Hopefully I am not alone on this (maybe I am), but after taking a break from Tribble last night I started to think a little clearer about how F2P will really affect me.
People here seem to focus solely on the monetary aspect of things, minutia that doesnt really affect them, and how mad they are that their playing style will change. I get that Cryptic needs to make money so change is necessary. My thread isnt about that. Its about the real heart of the issue that no one is really talking about.
F2P is boring.
Consider the following
Missions In F2P these are now forced progression, so if I dont like a mission or have a difficult time with it, Im stuck. This gives me nothing to do if I absolutely hate that Devidian mission (or cant complete it). Leveling becomes a boring grind very quick.
Dilithium Cap Right now I can log in do my dailies, get emblems/marks, and go do some explore missions every 30 mins. Now that Im capped at 8k dilithium, what do I do after I get my ore for the day? Play on the C-point exchange begging for pennies?
Crafting Right now you can waste hours crafting and hunting anomalies. But if your Dilithium is gated, how long is it worth your time to play? This eliminates any interest in the crafting system, which was previously a huge time sink. Result: What will I do to replace all that time I spent hunting anomalies?
STFs While the changes are overall very positive, the result for most of us will be repetitive runs to get the gear we want. Do the same mission 50 times and you start to get bored quickly.
PvP PVP hasnt really changed much since launch. The same that applies for STFs applies here. An influx of new players is nice, but with no major changes this isnt going to keep people around for long.
So what are you adding to replace all time sinks that you removed? Are you guaranteeing that new content will come out every week? Or making new items that cost dilithium on a regular basis? Is the intention to turn STO into a quick in-and-out game like Farmville?
As a gold member, I hate to say it but your dilithium limits and forced mission progression are seriously putting a limit on what I can do in game. Forget the financial impact for a minute and realize that as-is the Tribble model gives me no reason to bother logging in anymore, especially now that my dilithium is refined automatically.
Good post with good points and very little emotional outburst tied to it.
I disagree with some of what you say, but one thing Im in TOTAL agreement with you on is the STF rewards requiring 50 runs just to get one piece of elite STF equipment. that is just absurd. I could barely tolerate the 5 or so runs for each of my toons as it was. If it requires that many runs...I will just not play STFs.
yep.. the time sink of grafting has been shoot in the foot. no matter how much time you spend gathering anomolies you still stuck with a two day wait for dilithium PER SINGLE ITEM to craft at the level cap. going and running STF's is faster... much faster...
PvP.. no change in months some ground maps have had the same wall exploint in them for months unfixed and un addressed. Additional PvP content is desperatly needed.
New economic model. it stinks. It depends far to much on people willing to buy c-points. and them purpously buying a surplus of c-points. Unlikley to actually happen though i could be wrong.
Content.. actuall content. I'm willing to call the doff system both a feature and content. ANd its a great deal of fun. but more mission content is whats needed.
Forced mission progression needs to end before FtP goes live. Its all fine and good for levellng up in a hurry on the test server but thats all its good for.
KDF faction needs a lot of content and expansion before f2p or there is a very good chance f2p release will fall flat on its face. You need the opposition faction fleshed out yesterday.
Pretty much in agreement with the OP.. Unless there is more content in the game at f2p launch its not going to be good..
It sounds like you don't find the game intrinsically fun to play. That you're only motivated by ... what? Having a "full set of epic gear", and the only reason you can think of to log on every week is if they released a new piece of epic gear every week, for you to add to your collection?
As far as I can tell, the only two things Dilithium is good for is buying/crafting "epic gear" and exchanging for CP to buy C-Store items. Dilithium isn't gating your ability to have fun playing the game.
Re: the STFs, the "epic gear" you "have to grind for" is specifically tailored for people who like to play the STFs. That is: if you don't like playing the STFs, there isn't much call for the gear they drop. And you'd have to be unbelievably unlucky to have to actually play through them the theoretical maximum number of times to get the "full set of epic gear". The drop rates aren't actually that bad.
