about the Gauntlet, others, who achieved the goal, admitted they threw their merits like candy. What I wasn't willing to do.
Can't have your cake and eat it too. You chose to keep your merits over spending them on the objective. I respect that decision. You may call it anti-play, but I just call it resource management, or your own style of play.
Then don’t throw away your merits like candy. Make reasonable decisions on when to spend. I overspent on merits and by overspent I mean spent about 1000 merits in total. I mostly did it so I could secure over 20 wins in my first two cycles. In retrospect I should’ve preserved more merits because I only finish rank 21 when the gauntlet ended.
I finished by Wednesday morning. I did get up in the middle of the night to go visit the Captains Chair and squeezed in an extra gauntlet round. I probably upped my win total to about 75 wins over two days.
Arena was my own fault. I goofed and, when I realized I was so behind in Gauntlet, i decided not to buy tickets to finish it.
Gauntlet... sigh. I'm working on it. I will probably finish equipping a few crew for Gauntlet next week. Sec and Dip are my weak spots. Sec just needs equipment. I have five of the top six. Dip is lacking, which is why I'm looking forward to Laris.
I'm completely okay with using drone mode in Arena. I'm not pushing for something I don't need, when someone else actually does. Next month I'll play. This month...I got enough schematics for the replicator. Frankly, I get enough replicator fodder from Dabo. When will the schematic table get updated? You can get crew that aren't available anywhere else yet from Dabo, but you can't get ships that have been in game longer than I have?
My take away- it was meant to be tough. I tried. I failed. I learned.
*I learned that I shouldn't rushed to do things when I first wake up. I am not a morning person and I'm functioning more on reflex and habit than thought. It cost me the Arena Objective.
*I need to build my Gauntlet roster. It's my main weakness right now. Med is solid. Com is getting there. EV Picard needs gear and, then, I'll have most of the top crew there. I have most of who I need for Sec. They just need gear. The other three skills lack the crew and that includes three Gauntlet exclusives. I have to build who I have. Play more bouts and hope for crew to drop. There are a couple I might consider Retrieving later in the year if I don't get them before and don't have anyone else picked out.
One object lesson and one area to work on. I'll take it. It's its own reward.
1. For a Skirmish Event you spend only your time.
2. For Shuttle Events you only need the time savers and additional shuttles, if you want to compete for the ranks. You don't need these resources for any other things, and you get them for free through normal gameplay.
3. For Galaxy Events you need chronitons. From all events this may hurt the most, because chronitons are needed for crew leveling. But you get a good bunch of them through the threshold rewards. It doesn't hurt me a lot, if I invest additional chronitons worth a Voyage haul for the last new super rare crew. It only starts to hurt, if I want to compete.
And now this new midweek event comes around the corner, demanding a resource worth more. In my opinion buying a 10× premium pull straightforward is the better resource management, because you get more for it this way than throwing merits like candy. And additionally you don't waste your time.
In my humble opinion this new event type is even worse than the old Expedition Events.
I like this idea of giving away a few of the resources needed for the event. Or maybe giving merits as the reward for the shuttles (since shuttles are easiest, followed by gauntlet), then give arena tickets for completing the gauntlet, then (as the did) chronitons for completing Arena. That would help offset the cost of gauntlet resets and given wiggle room in the arena.
That's a great idea. I suggested giving extra arena tickets earlier. But adding in the merits also works well. It lets each objective build on each other and makes it a little easier for people to play without making it super hard.
I do like that they thought about creating an event for the more seasoned players; But not at the exclusion of others. Why create resentment? I hope they make things easier for the new players, and those who can’t spend a lot of money or time on the game. It would be nice to see more retention of players than a constant revolving door within our fleet. I definitely like the idea of a parallel easier path within the event, with tiered rewards.
Objective events probably work best when there are two tracks for everyone to access. One track for lower level players and another for those who have the experience/time/desire to challenge themselves. Otherwise, there will be players who are left out. Also, no event should require perfection to achieve.
In all honesty, I am not a fan of objective events. I think I know what WRG is going for: to increase the incentive for people to spend money. However, because the rewards aren’t good enough to justify it, players are being creative to get the rewards with minimal effort. We delay fusing cards, immortalizing them, hold onto shuttles for days, and tank our performance in the arena and gauntlet. This seems like a bad way to maintain player engagement, no matter what your data is saying. The data don’t get to the point of whether players are enjoying things, just that they’re doing them. These are two separate things, and reading one for the other will lead to trouble.
I went 19/20 in Arena. Much better than my average (I don't put much into Arena other than run the ten every day; I've had the same set-up for a year); I usually float around top 5000-7000. I did my part as well and sent out Level 1 ghost ships after my battles and dropped my rank to 18,000 the weekend before. So-- a "win" for the community for figuring out how to best accomplish this task. But like many other annoyances for OEs-- winning meant losing and losing and helping others by losing. I guess a win for me personally was that I played with other crew set-ups (because searching for the ones I usually use was so difficult; I have 400 crew slots, A LOT of scrolling. Why is there no search button?).
I managed to get the 50 wins in Gauntlet. I have a lot of the good gauntlet crew, but I am not great at playing them at the best times (I have tried the Big Book advice when I am near my laptop when setting the crew) -- and the RNG is a real buzzkill. I rarely give Gauntlet my energy. If I feel up for a little disappointment, I'll make a run until all five crew are fatigued a few times a day. I did spend some merits here (maybe a 1000), but I didn't have much better luck than usual (rarely get higher than a 9-win streak). After a while, using merits is just as disappointing as the Gauntlet is in general; wasting more resources to get yet another wall I can't beat. I did have to set a couple of timers to get more rounds in, so I guess it was a win (I played more, so got a few more treats-- and the game got some more activity from me).
Shuttles were easy enough. Half my factions are tanked. Wish I had realized that they needed to be successful. I saved shuttles from Monday (yet another work-around that defeats the purpose of the game) and none of them succeeded, so I had to just run more.
400 chrons spent is less than my usual daily spend, so no problems there.
In the end, I did spend 150 dil to get more arena tickets as I was just one win from completing the OE. I figured that was an acceptable price for a SR cite. But I waited until the end to do it. I wanted to be sure I could manage all the others.
I am curious to see what future OEs are like based on the results of this one; what was learned by WRG here (would love to know what the thoughts were behind this one). It was nice not holding crew to fuse (again-- going against bettering our crew right away to make it easier for an OE later)-- and I see we're back to that for next week's OE... Already wasting slots to fuse already-frozen crew just to make that easier next week.
Draws should go to the Player. My personal opinion. Especially if they are going to introduce stuff like this OE.
50 gauntlets are quite challenging to archive in fact very discouraging! I agree it should be hard but archievable. And spending Dilithium is not worth for that event.