They do listen to feedback;) Charles Grey, Lead Content Designer posted this in the forums a short time ago:
With the recent release of Star Trek Online: New Dawn, we introduced a lot of new content related to the new Terran Taskforce reputation including two new queues (Counterpoint and Assault on Terok Nor) as well as a new space battle zone (The Badlands). Unfortunately, there have been some concerns raised by the player base as to the drop rate of Terran Mark rewards for these new pieces of content, and the fact that the numbers being experienced in game are lower than the expectations set by similar, existing parts of the game.
We take these concerns very seriously and have investigated the claims with all due diligence. Where appropriate, we have made changes that will be rolled out to the live servers over the next several days as we can test them and make sure they are doing everything we expect and want them to do. To that end, what follows is a list of the updates you can expect and the approximate timeframe at which you can expect them:
Live Today:
Badlands Battle Zone
All Battle Zones make use of technology to make sure that we are rewarding participants in a given gameplay area adequately for the level of contribution they have made towards completing the area’s objectives. The intent behind this implementation is not that you need to do the majority of the work in a gameplay area in order to achieve the maximum rewards, but rather that the maximum rewards are given to anyone and everyone who has actively helped the group towards achieving victory for the majority of the gameplay time. Unfortunately, the participation requirements for the new Badlands Battle Zone were set up to require too high of a level of participation, and so most players were only seeing a fraction of the rewards they were intended to get.
As of today, October 29th 2015, the level of participation required to earn each tier of reward in a given gameplay area of the Badlands Battle Zone has been significantly reduced in order to fall in line with our expectations that most players who are playing for most of the mission are getting the maximum rewards possible.
Coming Next Week:
Counterpoint
Like many of our new queues, Counterpoint has introduced some new mechanics to STO which can be completed to varying degrees of success resulting in different amounts of rewards earned from playing this queue. Unfortunately, the time it takes to learn some of these new mechanics was not taken into account when developing the reward schedule for this queue. As such, initial plays with lower levels of completion of the optional objectives result in a lower total payout than was ever intended.
We are currently testing a new reward schedule for this queue that will double the base rewards earned for completing the queue before the completion of any optional objectives is evaluated, from 10 marks to 20 marks. Additionally, we are increasing the reward multipliers for the tracked events that make up some optional objectives in order to incentivize players learning the new mechanics.
Assault on Terok Nor
Similar to Counterpoint, there were some bad assumptions on our part regarding where we expected player performance to be when first playing this new queue and learning its novel mechanics. We are taking similar steps to address the issues.
The base rewards for only completing the queue without completing any of the optional objectives have also been doubled, from 10 marks to 20 marks. Again, all of the optional objectives have all received an increase, with the largest increases in rewards coming to the tiers of rewards achievable for protecting the Override Specialists so they don’t have to take a knee, and completing the lock puzzle in a minimal amount of time.
As will all major rewards updates, we will continue to monitor the situation and make sure that everything has improved in the expected manner and magnitude before we consider the issues resolved.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