I think the bottom line is: If you find the game intrinsically fun to play, the changes you mention aren't relevant. If you find playing STO boring and are only motivated by the accumulation of Dilithium/gear, then, sure, the F2P changes make the game less fun for you. Maybe you should consider playing a game you find intrinsically fun to play, where playing is its own reward.
So what are you adding to replace all time sinks that you removed? Are you guaranteeing that new content will come out every week? Or making new items that cost dilithium on a regular basis? Is the intention to turn STO into a quick in-and-out game like Farmville?
As a gold member, I hate to say it but your dilithium limits and forced mission progression are seriously putting a limit on what I can do in game. Forget the financial impact for a minute and realize that as-is the Tribble model gives me no reason to bother logging in anymore, especially now that my dilithium is refined automatically.
I am in 100% agreement with you and was thinking the very same thing as I logged off of Tribble this morning to update my Doff missions and headed to work. Was this dStahl's plan seeing as he did move to Zynga and pretty much all the FB games behave this way?
I have posted ad nauseum list of things that would keep players engaged in the game and we do not seem to be heading in that direction. Like this for Example:
You do an initial/repeatable mission you get dilithium
You get an accolade, you get dilithium
You do a daily, you get dilithium
You do a fleet action, you get dilithium
You do an initial/repeatable sector defense, you get dilithium
You do an initial/repeatable patrol, you get dilithium
You do an STF, you get dilithium
You do doff missions, you get dilithium
You do a repeatable exploration mission, you get dilithium
...and this I have abandoned because, well none of it has really been addressed so I feel like I am wasteing my time.
There are just alot of missed opportunities and misdirections.
But overall, I AGREE WITH YA 100%. It has rapidly become for me (and my 20 or so SWG friends who were planning on coming over to check the game out) the fact that not being able to "play the game the way I want to play it", has been overshadowed by the issue of "is this a game I even want to play".
Time will tell, there are still a couple of months left for Cryptic to hear, understand, and address the concerns and shortcomings.
@Modernevil - The game by itself is mildly intrinsicly fun to play because there is a lack of diversity in things to do (i.e. very few content systems = high repetivity = lack of stimulation and interest), and what to do is what I would call "skeletal". Very few things seem "fleshed out" or have been fleshed out in the months since launch. This is also part of the philisophical problem people are having with the changes so far. Narrowing down the limited diversity in this game and that is not a good thing.
It sounds like you don't find the game intrinsically fun to play. That you're only motivated by ... what? Having a "full set of epic gear", and the only reason you can think of to log on every week is if they released a new piece of epic gear every week, for you to add to your collection?
...
It's more an issue of "what do I do now" than getting epic gear.
Believe it or not, I do actually find Tribble fun to play, it's just there is not a lot of "game" to play. I have a backlog of 150k dilithium ore to refine, there's nothing new on the C-store to purchase, STF's are fun the first time, and nothing craftable as I'm waiting on dilithium to refine. the DOFF system is great, but it only keeps me busy for about 15 minutes.
But all of that is on Tribble. I'm looking at this and trying to decide how it's going to impact my Holodeck character. And more importantly, how will it impact the fleetmates I've got lined up to return when F2P hits. With no time sinks, this effectively means the dev's will have to churn our content on a regular basis to make this model sustainable. Or else I'm going to lose my re-joined friends again, probably for good this time.
You forgot to mention that the ability to gather ore is severely gated in and of itself.
You can only get it through doing the special events and power levelling DSE's, and a teeny little bit from Doffs.
You can only get it through explore dailies at the lower levels.
You cannot get it from the story and patrol missions, nor from the regular DSE's.
This isn't a problem at cap, because you can grind numerous dailies, but at lower levels, it's painful because by the time you have enough to outfit your ship, you get promoted.
"Time-based currency," my foot. Why aren't Cryptic giving dilithium to the things that people spend the most time on? Why is the limit 8k a day? Remove it for Golds!
Having the missions in a chain is actually good, but right now it's messed up as far as level and rewards (which aren't scaling, although enemies do scale.)
