Every video game ever is just some variation on alternating 1's and 0's. Nothing really new or innovative since Pong.
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Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
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We had years go buy with nothing. Very few lockboxes, no missions, and in fact very little content. Then we got LOR. Which was awesome at the time, but the devs explained it took years to get it together. And players complained. Lull started again after that and I think 1.5 or 2 years later we got T6 and Delta. Again, HUGE drop all at once. And players complained. So they switched it up.
Now we have been sitting on almost 3 years with a ton of new ships coming out every couple of months, and new missions (albeit 1 - 3 at a time) coming out every couple of months instead. Since Delta, we have had I think 5 mini arcs, the Temporal mini expansion, VIL mini expansion, and now TRIBBLE mini (mini) expansion.
Now, out of curiosity, let's compare this with the famed 800-pound-gorilla of MMOs, WoW. With the massively larger budget and staff Blizzard has available:
World of Warcraft: Nov. 23, 2004
First expansion, The Burning Crusade: Jan. 16, 2007 (2 yrs 2 months later)
Second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King: Nov. 13, 2008 (1 yr 10 months later)
Third expansion, Cataclysm: Dec. 7, 2010 (2 yrs 1 month later)
Fourth expansion, Mists of Pandera: Sept. 25, 2012 (1 yr 2 months later)
Fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor: Nov. 14, 2014 (2 yrs 2 months later)
Sixth expansion, Legion: Aug. 30, 2016 (1 yr 9 months later)
Seventh expansion, Battle for Azeroth: Aug 14, 2018 (2 yrs later)
So, as you can see, even WoW can only do expansions once every two years, about. I don't recall anything similar to our new TFOs popping up between, either; during my time playing the game, everything new came out in an expansion, with no changes between. And while I did drop out of the game shortly after Cataclysm and thus can't comment on the later expansions, that one was almost entirely "reskinning" of existing assets, aside from adding playable worgen. (Yes, the world was "broken" by the Cataclysm - but in practice that mostly just meant repainting parts of the world, aside from Thousand Needles changing from a desert region to a flooded area.) Oh, and until January of 2018, each of those expansions cost an extra sixty bucks, aside from the monthly subscription fee, while STO doesn't have a subscription fee and drops each and every expansion for free. (The Battle for Azeroth will still cost you fifty bucks on top of the sub, however. Figure that's going to be the pattern going forward, as well - making games ain't free.)
On top of that, there's been a bit of an exodus from WoW since Battle for Azeroth because of the changes they made to classes apparently made them less appealing in diversity as well as just becoming alt unfriendly. I have a friend who defected to FF14 from WoW, and he had been playing since before Burning Crusade.
A lot of players are not happy with Battle for Azeroth.
But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
If everything feels the same to you, perhaps it's time to take a break and play other games for awhile.
I cannot do that because I need to do the daily endeavors to progress my account. But after doing the endeavors, I mostly log off immediately because played all the existing content already many times.
Still hoping Cryptic finds a way to break the repetitive grind nature, the state the current game is in. Still hoping for Cryptic to boldly go where no one has gone before, and be creative in creating new game play elements and more variations. Instead of recycling current content over and over again, to sell it as new.
I never played WOW. It has nothing to do with STO. Hence it seems not relevant for this topic to talk about the flaws of other games like WOW or Pong.
Also it is never a good argument to say "other games have the same or worse flaws". That still does not make it right.
The point is that in order to stay in business, a company can only create a limited amount of new content per month, per year.
WOW is relevant because it shows that a game with more players, and where those players pay $15/month + $60 per expansion is still not able to create more content than Cryptic does for STO.
In other words, Cryptic is creating a very good amount of content given that they have much less money to do it with.
But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
If everything feels the same to you, perhaps it's time to take a break and play other games for awhile.
I cannot do that because I need to do the daily endeavors to progress my account. But after doing the endeavors, I mostly log off immediately because played all the existing content already many times.
Still hoping Cryptic finds a way to break the repetitive grind nature, the state the current game is in. Still hoping for Cryptic to boldly go where no one has gone before, and be creative in creating new game play elements and more variations. Instead of recycling current content over and over again, to sell it as new.
Why do you "need" to progress your account if you are not enjoying playing the game?
