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Ideas for CO from STO
mrcaton1
Posts: 6 Arc User
I'm an LTS on STO and a semi-regular player and spender-of-money on CO, and just wanted to some thoughts on things STO does well that I think CO could benefit from. Obviously, there is no substitute for more content and more powersets and the like, but below are things STO does without a huge investment that encourage players to play the game. And if people are playing, there's a better chance they'll spend money on it than if they're not playing, I think. And money keeps the game going. So . . .
1) STO occasionally does events that simply encourage you to log on daily and get in-game. For instance, they'll do a time-limited Crystalline Entity event occasionally that, if you bet the CE like 14 times in the time period, you get a nice reward. (I think it was a duty officer once, and a nice haul of dilithium and marks the second time around. They also did a great event that rewarded 15 lobi (the Drifter Salvage of STO) for playing a Featured Episode mission once per day. These events get people in game because for most players the rewards are worth it. I had been taking a break from STO, but the lobi event literally made me log on every day--even though I had done these missions before.
CO could do the same thing and encourage people to play adventure packs or comic series. Seems like a simple option since you're not even adding content.
2) I don't want to re-start the vehicle discussion and what's wrong with them, but having a couple vehicle-specific alerts/instances/zones with decent rewards, and giving every player a token for a choice of a vehicle of low C-store quality would be a good thing. This is an aspect of the game that some people would enjoy, and it would encourage them to play and try to improve their vehicle if they like that sort of thing. Everyone in STO has the opportunity to do ground combat, shuttle combat, and starship combat without paying a cent. In STO, not many people care about their small craft, but I love my peregrine, and am grateful there are at least a couple of instanced missions I can use it on. Giving everyone in CO a modest vehicle option--and something to do with it--would be another simple way of encouraging people to log on. Some of us alt-aholoics would surely find ways to build a character around a free vehicle.
3) More Gravitar-esque missions. Like Gravitar, I don't mind running and re-running high-level stuff on STO because a) they're fun and (mostly) challenging, b) the rewards are worth it. The Borg STFs on STO always pop quickly because people run them over and over because the rewards are worth it. I think Gravitar is fun and would love some more rampage alerts.
4) This is a stretch, but . . . Supergroups: STO's fleet system is far from perfect and criticized for it's grindy-ness, but there are at least things for STO Fleet to work toward, and which gives you nice benefits if your fleet accomplishes projects in terms of gear and other options. Again, fleet stuff is a reason for people to log on and play and stay engaged in the game. Other than RP, there's not much reason to join a supergroup. A supergroup base would be great, but probably too much to ask. Even so, there are surely other ways besides a costume slot to encourage people to join a group.
5) Foundry. Yeah.
Just some thoughts. I love both of these games and want them both to continue to succeed!
1) STO occasionally does events that simply encourage you to log on daily and get in-game. For instance, they'll do a time-limited Crystalline Entity event occasionally that, if you bet the CE like 14 times in the time period, you get a nice reward. (I think it was a duty officer once, and a nice haul of dilithium and marks the second time around. They also did a great event that rewarded 15 lobi (the Drifter Salvage of STO) for playing a Featured Episode mission once per day. These events get people in game because for most players the rewards are worth it. I had been taking a break from STO, but the lobi event literally made me log on every day--even though I had done these missions before.
CO could do the same thing and encourage people to play adventure packs or comic series. Seems like a simple option since you're not even adding content.
2) I don't want to re-start the vehicle discussion and what's wrong with them, but having a couple vehicle-specific alerts/instances/zones with decent rewards, and giving every player a token for a choice of a vehicle of low C-store quality would be a good thing. This is an aspect of the game that some people would enjoy, and it would encourage them to play and try to improve their vehicle if they like that sort of thing. Everyone in STO has the opportunity to do ground combat, shuttle combat, and starship combat without paying a cent. In STO, not many people care about their small craft, but I love my peregrine, and am grateful there are at least a couple of instanced missions I can use it on. Giving everyone in CO a modest vehicle option--and something to do with it--would be another simple way of encouraging people to log on. Some of us alt-aholoics would surely find ways to build a character around a free vehicle.
3) More Gravitar-esque missions. Like Gravitar, I don't mind running and re-running high-level stuff on STO because a) they're fun and (mostly) challenging, b) the rewards are worth it. The Borg STFs on STO always pop quickly because people run them over and over because the rewards are worth it. I think Gravitar is fun and would love some more rampage alerts.