There's not enough dilithium given out. A sane player would never spend any until max level, and what fun is that?
Crafting...forget it. Hunt for stupid anomalies AND spend dilithium? No.
I've gotta agree with this, at least how it stands on teh Tribble so far.
Boring, grindy, almost like a second job but without the paycheck.
I can't even be bothered to log on to DOFF anymore.
Thanks to the accelerated leveling plus mission chaining with level-appropriate npcs and level-inappropriate rewards and drops, it's no longer worth what little time I DO have to run missions. Still hovering around Mid-Romulan at Vice Admiral, don't think I'll go any further up the chain.
Crafting for friends, fun, and profit no longer seems to be a going concern, so no reason to log on Tribble for that.
If I run one more SFA event I swear I'll drive up to Los Gatos with a halberd and run amok. That and having yet another "midterm" via ATM machine at SFA.
Mirror Event is kinda fun, even though sometimes it takes quite a while for enough people to make a PUG 5-man team. I suppose this was planned-- can't have people grinding teh mad pimpin' Dilithium G-Stacks too quickly or easily, same as the unmentioned reducing of particle drops from 3 per isolated particle scans to 2.
So yeah. As someone once said, I'm not paying time and money for the "privilege" of having a non-paying second-job*--
er, I mean, "testing" F2P for the new hypothetical Communist Chinese gentlemen overlords--
er, I mean, validating a steaming pile of FAIL--
er, well, you know what I mean.
*yeah, I know if I follow the gold-farmer model, I'd get some sort of real moneys-type value due to some arcane mathematical fallout from the Dilithium Exchange-- maybe enough of a pittance to keep some underpaid, under-aged factory worker in an outsourced third-world manufacturing facility with no OSHA compliance happy, but for me, not so much.
It's nothing new really. STO needs more content, pure and simple. Perhaps with an influx of players who would spend some money, Cryptic will dedicate more manpower towards the Foundry (which will allow us to create more interesting content on our own) and continued development of actual story-based content, i.e. more missions and Featured Episodes.
Without more content, STO would stagnate (it already has for some anyway) into a gear-fest and as a F2P that very well could be the last nail in the coffin.
Yeah it is also my opinion that the major failing of the game is the overall lack of content. Cryptic expends tremendous energy to invent these arbitrary gates, locks, and slowdowns to slow people's progression in the game, and they do it all to fix their primary failing: lack of content. It's treating the symptoms and not the cause. And this is why they are quickly wasting through what little resources they have.
Even if they release feature episodes, I don't think that's going to be enough. I don't know about you guys, but I honestly don't feel that the extra effort to put in a few cutscenes and voice acting into the FEs adds all that much. The cutscenes are pretty crude and simple, the voice acting is mediocre at best. And it's all just added resources for an ultimately unfinished experience.
They need to be releasing TONS of new missions, not just 2-3 FE series per year, but entire new "campaigns" along the lines of the Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian fronts. They don't need the "fit and polish" (what little there is) of the FEs, just solid storylines and engaging mission play. Some good examples of this are the sequence where you get on the satellite to free your ship in "coliseum". That is a very "trek-like" experience, and there needs to be more of that in the game. It didn't require cutscenes, fancy set pieces, or anything, just some good believable and appropriate puzzle solving, a decent story, and decent execution.
If there were a lot of new content to work through, I think players would not be quite as angry over the arbitrary slowdowns like dilithium in crafting, because they could earn that extra dilithium by playing through new and engaging content. This is the real problem. Players see these slowdowns like adding dilithium to crafting, and complain because the only way to get those extra resources is to continue to play the same old tired content we have all been playing for the past 2 years.
Good post with good points and very little emotional outburst tied to it.
I disagree with some of what you say, but one thing Im in TOTAL agreement with you on is the STF rewards requiring 50 runs just to get one piece of elite STF equipment. that is just absurd. I could barely tolerate the 5 or so runs for each of my toons as it was. If it requires that many runs...I will just not play STFs.
Sadly, same here.