I skip more than half of the endeavors because I don't feel like doing them. This has not affected my ability to play other parts of the game in any way.
I could maybe see "needing" to do it if you are in the .01% of players who still do PVP, but for the rest of us it's entirely optional.
But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
If everything feels the same to you, perhaps it's time to take a break and play other games for awhile.
I cannot do that because I need to do the daily endeavors to progress my account. But after doing the endeavors, I mostly log off immediately because played all the existing content already many times.
Still hoping Cryptic finds a way to break the repetitive grind nature, the state the current game is in. Still hoping for Cryptic to boldly go where no one has gone before, and be creative in creating new game play elements and more variations. Instead of recycling current content over and over again, to sell it as new.
Why do you "need" to progress your account if you are not enjoying playing the game?
Because I still believe in and hope for improvement as i said. If things change and I now do not progress my account I will have to do it later anyway. Then i will have to do a lot of catching up. So for now I do the minimum to keep stuff up to date.
I never played WOW. It has nothing to do with STO. Hence it seems not relevant for this topic to talk about the flaws of other games like WOW or Pong.
Also it is never a good argument to say "other games have the same or worse flaws". That still does not make it right.
The point is that in order to stay in business, a company can only create a limited amount of new content per month, per year.
WOW is relevant because it shows that a game with more players, and where those players pay $15/month + $60 per expansion is still not able to create more content than Cryptic does for STO.
In other words, Cryptic is creating a very good amount of content given that they have much less money to do it with.
And now about the second part I wrote. Why would the argument that other games are maybe worse, be a validation for STO doing not so good in bringing REAL new content and gameplay elements into the game?
A lot of players are not happy with Battle for Azeroth.
Which apparently started with the STORY, and got worse from there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etFpKpiV16k
most of what I know comes from watching that since I've never played WoW.
I never played WOW. It has nothing to do with STO. Hence it seems not relevant for this topic to talk about the flaws of other games like WOW or Pong.
Also it is never a good argument to say "other games have the same or worse flaws". That still does not make it right.
The point is that in order to stay in business, a company can only create a limited amount of new content per month, per year.
WOW is relevant because it shows that a game with more players, and where those players pay $15/month + $60 per expansion is still not able to create more content than Cryptic does for STO.
In other words, Cryptic is creating a very good amount of content given that they have much less money to do it with.
And now about the second part I wrote. Why would the argument that other games are maybe worse, be a validation for STO doing not so good in bringing REAL new content and gameplay elements into the game?
Bad is not good because others are worse.
Cryptic needs to make money to survive. To do that they need to spend their limited funding on content that appeals to the majority of the players who are willing to spend money.
So:
- Federation gets more new gear than other factions, because more players want it
- "All factions" story episodes are Federation first, other factions second.
- Action-based and PUG-friendly TFOs win out over experimental new TFO types, and over types that require coordination that will fail for PUGs
- Story episodes are action-based, because players whine about puzzles and pretty much anything else. The paying majority want to pew-pew-pew as Captain Awesome.
If Cryptic had WoW money then maybe they could afford to throw some of it away on creating content for niche players, but one reason for the action bias is that pew-pew-pew holds up better to repetition, and all MMOs need to use repetition to keep players busy.
It's another form of the cynical version of the Golden Rule: The players that pay the gold, heavily influence the rules.
> @totenmet said:
> davefenestrator wrote: »
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> totenmet wrote: »
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> But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
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> If everything feels the same to you, perhaps it's time to take a break and play other games for awhile.
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> I cannot do that because I need to do the daily endeavors to progress my account. But after doing the endeavors, I mostly log off immediately because played all the existing content already many times.
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> Still hoping Cryptic finds a way to break the repetitive grind nature, the state the current game is in. Still hoping for Cryptic to boldly go where no one has gone before, and be creative in creating new game play elements and more variations. Instead of recycling current content over and over again, to sell it as new.
Cryptic has done nothing of the sort. At all. They have reskinned a total of 1 mission. All MMOs in the entire world have "repetitive grind" as their endgame, with no exceptions whatsoever.
Endeavors or no endeavors if I felt even remotely the way you claim to about STO no force on Earth or off it could force me to play.
