abargar7510 wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 2:07 am
I'm not a good player, and I don't mind losing, but there's very little creativity going on in deckbuilding right now. It's what flavor of Founder's Homeworld do you want to run, or, if you don't want to do that, are you playing 5SV or Starfleet? That type of environment is boring as shit to play in, and a big reason why I'm more interested in the Draft and Hall of Fame formats these days.
I understand this may be the experience you're having online, and I can understand why it's frustrating. But it's not reflected in the stats, and the stats are drawn from events in which players upload decks or in which the TD records the HQ. Also, if
is dominating play at locals (events that aren't Regional or higher), then players don't seem to be taking those decks to higher-level events, for whatever reason. But, again, the stats don't support the conclusion that all people play is Dominion at locals either.
Here are the top 10 missions across 623 decks uploaded in the last six months:
Alpha 5 Approach, Transport Crash Survivor
Provoke Interstellar Incident
Metron Arena, Resolve Standing Conflict
Caretaker's Array
Cardassia Prime, Secure Homeworld
Gateway, Historical Research
Plasma Storm Depths, Search for Missing Vessel
Alsuran Sector, Utilize Abandoned Relay Station
Brute Force
Cardassia IV, Rescue Prisoners
If Dominion were dominating everywhere the way you have experienced in your games, I'd be expecting to see a couple different missions in there.
Turning to draw decks,
U.S.S. Defiant, Commandeered Warship has been used in 355 uploaded decks since 2008. That may seem like a lot, but for comparison,
U.S.S. Voyager, Home Away From Home has been used in 628 uploaded decks, the
I.K.S. Vor'cha has been used in 474, the
Groumall, Inauspicious Command has been used in 335, the
Xhosa, Sponsored Transport has been used in 512, the
U.S.S. Centaur, Patrolling Ship has been used in 691, the
D-7 Battlecruiser has been used in 373, the
D'deridex Advanced has been used in 294, the
U.S.S. Relativity, Federation Timeship has been used in 385, etc.
I'm not doubting your experience. But I am also not playing in your games. Just as you are not playing in mine. I am still playing in person, and I am not seeing the same things you are seeing. And I know stats are an imperfect measure, but so too is anecdotal experience. For example, for literally years
and
dominated my local playgroup. So, to me, that's all anybody who wanted to win ever seemed to play. But that wasn't what other people in other groups were experiencing.
So, what's the answer to this? I am not sure, but any answer probably involves a wider breadth of experience than either of us have. That's one of the reasons I like looking at the stats, it's the only way I know to approximate that wider breadth of experience, even though I recognize that it is an imperfect approximation. Travelling is another, and I am trying to travel more...
One of the reasons why John was such a good person to do Rankings was because he travelled all the time. So, he saw what was going on all over the US and he saw what was being played in high level events in different places in the world. He also hosted events that lots of people from all over traveled to. Was his ranking system infallible? Certainly not - it was prone to being influenced by his personal biases, though I think he tried to compensate for that fact. Did it always mirror the stats? Certainly not - stats do present an incomplete picture because they lack context. But it had the benefit of cutting through different sets of anecdotal experiences because what one player who keeps playing the same 5 or 10 players over and over is experiencing isn't necessarily what the rest of us are.
So, I guess what I am saying is that while your experience is clearly frustrating, it doesn't seem to be the experience all of us are having. I'd be very interested to hear from others though and see if they too are seeing what you are seeing. I am not.