I was thinking to myself that another set/sets need to be added to crafting, like the Aegis set was when the Borg set came out. At least that way the grind would be to obtain something new and epic, not the same gear we've been able to get all along easier.
I can't disagree with anything except the first point. Devs have already stated they didn't agree with the gated mission progress either and were looking to change it back.
Hopefully I am not alone on this (maybe I am), but after taking a break from Tribble last night I started to think a little clearer about how F2P will really affect me.
People here seem to focus solely on the monetary aspect of things, minutia that doesnt really affect them, and how mad they are that their playing style will change. I get that Cryptic needs to make money so change is necessary. My thread isnt about that. Its about the real heart of the issue that no one is really talking about.
F2P is boring.
Consider the following
Missions In F2P these are now forced progression, so if I dont like a mission or have a difficult time with it, Im stuck. This gives me nothing to do if I absolutely hate that Devidian mission (or cant complete it). Leveling becomes a boring grind very quick.
Dilithium Cap Right now I can log in do my dailies, get emblems/marks, and go do some explore missions every 30 mins. Now that Im capped at 8k dilithium, what do I do after I get my ore for the day? Play on the C-point exchange begging for pennies?
Crafting Right now you can waste hours crafting and hunting anomalies. But if your Dilithium is gated, how long is it worth your time to play? This eliminates any interest in the crafting system, which was previously a huge time sink. Result: What will I do to replace all that time I spent hunting anomalies?
STFs While the changes are overall very positive, the result for most of us will be repetitive runs to get the gear we want. Do the same mission 50 times and you start to get bored quickly.
PvP PVP hasnt really changed much since launch. The same that applies for STFs applies here. An influx of new players is nice, but with no major changes this isnt going to keep people around for long.
So what are you adding to replace all time sinks that you removed? Are you guaranteeing that new content will come out every week? Or making new items that cost dilithium on a regular basis? Is the intention to turn STO into a quick in-and-out game like Farmville?
As a gold member, I hate to say it but your dilithium limits and forced mission progression are seriously putting a limit on what I can do in game. Forget the financial impact for a minute and realize that as-is the Tribble model gives me no reason to bother logging in anymore, especially now that my dilithium is refined automatically.
Interesting points... ADD to that : Crafting and accumulating other related items becomes almost usless since it is next to impossible to farm specfic items as needed. It's like trying to prepare an 8 course dinner with only the fixin's of a pot luck meal (or even less) in hand.
Missions In F2P these are now forced progression, so if I dont like a mission or have a difficult time with it, Im stuck. This gives me nothing to do if I absolutely hate that Devidian mission (or cant complete it). Leveling becomes a boring grind very quick.
I agree. The new in-game box showing the sequence of missions is a good idea, but I don't see why you have to be forced to do them in order, and the next mission only becomes available when you've completed the previous mission or reached the appropriate level cap. Not to mention that right now mission rewards STILL aren't scaled.
Why can't the current system on Holodeck be kept? It's disappointing if you have to finish a previous mission before you can get the next one even if you're at the level requirement. The level requirement is also too high anyway, Captain 3 for the middle of Romulan missions? There are times when you're half way through a Captain grade and can't get the next mission because you need a level more and you're left wandering around looking for stuff to do. Would it be so terrible if the next mission becomes available to us even if we're one or two levels below? Most people won't mind fighting at one or two levels below.
I play KDF becuase thats my fan attraction, but I've been bored for months now.
I wait for the KDF revival thats suppossedly inbound and to arrive sometime after F2P launches (though I expect months afterward).
If it looks like another two years of this is the status quo, then I leave like mnay others have done in the past.
I play KDF becuase thats my fan attraction, but I've been bored for months now.
I wait for the KDF revival thats suppossedly inbound and to arrive sometime after F2P launches (though I expect months afterward).
If it looks like another two years of this is the status quo, then I leave like mnay others have done in the past.
Ya know , bud .. seems like someone somewhere up the food chain at Cryptic has taken advantage of the paitence and kindness of players like your self and yours truely.
I'm still holding out for the best. I sincerly hope that that this time they are listening with a heavy ear to what is being said.