Same for me. I log on to do endeavors on two accounts, and then sometimes pop to a toon that hasn't seen love in awhile and play whatever content they have queued. It makes for great fun even though I've played through all content on my main.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
The title of this thread with "NO MORE TRUE CONTENT" and OP's opinions on such is very subjective and invites an argument. So who determines what is and is not "true content?" As has already been revealed in this thread, what is considered "content" may vary from one player to the next. A rational, civil, organized discussion/debate cannot occur without some agreement on the terms used. It's clear that the OP does not agree with the majority of posters here on what constitutes "content," so I find it doubtful that this thread will end up more than just a circular argument around terms. Add to that, we now have an argument revolving around an opinion that everything so far added to the game since basically launch is just a re-skin/rehash and nothing "truly" new has been added since then, and this thread becomes a recipe for disaster in the making. But who knows, maybe I'll be surprised.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
The title of this thread with "NO MORE TRUE CONTENT" and OP's opinions on such is very subjective and invites an argument. So who determines what is and is not "true content?" As has already been revealed in this thread, what is considered "content" may vary from one player to the next. A rational, civil, organized discussion/debate cannot occur without some agreement on the terms used. It's clear that the OP does not agree with the majority of posters here on what constitutes "content," so I find it doubtful that this thread will end up more than just a circular argument around terms. Add to that, we now have an argument revolving around an opinion that everything so far added to the game since basically launch is just a re-skin/rehash and nothing "truly" new has been added since then, and this thread becomes a recipe for disaster in the making. But who knows, maybe I'll be surprised.
The expansion will have:
1. So called new reputation grind of 70 days: The reputation grind thing we have many of them. So nothing new gameplay there, or new functionality. Just the same thing giving items and traits with different stats.
2. Two missions: using the same game mechanics as all the others. In a new skin
3. New lootbox: more items, traits and ships, with new skins and stats. At the cost of resources or real money.
4. Scaling T6 ships. Removing a level/limitation of T6 ship using, Disabling some functionality on lower tiers.
So no real new gameplay or new functionality. It is copy paste, change some attributes and add new skins. For me the so called new content and gameplay feels very the same as we already have.
So regarding content:
1. Content: every thing containted in STO
2. New content: everything added that was not containted in STO before.
3. Real new content: content that is adding new functionality and new gameplay experience. So not created by copy pasted, re-skinned rearranged existing gameplay (missions) or items or functionality. In Short not belonging to point 1 and 2.
I first started playing right after LOR hit. I remember how long we had to wait after that to get any more missions. Sometimes it was about a year or more (as others have stated). Though, after LOR hit, there was a LOT of bugs that had to be fixed. Way more than there are now.
When I came back to the game recently, I never expected the game to have so many new missions coming so quickly. I wish that they had them at this pace about 4 years ago.
They are coming out with new content. While it might not be what a lot of players want for content (like another grindy rep system), it is at least something. I hate games that are heavy grind games. I prefer playing fun content over grindfest. But, that is the way developers are focusing now. Trying to keep players in the game longer, so they will be more likely to spend more money on it.
If you want a game that offers content that isn't like what STO is delivering, then good luck trying to find it. Grind = Money.
Razar.
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Oh, that's what I do sometimes too. Since I'm doing the FTFOs I check the endeavors to see if I can combine that with the TFO. Most times I can. Then I usually go to Nimbus if I need ground related stuff. If it's kill something specific that isn't on Nimbus I'll replay whatever episode I need to get that. And sometimes I can do with a BZ.
Then, if I can/want to do the global, I'll do that. Then if I don't have anything better to do, I'll run a toon through whatever mission they have queued.
Then again, I have a lot of time on my hands since I'm usually home all day and most days I'm babysitting my 3 year old granddaughter.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
We had years go buy with nothing. Very few lockboxes, no missions, and in fact very little content. Then we got LOR. Which was awesome at the time, but the devs explained it took years to get it together. And players complained. Lull started again after that and I think 1.5 or 2 years later we got T6 and Delta. Again, HUGE drop all at once. And players complained. So they switched it up.
Now we have been sitting on almost 3 years with a ton of new ships coming out every couple of months, and new missions (albeit 1 - 3 at a time) coming out every couple of months instead. Since Delta, we have had I think 5 mini arcs, the Temporal mini expansion, VIL mini expansion, and now TRIBBLE mini (mini) expansion.