4) This is a stretch, but . . . Supergroups: STO's fleet system is far from perfect and criticized for it's grindy-ness, but there are at least things for STO Fleet to work toward, and which gives you nice benefits if your fleet accomplishes projects in terms of gear and other options. Again, fleet stuff is a reason for people to log on and play and stay engaged in the game. Other than RP, there's not much reason to join a supergroup. A supergroup base would be great, but probably too much to ask. Even so, there are surely other ways besides a costume slot to encourage people to join a group.
5) Foundry. Yeah.
Just some thoughts. I love both of these games and want them both to continue to succeed!
Post edited by mrcaton1 on
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2) There are some people with some really pimped out rides who would certainly enjoy this. And even though there are people who would instantly start screaming "They're only going to release vehicle-only content forever from now on! DOOOM!", it's still a good suggestion since there certainly are some people who would enjoy it. Preferably the content would be equally rewarding, in terms of being useful, to those players who have built their vehicles for damage output and mitigation, and those players like me who just tuned their vehicle for speeeeeeeeeeeeed.
3) They are in fact working on another Rampage already! Yay! \( o w o )/ We were actually supposed to have it like a year ago, but Neverwinter happend u_u
4) You're not alone in this for sure, there are many people who want some sort of thing to be put into place that makes Super Groups more than just a friends list with a chat channel attached. The challenge then is making it so that being in a Super Group still remains optional.
5) Yeah. Foundry.
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STO has the hourly thing too. The events are quite different tough I think. The closest thing to the crystalline thing would be gravitar I guess. There are a normal and elite version in STO and they take about 5-10min I would say. During the event you were awarded a shard once every 20h per character. You could trade in about 14 shards for a big reward. That was 50k dilithium (questionite) and marks for the rep/fleet system, also a doff the 2nd time.
You had something like 20 days to get your 14 shards so you could miss a few days.
The featured episode replay event offered 15 lobi (drifter salvage) every 20h per account if you played a mission from a featured episode. I guess they are a bit like the comic series in CO. Only in STO you do not have to play the whole series you can just replay a mission. So depending on what mission you chose it took like 2-15min.
While that might be a cheap trick to get people to play it works. And it really motivates you to play again if you took a break. And often you stay longer and do something else if you are already logged in. You might stay to chat a bit with people and suddenly you play again even if you stopped a month before.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
The nice thing about CO is that there are no grinds. The fleet system is grind incarnate. I hated guild levels in the 800lb dragon game. Turning guilds into a requirement was bad for everyone.
I completely agree. I also think a benefit is that it engages players in content besides the instanced grinding stuff (STFs/Alerts) that hogs so much player's time. Since the Lobi rewards were account based, I actually used my Klingon and Romulan a lot more than my main for the lobi event. Not only did I get the lobi, but then my alts got the mission rewards for those featured missions, such as the Breen or Jem'Hadar sets.
No grinds in CO? You must be mistaken. There are many grinds, there have always been many grinds in CO. From Q to tokens those are all grinds, there is even a little mini gear grind for players to participate in whether by lockbox grind for legacy gear or merc gear, or getting tokens for gear from the rep vendors. CO is not short on grinding.
That is correct.
The fleet system actively discourages and punishes small groups. Small fleets shed members left and right because they don't, and won't any time soon, have the perks that everyone wants.
Unfortunately yes. They said they would help small fleets when they added the mine last summer. Turned out they lied.
But I have to say a small fleet still works, thanks to the community. You can get an invite to a bigger fleetbase and shop there. There is a community channel where people provide free invites. It is not an ideal solution and it might take a few tries to find someone who has time to help, but it works.
I am still in a small 5 people fleet. I am happy there but the reason it works is thanks to the community. The system itself is a failure.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
The grinds in most games are optional, yes even those in STO. However, how optional they are depends greatly on what you want to do. In CO, for example, if you want to maximize your output and stats then you will have to grind gear, mods, and probably questionite.
In CO, Supergroups are mostly for flavor, and sometimes making it easier to provide assistance to newcomers (although that gets spoiled when someone comes in and robs the Supergroup bank, so now most SGs limit access, which protects the gear but also (perversely enough) keeps the gear from assisting the lowbies it's meant to help). My CO toons are all members of my own personal SG, the Union of Concerned Superheroes, because the Hideout bank just doesn't have enough slots.
I'm not sure adding the Fleet grindiness from STO into CO Supergroups would be a lot of help. And do we need the resource sink that is a Fleet Starbase? (It seems to exist primarily to look pretty, and to cost lots of Dilithium and other stuff to make prettier and more useful.)