1. Buggs need to be fixed. ( ie. I'm hoping the DS-9 fleet action gets fixed)
2. Make sure the skill tree gets fixed (ground and space alike)
3. Make certain that farming is something that is set up where it can be done on purpose (not just depending upon a TRIBBLE shoot for whta ever drops).
4. Ensure that the up comming economy does not find its way to a cash cow only game.
5. Make it a PRIORITY (not just a promise) tro get content for the Klingon faction and VA levels into the game.
(note: these are a few ... a very few items that seem to be at the forefront of discussions)
Ya know , bud .. seems like someone somewhere up the food chain at Cryptic has taken advantage of the paitence and kindness of players like your self and yours truely.
I'm still holding out for the best. I sincerly hope that that this time they are listening with a heavy ear to what is being said.
Yes no maybe
As am I though I think fate handed thier own unfair share of fickleness as well.
I agree, F2P is boring. Honestly, I got my Fed and Klink to VA for the rewards and filed bug reports but i cant even bother playing. I only log in for new patches to test the updated content then go back to live, its so boring now.
That being said, the reality is Patient and understanding gets nothing done. Some of you might think its being supportive but your actually hurting the product. In the real world these days its only a uproar that gets things noticed... and gets things fixed. Thats just the reality and I mean in life in general. This is why "Loud mouth a-holes" we all know and hate IRL is almost always getting their way because they speak up for themselves, now im not advocating being loud mouthed and ignorant but I am saying speak up, its the only way people listen these days.
Especially with Cryptic, history has PROVEN they listen to who yells loudest, most everything that got changed or fixed in the game since launch happened as a result of vocal players.
Sto is boring, not just F2P but the holodeck as well. Content Cryptic, not grinding. I do not enjoy grinding & want content; & the content I want is not just "shoot em up". I do realize thet the shoot em up principle is essential to the game, but this is Star Trek- there has to be more. Where is Kirk getting tail, where is Piccard turning into a child, where is crashing the saucer section onto a planet, where is flying your ship from the bridge? Other things besides shoot em up should be developed & any & all grinding should be severely curtailed. Grinding is boring, period.
I will agree with others that it's nice to see a level-headed and not overly 'emotional' OP.
However, it's just an opinion.
Would I like more content added? Most assuredly. However, I, personally, don't find STO boring. If I were to do all the missions all the time by myself, perhaps I would. But I normally don't, and even though I've done most missions many times (I have 17 characters - 11 Fed, 6 KDF), with company they're still fun (as I tend to 'RP' some on the missions with the people I play with - why are the Cardassians always sending ships to meet the Devidians? What are the Breen interested in? What happened to the ship that we're finding wreckage for on this planet, etc.).
Comments
I disagree with some of what you say, but one thing Im in TOTAL agreement with you on is the STF rewards requiring 50 runs just to get one piece of elite STF equipment. that is just absurd. I could barely tolerate the 5 or so runs for each of my toons as it was. If it requires that many runs...I will just not play STFs.
PvP.. no change in months some ground maps have had the same wall exploint in them for months unfixed and un addressed. Additional PvP content is desperatly needed.
New economic model. it stinks. It depends far to much on people willing to buy c-points. and them purpously buying a surplus of c-points. Unlikley to actually happen though i could be wrong.
Content.. actuall content. I'm willing to call the doff system both a feature and content. ANd its a great deal of fun. but more mission content is whats needed.
Forced mission progression needs to end before FtP goes live. Its all fine and good for levellng up in a hurry on the test server but thats all its good for.
KDF faction needs a lot of content and expansion before f2p or there is a very good chance f2p release will fall flat on its face. You need the opposition faction fleshed out yesterday.
Pretty much in agreement with the OP.. Unless there is more content in the game at f2p launch its not going to be good..
As far as I can tell, the only two things Dilithium is good for is buying/crafting "epic gear" and exchanging for CP to buy C-Store items. Dilithium isn't gating your ability to have fun playing the game.