Now, out of curiosity, let's compare this with the famed 800-pound-gorilla of MMOs, WoW. With the massively larger budget and staff Blizzard has available:
World of Warcraft: Nov. 23, 2004
First expansion, The Burning Crusade: Jan. 16, 2007 (2 yrs 2 months later)
Second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King: Nov. 13, 2008 (1 yr 10 months later)
Third expansion, Cataclysm: Dec. 7, 2010 (2 yrs 1 month later)
Fourth expansion, Mists of Pandera: Sept. 25, 2012 (1 yr 2 months later)
Fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor: Nov. 14, 2014 (2 yrs 2 months later)
Sixth expansion, Legion: Aug. 30, 2016 (1 yr 9 months later)
Seventh expansion, Battle for Azeroth: Aug 14, 2018 (2 yrs later)
So, as you can see, even WoW can only do expansions once every two years, about. I don't recall anything similar to our new TFOs popping up between, either; during my time playing the game, everything new came out in an expansion, with no changes between. And while I did drop out of the game shortly after Cataclysm and thus can't comment on the later expansions, that one was almost entirely "reskinning" of existing assets, aside from adding playable worgen. (Yes, the world was "broken" by the Cataclysm - but in practice that mostly just meant repainting parts of the world, aside from Thousand Needles changing from a desert region to a flooded area.) Oh, and until January of 2018, each of those expansions cost an extra sixty bucks, aside from the monthly subscription fee, while STO doesn't have a subscription fee and drops each and every expansion for free. (The Battle for Azeroth will still cost you fifty bucks on top of the sub, however. Figure that's going to be the pattern going forward, as well - making games ain't free.)
Point of contention WoW rolls out content constantly over the life of the expansion, for instance in BFA they've added a full raid, a mini raid, they have 2 new zones coming soon with more raids in them in 8.2 and will have more content in 8.25 and 8.3 will feature another raid and more story.. Even older expansions had content drops as they progressed over the 1-2 years they where live, nothing was ever here it is and it's done. Even vanilla for instance launched with Molten core as the raid, expanded to Black wing lair, and went to Ahn'Qiraj as its final raid with each raid having accompanying story and quests to do. So your entire assessment is.. well wrong.
One of the major problems with STO story content vs a game like WoW is that since we planet hop all the time there's no new "zone" feeling most the time, it's just another nameless planet where you blast some Klingons or whatever. It's not like WoW where you go to Northrend and do this and that, or the new zones in BFA, or how SWtOR used a single planet as the back drop for an entire batch of story and missions, so going to a new one was exciting and different.
Or the space TFOs its just.. space.. its hard to make that feel new and exciting when landing in a TFO and blasting 40 bazillion ships to atoms in 20 minutes.
Creating new ships and items is re-skinning current ones and give them different parameters.
This is so backwards and nonsensical its hilarious. That isn't how new ships or items are made. These new times use new models and textures, made specifically for them, which makes them literally not reskins by any measure
Creating real new concepts, functionality, gameplay requires more effort. And that has been very sparse.
Not really. Every new enemy type since like the Tholians has had new gameplay mechanics, and we see new ideas in TFOs like Operation Reposte.
But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
That's because every time they make any enemy anything more than floating HP sacks, people whine that it's "too hard" and "annoying" that an enemy can actually do something besides die. Same for any mission where you actually have to do something besides kill helpless rubber ducks or wait out a timer. And Cryptic doesn't dare tell them to learn to play better and/or buy better stuff.
Every video game ever is just some variation on alternating 1's and 0's. Nothing really new or innovative since Pong.
Do you see room for improvement e.g. content wise and in diversification of content?
If no: why not?
If yes: what would that be?
STO Will always improve on content. With another season of Disco coming. The new Picard series currently in production. The new Section 31 series also coming. STO will have a lot of new concepts, new characters, new VO actors to introduce. All this as well as being able to expand on stories and characters that were not featured in the tv shows. Dunno about everyone else but I'm excited for the future and what it will bring to STO.
Creating new ships and items is re-skinning current ones and give them different parameters.
