I love PvP events. There’s a strategy to them. There’s competition. Test your officers and your tech against other live players on your server. The problem is that all of the PvP events in the past have been tiny ships. Realta vs. Realta. Original Jellyfish fight to the death. Even Discovery vs. Discovery, and Stella vs. Stella. These are fun events, but once in a while, it would be nice to send out my Augur or D4 against someone else’s best. Rage of the Klingon Houses gave just the opportunity for that. But some flaws in the design made it less enjoyable for everyone than it could have been.
First of all, the rewards weren’t bad at all. Michael Burnham and Georgiou shards, ultra recruit tokens, and enough minor commendations to get at least an officer badge. Plus some crystal and alliance credits to boot. No complaints at all here.
The Problem with Rage of the Klingon Houses
There are some times you don’t want to be right. I’m not all that prescient, really (don’t let the Carnac moniker fool you.)
I just remember the last time Scopely ran an event like this. Now I don’t remember the exact date, but it was a while ago. I’m guessing the late winter or early spring of 2019.
And it was a ghost town. No ships out of bases anywhere. That event gave points for hitting miners, so it was even more empty. But the principle was the same.
For most of the day, the galaxy on my server was a bit of a ghost town. Miners were out, but that was about it. (And any time I can squeeze in a Strange Brew reference, I will.)
People were so afraid of losing their ships and losing points that they hid in their bases. Repairing ships is cheap, and fear of having ships destroyed is a one of the major factors that holds a lot of players back – but still, this was understandable, and in many ways, predictable.
This Facebook poll shows the problem.
Most players stayed home. The message boards were full of players saying that they were taking the day off.
And many who tried to participate weren’t finding anyone to attack. I got a bunch of targets early, then found the ghost town for the remainder of the event.
I got most of my points for the event by smashing the bases of unshielded players with ships in dock.
So you’d get more points for defeating larger ships. Which is perfect.
The rub is that you’d lose the same amount of points for losing with that ship.
And so players didn’t play, and “Rage of the Klingon Houses” became “Where is Everybody?”
Fixing the Event
So, because I want to see events like this in the future, and I want to see as many people involved as possible –
1. Add a Solo Milestone Event
This would be the big one. The fact that it was exclusively an alliance event contributed greatly to the apathy. It gave players no incentive to get out of their bases, aside from the alliance event, where they only need to score one victory to qualify. So smaller and mid-level players, leery of losing points, had no incentive to leave their bases at all.
Creating a solo event with even modest rewards would be a welcome change.
2. Remove the Penalty for Losing
I honestly think the Discovery-vs.-Discovery model of combat is a great model to use here. 3 points for a win. 1 point for a loss.
Having players get some points for losing would do a great deal to encourage them to get out of their bases.
But get rid of the points penalty for losing. This was another major factor in keeping players bubbled up – and not playing.
3. Add Bonus Systems
So we can steal this feature from the Vulcan Hello event. You could get double points for battles in a few selected systems.
This would make it much easier to find opponents, rather than spending your time searching for targets.
4. Add Bonus Points for hitting Higher Level Players
Throw a bone to the lower level players. As a level 38, I can hit players from level 25 all the way up to mythical level 58. How about rewarding players for defeating higher level players. Add a multiplier for hitting players higher than you.
I do sympathize with players in the 20s, many of whom are only 10 levels below me because they started months after I did. A lot of them (understandably) have issues with new content coming out that they don’t yet have access to – (see Discovery summoning)
Warning, half-serious crazy bonus idea ahead
5. Inter-alliance Combat
Again, this wouldn’t be an all the time thing, but how much fun would it be to attack your friends in an event, just once. Or here’s an even crazier idea, how about a leaderboard within the alliance, with rewards.
Maybe make this a special one-time burst event.
How do you think Rage of the Klingon Houses should be fixed? Or do you like it the way it is? Let me know in the comment section below.
Coming Up Soon
As you can see on the calendar, we will see this event again. Two more times this month, on Friday the 16th and Wednesday the 28th.