Re: the STFs, the "epic gear" you "have to grind for" is specifically tailored for people who like to play the STFs. That is: if you don't like playing the STFs, there isn't much call for the gear they drop. And you'd have to be unbelievably unlucky to have to actually play through them the theoretical maximum number of times to get the "full set of epic gear". The drop rates aren't actually that bad.
I think the bottom line is: If you find the game intrinsically fun to play, the changes you mention aren't relevant. If you find playing STO boring and are only motivated by the accumulation of Dilithium/gear, then, sure, the F2P changes make the game less fun for you. Maybe you should consider playing a game you find intrinsically fun to play, where playing is its own reward.
I am in 100% agreement with you and was thinking the very same thing as I logged off of Tribble this morning to update my Doff missions and headed to work. Was this dStahl's plan seeing as he did move to Zynga and pretty much all the FB games behave this way?
I have posted ad nauseum list of things that would keep players engaged in the game and we do not seem to be heading in that direction. Like this for Example:
...and this I have abandoned because, well none of it has really been addressed so I feel like I am wasteing my time.
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=235914
There are just alot of missed opportunities and misdirections.
But overall, I AGREE WITH YA 100%. It has rapidly become for me (and my 20 or so SWG friends who were planning on coming over to check the game out) the fact that not being able to "play the game the way I want to play it", has been overshadowed by the issue of "is this a game I even want to play".
Time will tell, there are still a couple of months left for Cryptic to hear, understand, and address the concerns and shortcomings.
@Modernevil - The game by itself is mildly intrinsicly fun to play because there is a lack of diversity in things to do (i.e. very few content systems = high repetivity = lack of stimulation and interest), and what to do is what I would call "skeletal". Very few things seem "fleshed out" or have been fleshed out in the months since launch. This is also part of the philisophical problem people are having with the changes so far. Narrowing down the limited diversity in this game and that is not a good thing.
It's more an issue of "what do I do now" than getting epic gear.
Believe it or not, I do actually find Tribble fun to play, it's just there is not a lot of "game" to play. I have a backlog of 150k dilithium ore to refine, there's nothing new on the C-store to purchase, STF's are fun the first time, and nothing craftable as I'm waiting on dilithium to refine. the DOFF system is great, but it only keeps me busy for about 15 minutes.
But all of that is on Tribble. I'm looking at this and trying to decide how it's going to impact my Holodeck character. And more importantly, how will it impact the fleetmates I've got lined up to return when F2P hits. With no time sinks, this effectively means the dev's will have to churn our content on a regular basis to make this model sustainable. Or else I'm going to lose my re-joined friends again, probably for good this time.
You can only get it through doing the special events and power levelling DSE's, and a teeny little bit from Doffs.
You can only get it through explore dailies at the lower levels.
You cannot get it from the story and patrol missions, nor from the regular DSE's.
This isn't a problem at cap, because you can grind numerous dailies, but at lower levels, it's painful because by the time you have enough to outfit your ship, you get promoted.
"Time-based currency," my foot. Why aren't Cryptic giving dilithium to the things that people spend the most time on? Why is the limit 8k a day? Remove it for Golds!
There's not enough dilithium given out. A sane player would never spend any until max level, and what fun is that?
Crafting...forget it. Hunt for stupid anomalies AND spend dilithium? No.
Boring, grindy, almost like a second job but without the paycheck.
I can't even be bothered to log on to DOFF anymore.
Thanks to the accelerated leveling plus mission chaining with level-appropriate npcs and level-inappropriate rewards and drops, it's no longer worth what little time I DO have to run missions. Still hovering around Mid-Romulan at Vice Admiral, don't think I'll go any further up the chain.
Crafting for friends, fun, and profit no longer seems to be a going concern, so no reason to log on Tribble for that.
If I run one more SFA event I swear I'll drive up to Los Gatos with a halberd and run amok. That and having yet another "midterm" via ATM machine at SFA.