This is so backwards and nonsensical its hilarious. That isn't how new ships or items are made. These new times use new models and textures, made specifically for them, which makes them literally not reskins by any measure
Creating real new concepts, functionality, gameplay requires more effort. And that has been very sparse.
Not really. Every new enemy type since like the Tholians has had new gameplay mechanics, and we see new ideas in TFOs like Operation Reposte.
But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
That's because every time they make any enemy anything more than floating HP sacks, people whine that it's "too hard" and "annoying" that an enemy can actually do something besides die. Same for any mission where you actually have to do something besides kill helpless rubber ducks or wait out a timer. And Cryptic doesn't dare tell them to learn to play better and/or buy better stuff.
That's true. Gravity Kills, Tzenkethi Front, Days of Doom (even back when it wasn't bugged) were received rather poorly because they require some basic level of coordination between players and not just spacebar hammering.
In the end, most players will always gravitate towards queues that offer the best time/effort-reward ratio. More challenging TFOs will remain the exception UNLESS they start scaling rewards according to difficulty and time investment.
Creating new ships and items is re-skinning current ones and give them different parameters.
This is so backwards and nonsensical its hilarious. That isn't how new ships or items are made. These new times use new models and textures, made specifically for them, which makes them literally not reskins by any measure
Creating real new concepts, functionality, gameplay requires more effort. And that has been very sparse.
Not really. Every new enemy type since like the Tholians has had new gameplay mechanics, and we see new ideas in TFOs like Operation Reposte.
But still every so called new enemy and tfo feels the same. I go in and kill it. Repeat it for the marks or endeavor and log off.
That's because every time they make any enemy anything more than floating HP sacks, people whine that it's "too hard" and "annoying" that an enemy can actually do something besides die. Same for any mission where you actually have to do something besides kill helpless rubber ducks or wait out a timer. And Cryptic doesn't dare tell them to learn to play better and/or buy better stuff.
That's true. Gravity Kills, Tzenkethi Front, Days of Doom (even back when it wasn't bugged) were received rather poorly because they require some basic level of coordination between players and not just spacebar hammering.
In the end, most players will always gravitate towards queues that offer the best time/effort-reward ratio. More challenging TFOs will remain the exception UNLESS they start scaling rewards according to difficulty and time investment.
There are countless ways for cryptic to make adjustments to their map design philosophy but they won't.
- Tzenkethi front is a good map and the default to go to option for the respective marks no matter what difficulty. Could be that weak teams avoid it and mixed teams dont form often as elite players don’t feel like carrying the weight for all but in good groups the map is encouraging, fun and has a fitting effort reward ratio.
- Days of doom is kind of the worst map in game. With autocompletion for AFKing in Easy mode and being strictly time gated on Elite this map is the opposite of the former one. Why in the world should anybody in game play this nonsens no matter how good or weak he is? The competitor for the marks here is Miners Instabilities - a great map - by the way.
- Gravity kills as a mix thereof. New elements, no strict time gate and auto completion on the + side but 3 times to do the same stuff repetitively and an un-lucrative "carry others factor" for good players on the - side. I only play it if I dont have to transport 30 particles for an incompetent group. 6-9 is something I'd be willing to do.
It would be easy for me to advise cryptic to adjust them to make them played by a lot more players without limiting myself to pew pew advise. but I certainly can't blame anybody that they avoid this content the way it is now.
This has nothing to do with lack of interest in teamplay or challange of the playerbase. It's just a matter of bad game design choices.
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If everything feels the same to you, perhaps it's time to take a break and play other games for awhile.
