SRS Weekly News 22/7/23

Greetings everyone.

MAIN STORY

First off let's get the big news out of the way. I will from now on be splitting my gaming time between our fleets on STO and our Guild on Elderscrolls Online. Yes, we have an SRS guild there, it's called Skyrim Red Shirts (SRS) and it was formed when the foundry was removed in 2019. At that time so many people were disgusted with the removal of the foundry that some left STO completely and went to play other games, others like me put very little time into STO except admin. For me, it was 7 months before I came back and instigated the MRP system to try and revitalise interest in STO. The MRP system has been very successful for sure, however recently, over the last few years and especially the last few months, fewer and fewer members are taking part in any activities. When we first ran special events such as the Voyager week it was not unusual to see 20+ members taking part each evening, with three or four teams running simultaneously, now when we run an event we are lucky if we can fill a single team.

Over the last several months activity from members has drastically reduced. In this last week we had scheduled our Ultimates challenge, the idea was to play Bronze, Silver and Gold ultimates daily with lots of master keys and the like handed out. In the end, we only had enough players for a single bronze ultimate all week. Only once during the entire week did we have enough members online to fill a team. This is a very sad state of affairs. It's not that we don't have active members, there are around 400 of you who log in daily and do the event. We pick up new members most days, but almost none of those new members ever even chat and certainly don't get involved in our events. It seems they just join to have free access to the fleets that I and many of you have helped to build over the years.

So that's the situation from the SRS point of view. From Cryptic's side, it's even worse. The game engine is struggling to draw the map, we had an emergency patch this week to sort out the graphical bugs on Risa which was only partially successful. For me and some others, there are constant disconnects, and for everyone else, there are so many bugs it's laughable. There is hardly any content, Cryptic seems happy with putting out an hour of new story content every 6 months and the rest of the time they try to milk money out of people by endless sales of their virtual products, products which they will happily nerf a few months after you've bought them. And the list goes on, STO is not in a good place right now and I think that is the main reason so few people actually bother to get involved. I still love to play the game, I love the Pew Pew but it's pretty difficult to do on your own or with the occasional small team. So for me personally I need something else to work with, a game that showers its players with new content, 60+ hours a year, daily login rewards, absolutely no pay 2 win anywhere, it's way cheaper to play than STO, has a good engine and very few bugs, I honestly don't remember seeing any. For some of you, ESO will not be the game for you, but for many, I am sure you will like it. It's a great contrast between the tech-heavy world of Star Trek and the medieval world of swords and magic. It also has some exceptionally challenging dungeons and trials, most of which are way too hard for me to play at the moment. So there is a challenge in ESO that simply doesn't exist in STO. So, what I will be doing is probably playing one day on ESO and the next day on STO and alternating in that way. All currently planned special events are cancelled from this moment on, I see no point in running them and doing all the web work, the planning, the buying of prizes if nobody is going to turn up. So sadly this means that the Victory Is Life event due to start today has been cancelled for the time being. If activity picks up again in the future we will reinstate these events.

Join us on ESO

If you wish to come and join SRS on ESO please note we are PC only and based on the EU server, sorry if you have an account on the NA server, you cannot move it across. We have a website which is in dire need of an update and it will be done soon, here is the link: https://www.skyrimredshirts.co.uk/

We have a Facebook Group too: https://www.facebook.com/groups/830314337306739

We are using the same Discord and there are dedicated ESO sections on there now.

SRS STO NEWS

Victory is Life event - Cancelled

This week the fleet of the week will be SRS Hazard Team

Bonuses to Engineers and Escorts or Raiders

Bonuses for DPS and Max One Hit

This week's Endeavour is to take part in 10 MRP events for an endeavour point. Cryptic News

There is a Flash Sale on right now for Master Keys and a Mudds 75% off sale which is ending soon.

The main graphical bug on Risa has been almost fixed

There is no news on the Maelstrom Click-bait torpedo nerf but I think we need to give them time to decide what to do, they definitely know about it and are probably having meetings to decide how much to un nerf it by.

So that wraps up this week, not the news I wanted to write, but it's been on the cards for a long time. I'm looking forward to running dungeons with some of you guys and kickstarting our old guild back into life. Perhaps playing STO less will make it more enjoyable when we do play, it will for me I'm sure. I will be starting the week, Saturday on STO then on Sunday I will be on ESO and so on. See you guys around Matt