They removed the red alerts and made them events, now we got to pug grind specific queues which sometimes never has a full group for marks, wonderful. Before you hit a red alert and within a minute you get a group now gl getting a group it even took CC advanced 5 minutes to trigger.
Also I don’t know if this is bug or not Kobali ground mission is blocking your boffs to spawn. So basically you solo the quests for the delta and iconian mark runs, if bug hope they fixed it if its intended this game is going to the toilet.
I came in yesterday and Admiral from Spacedock kept spamming me for operations. As soon as I dismiss one, he would post another stopping what I was doing.
I think its cryptics attempt to lower your mark gain. Even before this update I had a feeling they would bump tier 6 to 250k though they dropped sponsor crap and boosted the gain to 5k. Still it will take 30 days and 900 Mark’s to reach 250. The kicker is finding the right places to farm for marks.
Omega Marks: ICA or BDA though its getting longer to queue for those
Nukara: CCA is still decent though you can farm more doing Nukara ground
Romulan: eh epohh farming is still good
Dyson: Voth gorund still is number one to farm for the voth nodes and marks
Undine: Undine open space queue is still ok
Delta & Iconian: Kubali ground is still king though Cryptic is now blocking boffs so you need to solo or pug it, which is d***
Terran & Temporal: Badlands open space queue is still viable
Lukari & Wargames: here is where im stumped. I will never pvp so I get most marks from red alerts which is now the SB1 stf. Guess I will hoarde them when an event pops up because all of the lukari stfs are dead, it will take you over an hour to queue and thats if you are lucky
Gamma: Doing one of the 3 quests through the wormhole is fine wait time is kinda bunk though, lucky if you zone into final stage where you can get one of the carapaces even on failed mission. 3 if you have pug that knows what to do.
All of these though does not compare to the red alerts. In 15 mins you can garner anywhere from 70-90 marks in 3 different categories and be done for the day, now we gotta time sink.
Yup red alert tholian is up as an event. Mark gain has been reduced to increase the time sink before for first time of day mark gain you get 78 now its 42. Stfs are still normal gain though it will take forever and a day to queue for one though SB1 is regular it’s pretty fast repeatable every 30 mins and one time day gain is about 90 on regular difficulty but it takes about 10 mins for a decent pug 15 of you have lower levels clearing for the quest. Open zones are still the best for Mark’s though they only cover about 5 marks.
Well, my doing Level 6 reputation on anyone is not going to happen with the new improved mark grind. CCA for FM for SB projects it looks like for me whenever I get time to play again.
Looks to me like they fixed the reputation mark system by making the Random Task Force you can pick whatever marks you want out of the box you get if it is not on the initial list of marks and there is hardly any wait time.
This is sorta a punishment though forcing you to play with people who are either trolling to make the run bad or dare I say it total nubs. Ex. if you are doing ICE with a knowledgeable group you are in and out in 5 mins if you are with nub group you could be suffering through almost 15 mins of pain. Red alerts no matter how good or bad could be almost done solo and takes no less then 5-8 mins shorter if you have a good pug group. I am very good at some STFs and completely horrid at others. I do not wish to be peg holed because I am forced to random gamble and pray I don’t get a ground mission, those blows for me. I am not saying they are lacking effort to change for the better but removing something that has been a staple for years in STO and making them event only is kinda ‘dickish’ move on their part. I would rather they keep them in and use the lower mark gain than completely remove them, make them event only AND lower the mark gain kinda loses all purpose of me doing them altogether. Most ground missions are pita and the vault space is teeth crunching are other examples of runs I wish to never pug with. All in all this is just my opinion and it’s kinda hard pill for me to swallow because it has been in the game IIRC since year 2-3 only to be removed recently. I guess I just have to many memories of RA’s, Gunner used to organize runs for them (RIP brother).