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Elite fleet shields, the warp cores and consoles are more powerful than non fleet stuff. While it is not needed in pve it can still be kind of frustrating to be locked out of some nice toys.
The way STO has it it would probably be a disaster. But if they would design it for 5 people, instead of 50 and not lock the best gear behind months of grind it could work. More like the player hideouts, only bigger. And probably some functions like mail, auction house, bank,... Probably some visual unlockable upgrades as well. Maybe a teleporter to all zones. The base should offer some convenience and not a real advantage.
And maybe some alerts that use that map, defend your hideout or something like that.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
Pretty much. You don't have to do anything here to do anything (i.e. not grinding will never bar anyone from any sort of progression).
But you'll always have players who don't think about it that way. They don't see any part of the game as optional, or something they can choose not to do because they don't need it, and believe that everything in the game is something they have to do and be a part of. For these players, if they were to implement a grindy SG system, even if the benefits of that system are in no way required to actually successfuly do anything in the game, those players will claim that they are being forced to grind and then complain about it.
It's strange how some players will claim they are forced to do content they know they don't enjoy, just because it's new... but it happens.
It's also strange that there are players who actually do enjoy grindy things like that.
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1 - 4,
please not, especially about SG and Grind... not more gind to CO... the reason i play CO is i dont need to grind my life away... i left STO...because of the grind...
also... if we need to grind for SG stuff then this wil destroy small SG ( SGs for friends ) ... not everyone has like 100 friends... soem of use enjoy to play within a small circle of 10 players.. maybe even only reallife friends...
______
5, yes please
Wait? Whaaaa..?
Does FF1 count?
Anyways it was the fleet system being discussed, not the rep system.
I think we're putting the cart before the horse on this one, mainly because... what sort of benefits could a SG system over here provide that people would even care about? XP bonus? resource bonus? ....mod bonus?
There's certainly nothing they could do that would make the SG system absoloutely necessary for anyone. If anything it would likely be a bunch of stuff that's "nice to have", meaning that your group of 10 wouldn't really be missing out on anything. No one in your group of 10 friends would likely even have a reason to want to leave.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Yes an account bound rep system could be really nice, if done right.
Really? They could do lots of fun stuff. Like justice gear. But that would be too harmless. Maybe more like special mods. Defensive mod: adapt. Adds a stacking resist buff when hit. Or an offensive mod giving offense and flat crit chance (not rating, actually crit chance).
Trust me, there are plenty of ways for op stuff that you can lock behind a wall of grind.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
Ah.
I view the fleet system as mass sanity test that lots of people failed.
Wait? Whaaaa..?
But none of those things you just listed would actually be stuff that anyone needs to progress... it's still just stuff that would be neat to have, but that no one would actually need. It would be entirely optional within the context of this game's progression.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Depends how you define "need" and what you want to do in general. You would actually need it to be competitive in pvp. You would not need it in pve unless they made harder missions.
Also there is not really much progression on max lvl anyway. So you could argue getting better gear is the only progression
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
Oh yeah STO has serious endgame BORG FARMING! for all the best ship parts, but it doesnt really seem like grind because your having fun blasting Seven of Nine's cousins into tiny teeny parts.
The thing is the grinds worth it cause the parts and gear are good. CO needs something like that. Something to actually do.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Wait a mo..
STo gives Guilds/Fleets -something- so there's benefits to having a big group, does that mean small fleets get less that CO Sg's do now?
If so I can see you point, if not..
Well something for your small Sg is better than next to nothing that we get now
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Losing what few members you do have to full spire/mines/whatever guilds is a good thing?
And losing them in a way you can't blame them to boot.
The problem with Adventure Packs is, once a Comic Series ends it's initial new hotness run you can't play the individual issues anymore, like you can a Featured Episode. We're forced to play the whole thing.
The SG I'm in is small. I guarantee you not a single member would leave to go grind with some giant factory SG.
Fact is, the only people who would leave, are people who were never really part of the group to begin with. You know, people who only joined for the costume slot and/or because they thought they might get something out of the SG vault.
Your friends won't leave.
Easy solution is easy: Limit the amount of progress a SG can make per day, now there's no point to go and join a huge SG.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
They have in STO because it's the only way to get access to the top gear.
I can't fault them either. The ones left behind are very non-grindy types who even if they did want to contribute the time to fleet projects don't have the resources to divert to making any noticeable advance on the projects.
Well, in STO you need the top gear to complete certain parts of the tiered PVE endgame.
I don't play STO, but I'm assuming that's not the case at all and those people abandoned their fleet for gear they don't even need... good friends.
