This sudden upcoming doubling of death penalties in STFs got me thinking. Follow me here for a moment.

FTP begins.
Cardashian Lockboxes and 2800 FE hits.
First wave of outcry on lockboxes begins.
STF Penalties begin.
Some time passes.
Ferengi Lockboxes appear.
Player outrage escalates.
Featured Episodes taken away.
STF Penalties stiffen.

Even if that all may just be coincidence, who is to say we are not being punished as a playerbase in ways we don't even know about over the lockbox outcry? After all, it did end up garnering national bad press, did we all think Perfect World was not going to come back on us in some way?

Whats the next wave going to be??

*Next* Lockbox comes out
Player outrage shows again
Doff system gets removed?
Stfs become one death and out?
Fleet starbases nerfed to a bank console only?

Nope, Gozer is punishing us because he's mad people are beating his scenario. Literally, read the patch notes.

It sure as hell seems that way. The death penalty is bad enough as it is, so why the hell does it need to get worse? The lockboxes are getting ridiculous; I can't do a STF without passing up at least 10 lockboxes, most of which are given to me anyways. I get why the lockboxes are there, Cryptic needs to make money somehow; but the drop rate can be reduced in STFs.

Look, Cryptic has done a lot of stuff that hasn't gone over well with the playerbase over the years but even I find it a stretch to say that the company would punish its customers, the very same people that keep them on the job.

Wait, what? I've not seen or heard anything about an increasing penalty...

They've doubled the death penalty incriments to 30 seconds on the "No Win Scenario" on Tribble.

Haven't heard they have done/are planning to do the same for STFs though. Link?

They did it a month or two back now. It was to "encourage team work" but actually ended up forcing people into a "screw him I want to stay alive" mentality resulting in heals not flying around as they did back then and team members just leaving the rest of the team when they get so much as a scratch on their paintowork!

They aren't.

From my understanding (as someone who hasn't tested out the no win scenario), such a low respawn timer makes it much easier to keep going, to "zerg rush" the opponents to keep the freighter alive longer. If you fail and die constantly, that's it, the scenario would be over if it were a real starfleet test.

This happened to me in a STF, people were so afriad to heal me in elite infected that I died, and had to suffer a 60 respawn, there was only 45 seconds left for the optional objective. They missed it by 4 seconds. Needless to say if the Sci ship threw a heal on me instead of itself, we would have made the optional objective. (Although that was just one of the many things that went wrong that run.)

Frankly, I like the cumulative respawn timer as it allows me to heal escorts/tanky cruisers without feeling like it's a completely pointless waste of time. Nobody cares if they die if it takes all of 5 seconds or so to get back in the fight. I'd consider your example as just an example of your team playing poorly.

Lockboxes can die in a fire, of course.