Ok lets go down the list of things Cryptic does not listen to though many complain about:
Currently:
Dailies being removed has significantly lowered the amount of people playing. They say they removed dailies because no one was playing them, but now many aren't even playing STO due to their removal.
Nerf bat being used instead of adding depth to current content and adding new content. So how many times are events going to be removed, repainted, and re-released by nerfing. Mirror Invasion anyone, while the current mission is ok, it could have easily just been added instead of replacing a mission that most liked. Also, beyond these repeat reward WHAT IS THE POINT, no tie in to the current story, no special rewards except ridiculously predictable rep rewards, no accolades that lead to complete unlockables.
Bug central, enough said, still have zen stock on market with no response. Yet their customer service has been "improved".
Fleets having a point beyond gear and repeat missions. Have you noticed this is one of the only MMO's that make fleet play feel like a necessity more than a wanting or bonding?
Klingon faction keeps getting scraps, Cryptic keep giving the excuse that Klingons just aren't as popular, but almost every major revamp seems to be Federation. Even the ships are carbon copies of Federation ships, same BOFF slots, same weapons, same advancements. Interesting that the Federation keeps making all these advancements but all the Klingons can do is steal and copy? Didn't the Klingons make the first fire while cloaked ship. Are they so inept now that they aren't make any technological advances that the Federation hasn't though of?
More Grinding than ever before, remember that 4 year anniversary event, well expect that to become a norm. Do you expect the same grind next year or worse, I do.
PVP and Crafting...all has already been said, man this is a whole 3 threads by itself.
Normal vs. Advance vs. Elite difficulty and rewards. This is one that many see a problem but only one real suggestion has really rung true. Keep normal easy, add and Advance, or Keep Elite the way it is, and add a Veteran. Now for the change, Have Elite play COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, beyond just hiked difficulty, than normal/advance STFs. Mix it up, surprise people, put some effort into writing like having the Borg recognize resistance from playing previous STF missions.
Redesign every old ship to re-balance consoles. I have noticed every time I see devs playing in their watch events it is with the new ship of the month or week. It is interesting to be told how much devs play this game, but only see them with new style ships and not playing with ships that are obviously too weak to current ones. Also, for devs that play PVP so much, they seem not to notice the trend of imbalance there either. Unlike nerfing the game, people would actually welcome a re-imagined ships, AND what do you know people would want to buy EVERY ship.
If you have others please post.
Comments
in fairness to Cryptic they can't really win here. anything they produce that IS differnt from the Federation runs to risk of one side or another complaining about the other faction having a better ship and demanding an equivilant.
I mean hypothetical situation, cryptic introduces the avenegr battlecruiser for the feds, and gives Klingons ohhh... a science ship.
I bet there'd be a lot of complaining.
in fact it's worth noting that back when the game first launched Klingon players actually requested science vessels a lot. (this was, granted in the days of science BOFF powers being fairly potent)
On saturday I was litarally the only player on new romulus. Just one instance, just me. On a worldwide server. Needless to say, i had trouble finding an team for epohh tagging.
Yesterday i waited almost 10 minutes for infected elite to start, not enough players. Same for cure elite and christalline elite.
Kind of worried here.
Actually feds stole kdf ships too. The Defaint is essentially the t5 raptor, which was in the game first.
With the Klingons, Cryptic lacks creativity and bravery here.
They don't always listen when players moan, so I fail to see why they can't do the KDF justice and allow FED players to complain, it's not as if FED players haven't got enough toys already.
How do you know less people are playing? Even if you are right, how do you know WHY less people are playing?
Wait, did Cryptic share their metrics with you?!?
That said, isn't this usually always the case several weeks (or a month) before the next big update?
I think if Cryptic would see considerably unexpected number drops here, they would react. They are, after all, money-grubbers, right?
It seemed, throughout the shows and films that normally Starfleet would only have a single ship in the right sector (or even Earth) at any given time. The irony is that ship was usually named the Enterprise. :P
There was even this one occasion when they had a single ship to an entire quadrant.
Old mirror invasion was boring, all you had to do was press space button--in new mirror invasion you have to develop the tactic.