To be fair, it started in that direction, with "lack of good content" as the opening theme
World of Warcraft: Nov. 23, 2004
First expansion, The Burning Crusade: Jan. 16, 2007 (2 yrs 2 months later)
Second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King: Nov. 13, 2008 (1 yr 10 months later)
Third expansion, Cataclysm: Dec. 7, 2010 (2 yrs 1 month later)
Fourth expansion, Mists of Pandera: Sept. 25, 2012 (1 yr 2 months later)
Fifth expansion, Warlords of Draenor: Nov. 14, 2014 (2 yrs 2 months later)
Sixth expansion, Legion: Aug. 30, 2016 (1 yr 9 months later)
Seventh expansion, Battle for Azeroth: Aug 14, 2018 (2 yrs later)
So, as you can see, even WoW can only do expansions once every two years, about. I don't recall anything similar to our new TFOs popping up between, either; during my time playing the game, everything new came out in an expansion, with no changes between. And while I did drop out of the game shortly after Cataclysm and thus can't comment on the later expansions, that one was almost entirely "reskinning" of existing assets, aside from adding playable worgen. (Yes, the world was "broken" by the Cataclysm - but in practice that mostly just meant repainting parts of the world, aside from Thousand Needles changing from a desert region to a flooded area.) Oh, and until January of 2018, each of those expansions cost an extra sixty bucks, aside from the monthly subscription fee, while STO doesn't have a subscription fee and drops each and every expansion for free. (The Battle for Azeroth will still cost you fifty bucks on top of the sub, however. Figure that's going to be the pattern going forward, as well - making games ain't free.)
A lot of players are not happy with Battle for Azeroth.
Do you see room for improvement e.g. content wise and in diversification of content?
If no: why not?
If yes: what would that be?
I never played WOW. It has nothing to do with STO. Hence it seems not relevant for this topic to talk about the flaws of other games like WOW or Pong.
Also it is never a good argument to say "other games have the same or worse flaws". That still does not make it right.
I cannot do that because I need to do the daily endeavors to progress my account. But after doing the endeavors, I mostly log off immediately because played all the existing content already many times.
Still hoping Cryptic finds a way to break the repetitive grind nature, the state the current game is in. Still hoping for Cryptic to boldly go where no one has gone before, and be creative in creating new game play elements and more variations. Instead of recycling current content over and over again, to sell it as new.
The point is that in order to stay in business, a company can only create a limited amount of new content per month, per year.
WOW is relevant because it shows that a game with more players, and where those players pay $15/month + $60 per expansion is still not able to create more content than Cryptic does for STO.
In other words, Cryptic is creating a very good amount of content given that they have much less money to do it with.
Why do you "need" to progress your account if you are not enjoying playing the game?
I skip more than half of the endeavors because I don't feel like doing them. This has not affected my ability to play other parts of the game in any way.
I could maybe see "needing" to do it if you are in the .01% of players who still do PVP, but for the rest of us it's entirely optional.
Because I still believe in and hope for improvement as i said. If things change and I now do not progress my account I will have to do it later anyway. Then i will have to do a lot of catching up. So for now I do the minimum to keep stuff up to date.
And now about the second part I wrote. Why would the argument that other games are maybe worse, be a validation for STO doing not so good in bringing REAL new content and gameplay elements into the game?
Bad is not good because others are worse.
most of what I know comes from watching that since I've never played WoW.
My character Tsin'xing
Par for the course for this particular OP
I like the way they're putting out new content in bites instead of the whole meal at once. Leaves me 'hungry' for more, but not 'starving'.
Cryptic needs to make money to survive. To do that they need to spend their limited funding on content that appeals to the majority of the players who are willing to spend money.
So:
- Federation gets more new gear than other factions, because more players want it
- "All factions" story episodes are Federation first, other factions second.
- Action-based and PUG-friendly TFOs win out over experimental new TFO types, and over types that require coordination that will fail for PUGs
- Story episodes are action-based, because players whine about puzzles and pretty much anything else. The paying majority want to pew-pew-pew as Captain Awesome.
If Cryptic had WoW money then maybe they could afford to throw some of it away on creating content for niche players, but one reason for the action bias is that pew-pew-pew holds up better to repetition, and all MMOs need to use repetition to keep players busy.
It's another form of the cynical version of the Golden Rule: The players that pay the gold, heavily influence the rules.
Same for me. I log on to do endeavors on two accounts, and then sometimes pop to a toon that hasn't seen love in awhile and play whatever content they have queued. It makes for great fun even though I've played through all content on my main.
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The expansion will have:
1. So called new reputation grind of 70 days: The reputation grind thing we have many of them. So nothing new gameplay there, or new functionality. Just the same thing giving items and traits with different stats.
2. Two missions: using the same game mechanics as all the others. In a new skin
3. New lootbox: more items, traits and ships, with new skins and stats. At the cost of resources or real money.
4. Scaling T6 ships. Removing a level/limitation of T6 ship using, Disabling some functionality on lower tiers.
So no real new gameplay or new functionality. It is copy paste, change some attributes and add new skins. For me the so called new content and gameplay feels very the same as we already have.
