Prizes and Rewards for 2022

Hi Folks

As we draw to the close of another turbulent year around the world I am so pleased to be a gamer, the chance to remove myself from the problems of everyday life and immerse myself in the fantasy of virtual reality, be that the Star Trek universe, Tamriel, or Night City. Whatever your passion, I hope you get as much enjoyment as I do.

This leads me on to the state of Star Trek Online.

The MRP system has been a great success and many of you have said that it's only due to SRS and the events we run that you continue to play this game as much as you do. I have mentioned before the costs of running the fleet, from the website fees to the actual prizes, all told I spend around £1000 a year on SRS and more for myself. However, the continual lack of content, the continual annoying bugs and disconnects, the constant loot box ships and ridiculously expensive legendary packs have taken their toll on my goodwill for STO. I am simply not prepared to invest any more cash into this game until there are some seriously huge changes. These are the things I want to see in 2022:

The current story arc has had one episode since September, this is woeful, it needs to be fully populated with great stories for us to play and replay.

• Another year-long Story arc

• Some type of exploration system

• More patrols, some on the ground

• Addressing the disconnect on map transfer bug which even affects the devs on their own live streams.

• Battlezones to be brought up to date with difficulty, they are laughably simple and offer zero challenge and are all just a snooze fest. Dyson Space, Voth ground, Defera, Terran, all need updating.

• The Doffing system sucks, the rewards are pitiful and it offers zero interest, just a load of clicking each day for almost nothing.

• The Admiralty system is better but could do with some rework.

• Bridges on ships need to be updated, you spend god knows how many billion for a ship with a cargo bridge, it's pathetic.

• Update to the fleets system, there are so many issues from day one that have not been resolved

• Another fleet holding that doesn't require dil or doffs

• The DILEX needs fixing, so some serious dil sinks need to be added to the game, despite the devs saying they are looking for ways to address it I simply don't believe them, there has been ample time now and it's still a mess, they don't do anything because it suits their bank balance not to, or so they think.

These are just some of my major gripes, the main one being the content drought we are seeing. I am not prepared to spend my kid's inheritance anymore on this game until they do much of what's on my list. Player retention is appalling in this game, we struggle to keep people interested for more than a few months, you have to live and breath Trek to remain interested in STO.

Don't get me wrong, I still love playing and challenging myself to build a better ship, a better ground build, to try and beat others, but these are systems we the players have built, from the SCM combat log parser to the SRS MRP and DPS leagues, none of that is provided or supported by Cryptic.

I have written to the management at Cryptic asking for support for things like fleet prizes, I have done this by email and actually posted them a snail mail letter. I never got a response.

SRS was started in June 2012, and so this coming year is 10 years old, I was always planning to have massive prizes this year but I can't justify it based on the reasons above.

So this is advanced notice that the prizes for 2022 will be based on donations alone, I personally will not be putting anything into it except, the EC and keys I already have, my time and my payment for the website.

I'm currently sitting on around 200 Keys and 1 billion in prize money for 2022, if more donations are received then the prizes will increase in value. As it stands now the prizes for the year are likely to be as follows:

MRP Leaderboard

1st place - 500 million EC

2nd place 250 million EC

3rd place 125 million EC

4th place 60 million EC

5th place 30 million EC

6th place 15 million EC

7th through 20th place - 1 master key.

4 X Interim Prizes will be no more than 50 million EC

DPS Leagues

No prizes, you compete for glory only

Elite Fleets

The EC allowance for the Elite fleets is being dropped from today, again you will enter these fleets only for the glory of being ranked high enough to get in and wear the uniform, there will be no more payments.

CFOPS Payments

These are being scrapped, if you want to help the fleet and the players that would be fantastic, but I am no longer going to be paying players to organise events. However, CFOPS will receive a more generous boost to their score thus giving them the chance to win a higher prize.

Loyalty awards

These will remain the same.

SRS Systems

Over the last few years I have built the MRP System, the DPS Leagues System and all the spreadsheets that support them, this has taken me hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours working until the early hours of the morning many times. I have done this because firstly I love working out how to do things on spreadsheets (yeah I'm weird) and because it's my solution to keep players retained. These systems are there for you all to use, the DPS system lets you organise your builds and try to have as many good builds in as many different TFOs and patrols as possible and has space for the top 100 players. If you don't want to use them that's your choice, but they will remain and continue to be updated. Finally...if Cryptic introduce some of the changes I'm looking for, if the game becomes a lot more interesting so player retention isn't the long term battle it is now, if they make changes and promise to continue to improve the game I may well be inclined to increase what is offeredas prizes . Also if we receive any generous donations that will also go directly to the prize fund. I will still spend my time and some money, but nowhere near as much as before until things change. However, there will be something special for the 10th anniversary of SRS, you can be sure of that. Wishing you all a fantastic Christmas holiday and a very happy and healthy 2022 Matt Johnson

C in C

SRS