They said they will introduce daily mark mission that will give you bonus for first stf you play that day.
We're all exhausted from Mirror Event. (OK, just me.) But I've played it for 7 characters, made it on 6 and one to complete tonight. I don't know how much energy to play I will have after tonight's one run. Maybe I'll take a PS3 break. Maybe I won't play for a few days. Maybe I'll set up about 140 Doff missions for while I'm out of energy for STO.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
C'mon, dude, seriously. As many problems as I have with STO's current path, creating content for 5-person teams is just their convenient choice for team play design. CoH had 8 person teams. Other games have different team sizes. Fleet actions are the exceptions with 20-person teams, and CE has 10 (right?)... but it's just an arbitrary choice - it makes for faster popping queues, for one thing.
Pick a real issue. This is just a practical way to make the game run.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
Because it's a Video game and not real life.
It's actually every D'Tom Dhyk and Harry Kim.
Getting near the end of the MI grind, following a series of grinds, players are taking a bit of a break.
Additionally, with season 9 almost upon us, there is often a dip in participation just before such things.
The pattern, up to now after these long periods of grind, is players taking a break before coming back.
The real test will be how many do come back this time.
except your missing my point.
At launch Klingons where very differnt from the federation. Feds had Cruisers, Sceince vessels and escorts.
Klingons had Battle cruisers (which play quite differntly from cruisers) raptors, Birds of Prey, and at level 40 a carrier.
of thsoe four ship types ONLY escorts had anything remotely similer fedside. the ships where all completly differnt. and Klingon players immediatly started asking for "what the Feds had"
so yeah the Klingons have always had a number of differnt things, if the new klingon ship designs of late are simply mirrors of the feds though, it's not because cryptic can't be imaginative at times, but because it's WHAT PEOPLE ARE ASKING FOR
Are you really that surprised? People are taking a break from the endless grind. Winter ice race runs, the dyson ship grind, and then the mirror grind...that's a lot.
Edit: OP, I can definitely see where your coming from with your complaint about grind events not being tied to storylines. It seems like the easy way out for the devs since they don't have to put much thought into the backstory. It would definitely be nice if they could at least make a mini feature episode to give a little more context to these events.
Yeah, truly said.
The year has ebbs and flows, this is a natural ebb.
And the DIL nerfing and (seemingly) every turn.
And the dependence on "repeatable content," meaning NO MORE Feature Episodes.
And the lockboxes.
I'll just leave it at that.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My character Tsin'xing
I think you mean the Retrofit Defiant. Because the Defiant was in the game at launch day. The Retro Defiant came later.
What the game needs is more meat to it(story line content). Without real storyline content there really no reason for people to want to play. There were more people playing when a new episode was coming out every week or two then there is now. I thought they were heading in the right direction with the Romulan expansion because that did add a lot of new content. With what I have seen of season 9. I not terribly impressed. Sure the new ESD looks awesome, but it does not have anything to make it exciting. They wasted their time revamping the reputation skill when more actual playable content could have been added. You get more content by throwing 10 or 20 dollars at Steam for one or two games .
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Thats how I would like STO to release the end game gear. You have to explore, invistagate and unlock People , places, items, abilites that will let you craft the really good stuff.
I miss those days. But seriously. How can people complain about Klinks getting table scraps, and then turn around and say that Feds should have battle cloaks with a straight face? :rolleyes:
I have noticed that the Klingon ships might not have as wide of selection, however they can take more of a beating before going down. So, they do have that going for them, at least.
About the cloaks in the game, I would like for all of them to be more canon. In the movies, and series, all of the cloaks were like the battle cloaks. Any ship could decloak, start shooting, then recloak. However, we have a cloak, and a battle cloak. Needing to be out of combat for 5 seconds is pointless.
I do believe, though, that they have made some mistakes. Removing the hourlies has hurt the STO community during the weeks. With the way it was before, many would get on for one of the events, then stay online doing STFs, or PVE till the next hourly event they wanted to do came up. However, now it has been placed as weekend events that are spaced so far apart that most only get on then, or when there is a special grind (like the mirror grind). Another problem this makes is that now, the grind that was spread out over weeks, now needs to be crammed into a few days (4) on the weekend.