So regarding content:
1. Content: every thing containted in STO
2. New content: everything added that was not containted in STO before.
3. Real new content: content that is adding new functionality and new gameplay experience. So not created by copy pasted, re-skinned rearranged existing gameplay (missions) or items or functionality. In Short not belonging to point 1 and 2.
When I came back to the game recently, I never expected the game to have so many new missions coming so quickly. I wish that they had them at this pace about 4 years ago.
They are coming out with new content. While it might not be what a lot of players want for content (like another grindy rep system), it is at least something. I hate games that are heavy grind games. I prefer playing fun content over grindfest. But, that is the way developers are focusing now. Trying to keep players in the game longer, so they will be more likely to spend more money on it.
If you want a game that offers content that isn't like what STO is delivering, then good luck trying to find it. Grind = Money.
Razar.
Then, if I can/want to do the global, I'll do that. Then if I don't have anything better to do, I'll run a toon through whatever mission they have queued.
Then again, I have a lot of time on my hands since I'm usually home all day and most days I'm babysitting my 3 year old granddaughter.
Point of contention WoW rolls out content constantly over the life of the expansion, for instance in BFA they've added a full raid, a mini raid, they have 2 new zones coming soon with more raids in them in 8.2 and will have more content in 8.25 and 8.3 will feature another raid and more story.. Even older expansions had content drops as they progressed over the 1-2 years they where live, nothing was ever here it is and it's done. Even vanilla for instance launched with Molten core as the raid, expanded to Black wing lair, and went to Ahn'Qiraj as its final raid with each raid having accompanying story and quests to do. So your entire assessment is.. well wrong.
One of the major problems with STO story content vs a game like WoW is that since we planet hop all the time there's no new "zone" feeling most the time, it's just another nameless planet where you blast some Klingons or whatever. It's not like WoW where you go to Northrend and do this and that, or the new zones in BFA, or how SWtOR used a single planet as the back drop for an entire batch of story and missions, so going to a new one was exciting and different.
Or the space TFOs its just.. space.. its hard to make that feel new and exciting when landing in a TFO and blasting 40 bazillion ships to atoms in 20 minutes.
STO Will always improve on content. With another season of Disco coming. The new Picard series currently in production. The new Section 31 series also coming. STO will have a lot of new concepts, new characters, new VO actors to introduce. All this as well as being able to expand on stories and characters that were not featured in the tv shows. Dunno about everyone else but I'm excited for the future and what it will bring to STO.
That's true. Gravity Kills, Tzenkethi Front, Days of Doom (even back when it wasn't bugged) were received rather poorly because they require some basic level of coordination between players and not just spacebar hammering.
In the end, most players will always gravitate towards queues that offer the best time/effort-reward ratio. More challenging TFOs will remain the exception UNLESS they start scaling rewards according to difficulty and time investment.
There are countless ways for cryptic to make adjustments to their map design philosophy but they won't.
- Tzenkethi front is a good map and the default to go to option for the respective marks no matter what difficulty. Could be that weak teams avoid it and mixed teams dont form often as elite players don’t feel like carrying the weight for all but in good groups the map is encouraging, fun and has a fitting effort reward ratio.
- Days of doom is kind of the worst map in game. With autocompletion for AFKing in Easy mode and being strictly time gated on Elite this map is the opposite of the former one. Why in the world should anybody in game play this nonsens no matter how good or weak he is? The competitor for the marks here is Miners Instabilities - a great map - by the way.
- Gravity kills as a mix thereof. New elements, no strict time gate and auto completion on the + side but 3 times to do the same stuff repetitively and an un-lucrative "carry others factor" for good players on the - side. I only play it if I dont have to transport 30 particles for an incompetent group. 6-9 is something I'd be willing to do.
It would be easy for me to advise cryptic to adjust them to make them played by a lot more players without limiting myself to pew pew advise. but I certainly can't blame anybody that they avoid this content the way it is now.
This has nothing to do with lack of interest in teamplay or challange of the playerbase. It's just a matter of bad game design choices.
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