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Now, I'm fine with running "endgame" missions in, say, a Nebula refit (USS Messier, VA Sills), a free Obelisk carrier (RRW ch'Rihan, VA Nniol tr'Keiniadh), or a Qin-class raptor (IKS Ch'bug, Brig Gen Malthit). But some folks feel "gimped" if they're not in a Fleet Refit with all the top-end consoles. So they'll feel it "necessary" to jump ship for the bigger fleets. (While Malthit isn't even in a fleet, never had one, and I've never felt the loss...)
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Yes, some people will bail on their friends for shinys. We call them "fairweather friends" around here. The fact that they don't need any of that stuff, like you said, really only reinforces that fact.
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I'm the exception, because I don't mind at all - but I also don't insist that everyone else has to like the game the same way I do.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Well, some players are just more focused on "getting to the next level". I'm not saying it's an invalid playstyle, but I am pointing out that those people had to choose between friends and progress, and they made their choice. They were never forced to make it.
Fact is, if I'm in a fleet with that person, and they say they can't have fun without that stuff? I say go ahead, the game is about fun.
I like how we breezed over my simple solution to this problem... so I'll go ahead and repost it:
Limit the amount of progress a SG can make per day. Boom, now it doesn't matter how big your SG is, bigger won't always mean better, your friends can stay with you.
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I like having projects and stuff to work for, but the 'f u, small fleets' is infuriating and stupid.
(The final straw was the increasing factor of 'new pay ships are categorically better than old pay ships, even with the same price, and not even getting into pay vs. free ships...')
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Actually I find the shields/consoles more interesting than the fleet ships. At least you can get some zen store ships and the lockbox ones who are on the same lvl as fleet ships. But fleet consoles for example are simply better than a normal consoles.
But with the NoP Public Service channel small fleets are actually ok. If you are patient you will get all the fleet stuff if your own fleet managed T1. Only ships are a bit problematic but sometimes you can get even those.
Also some people consider pvp a valid playstyle, where not having fleet stuff can be quite the disadvantage.
Maybe people breezed over it because of the irony there. STO does limit the progress you can have per day. The main starbase for example has 3 slots for xp projects, those take 20h to complete. And one upgrade slot. The major tier upgrades take like 5days+ to complete. When all slots are filled you can do nothing but wait. Well you can already gather resources for the projects you want to start the next day.
The problem is simply the cost of such upgrades. The system would help small fleets if they like divided fleet mark costs by 10 and dilithium costs by 100 or something like that. If the whole system is designed for like 50 people than so are the limits.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
this is a good list, but you forgot to add the mission chain, like they have in sto. ie Klingon war, so forth and so forth.
and thats good.
I must say BORG FARMING is actually a hoot over there. I'd do it even if it didn't give a reward. :biggrin:
If there had never been a COH there would never have been a CO. :cool:
I don't see what that has to do with what you quoted. Just trying to take a random shot out of boredom?
Again, simple solution: Just don't do that!
Lol, lemme elaborate. Don't make the things cost that much.
Hey look at that, you're already on board!
Kind of ironic that you poo poo'd my idea... then totally followed its course.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
I did not "poo poo" your idea. I just pointed out that it only works if there are the right limits. So in the end it depends on if the devs agree with your views of what the "right" limit would be.
That means your idea also works as propaganda to just tell people everything will be fine, we take steps for small fleets, and than just screw them.
My stomach is clear and my mind is full of bacon!
If they bring Foundry here, it would be a heart breaker.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Not all Fleets are groups of friends. And that's another issue with the Fleet system. Fleet members are constantly recruiting because the more members they have equates to more resources they can get. So most invites to Fleets are no longer about if someone thinks you're cool, friendly, good player, etc. It's all about the Dilithium you bring to the fleet. So leaving a small fleet for a larger one doesn't necessarily make one a fair weather friend. Go to any main hub ingame and if you're not in a fleet you get mobbed with invites, makes one feel like a person who just slipped and fell in a hotel that was also hosting a lawyers convention.
But the grind is as horrible as everyone has expressed and is the main reason I left STO and haven't went back. I was in a small fleet and was constantly grinding to help improve the fleet while others in said fleet contributed little to nothing. I finally burned myself out and left.
Well the issue was about peoples friends leaving them. If they're not friends, then no biggie. Heck why doesn't everyone just join the same fleet, or assuming there is a player limit per fleet, why doesn't everyone just work together to get everyone into giant fleets? You know.. like the people on Star Trek would do
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