The new restrictions they have so far on the rep system hourly projects where you can only run three in a day is just too much micro management to slow our progression down in the rep systems. It is almost like shooting someone in the foot so that they will start walking the pace you want.
Making everything a grind, just to make it take longer to get from points A to B. Too much burnout!
I can see the improvements they have also done though. For example, the new Kit revamp looks like it will be an improvement. I always hated getting stuck with abilities I didn't want, or use, just so that I could get the ones I did want.
The featured episode with Tim Russ was the best episode they have done (in my opinion). It gave us a new environment to experience, and see the potential the game still has for story, and content options.
The new space battle zone coming is fun, as long as you can get 4 or more players together (Otherwise it is impossible to finish). Granted, they could have put move thinking and imagination into it. Every one of the areas are the same as the Voth ground battle zone, just a different appearance on the outside. However, it is a great attempt at giving us a decent space battle zone. Hopefully the final rewards will make it worth it, like the ground battle zone is.
The fact is that all companies are going to make mistakes in their course. Some are obvious, however due to pride, or other reasons, they don't change their minds when warned about what it will do. Others are mistakes made in the process of trying to make their product better. In the end, what really matters is how the company will act when those mistakes are made. They can either admit the mistake and work to do what they can to ensure their customers want to keep coming back to them, or they can protect those mistakes as if they were the greatest thing on Earth.
I believe that Cryptic has good intentions, even though there have been some set backs, and mistakes. They have given us some good things to help make the multi-character grinds go a little smoother. They fixed that problem. Therefore, I am interested to see where things are by season 10 launches. Which new features they will come up with to help us, and which things will be fixed.
Although when I carefully read your post I believe I understand what your are trying to say, the use of spurious logic, hyperbole, pure opinion and/or unsubstantiated assumptions would, I suspect, tend to make most readers discount your entire argument. Some specific examples:
Cryptic does not listen: Just because they have not done something you want does not mean they are not listening.
Fewer are playing? Based on what data? Nor is any games popularity likely to be due to one single feature or lack thereof.
Nerf bat instead of new content: New content is added every six months or so. Seems a lot more often than most games. As for the "nerf bat"? That seems rather subjective. Some call it game balance, some call it a nerf... reguardless of how you feel about the things that were "nerfed or balanced" saying that was done instead of new content ignores the fact that new content is added regularly.
Removing an event that most liked" Based on what data? I only know a few that played it.. those I knew that did play it only did so to power level alts. I personally have no idea if the event was liked or disliked by "most". If you have data showing what is or is not popular i would be curious to see it and its origin.
Bug central? Catchy term. but means... nothing. Never played a game that didn't have bugs.
Fleets.. Gave me a chuckle on this one. First you say fleets need a point and in the very next sentence you say this is one of the few mmos that make a fleets a "necessity" Seems a bit... contradictory. Why do fleets NEED a point "beyond fleet gear and repeat missions" (above and beyond making a fleet with friends just to have someone to do missions with and/or chat)
More grinding than ever before? Name a game without 'grind'.. even the term 'grind' is hard to quantify. One persons grind is another's fun.
Regading old ships.. Devs play the newest ship because they want it to sell. THATS ALL.. Trying to use that fact to "prove" something is wrong with all old ships is a huge assumption without facts. Nor does that mean the old ships are 'obviously" anything.
"Unlike nerfing the game, people would actually welcome a re-imagined ships" Two HUGE assumptions. Where do you jump from the changes made to "nerfing the game" ? Even IF you think the few changes made are nerfs.. (some do, some don't... NOT getting into that argument - thats another several threads) "nerfing the game" is a bit of an "overstatement" also, "people would actually welcome a re-imagined ships" ? LOL About the only thing you can predict about any change is from the second its announced some will complain about ANY change. Others will begin to complain the change was too much or too little. Welcome? Few in any mmo welcome change based on my experience, while your statement seems to imply that ANY change to 'old ships" would be welcomed.
Before I get flamed allow me to point out that I have NOT said I disagree nor agree with what I think I understand your point to be. All I have pointed out is any points you could have made are lost in the way it has been presented.
IKR?
/10chars.