Mirror Event is kinda fun, even though sometimes it takes quite a while for enough people to make a PUG 5-man team. I suppose this was planned-- can't have people grinding teh mad pimpin' Dilithium G-Stacks too quickly or easily, same as the unmentioned reducing of particle drops from 3 per isolated particle scans to 2.
So yeah. As someone once said, I'm not paying time and money for the "privilege" of having a non-paying second-job*--
er, I mean, "testing" F2P for the new hypothetical Communist Chinese gentlemen overlords--
er, I mean, validating a steaming pile of FAIL--
er, well, you know what I mean.
*yeah, I know if I follow the gold-farmer model, I'd get some sort of real moneys-type value due to some arcane mathematical fallout from the Dilithium Exchange-- maybe enough of a pittance to keep some underpaid, under-aged factory worker in an outsourced third-world manufacturing facility with no OSHA compliance happy, but for me, not so much.
Without more content, STO would stagnate (it already has for some anyway) into a gear-fest and as a F2P that very well could be the last nail in the coffin.
Even if they release feature episodes, I don't think that's going to be enough. I don't know about you guys, but I honestly don't feel that the extra effort to put in a few cutscenes and voice acting into the FEs adds all that much. The cutscenes are pretty crude and simple, the voice acting is mediocre at best. And it's all just added resources for an ultimately unfinished experience.
They need to be releasing TONS of new missions, not just 2-3 FE series per year, but entire new "campaigns" along the lines of the Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian fronts. They don't need the "fit and polish" (what little there is) of the FEs, just solid storylines and engaging mission play. Some good examples of this are the sequence where you get on the satellite to free your ship in "coliseum". That is a very "trek-like" experience, and there needs to be more of that in the game. It didn't require cutscenes, fancy set pieces, or anything, just some good believable and appropriate puzzle solving, a decent story, and decent execution.
If there were a lot of new content to work through, I think players would not be quite as angry over the arbitrary slowdowns like dilithium in crafting, because they could earn that extra dilithium by playing through new and engaging content. This is the real problem. Players see these slowdowns like adding dilithium to crafting, and complain because the only way to get those extra resources is to continue to play the same old tired content we have all been playing for the past 2 years.
Sadly, same here.
I was thinking to myself that another set/sets need to be added to crafting, like the Aegis set was when the Borg set came out. At least that way the grind would be to obtain something new and epic, not the same gear we've been able to get all along easier.
Interesting points... ADD to that : Crafting and accumulating other related items becomes almost usless since it is next to impossible to farm specfic items as needed. It's like trying to prepare an 8 course dinner with only the fixin's of a pot luck meal (or even less) in hand.
I agree. The new in-game box showing the sequence of missions is a good idea, but I don't see why you have to be forced to do them in order, and the next mission only becomes available when you've completed the previous mission or reached the appropriate level cap. Not to mention that right now mission rewards STILL aren't scaled.
Why can't the current system on Holodeck be kept? It's disappointing if you have to finish a previous mission before you can get the next one even if you're at the level requirement. The level requirement is also too high anyway, Captain 3 for the middle of Romulan missions? There are times when you're half way through a Captain grade and can't get the next mission because you need a level more and you're left wandering around looking for stuff to do. Would it be so terrible if the next mission becomes available to us even if we're one or two levels below? Most people won't mind fighting at one or two levels below.
I wait for the KDF revival thats suppossedly inbound and to arrive sometime after F2P launches (though I expect months afterward).
If it looks like another two years of this is the status quo, then I leave like mnay others have done in the past.
Ya know , bud .. seems like someone somewhere up the food chain at Cryptic has taken advantage of the paitence and kindness of players like your self and yours truely.
I'm still holding out for the best. I sincerly hope that that this time they are listening with a heavy ear to what is being said.
1. Buggs need to be fixed. ( ie. I'm hoping the DS-9 fleet action gets fixed)
2. Make sure the skill tree gets fixed (ground and space alike)
3. Make certain that farming is something that is set up where it can be done on purpose (not just depending upon a TRIBBLE shoot for whta ever drops).
4. Ensure that the up comming economy does not find its way to a cash cow only game.
5. Make it a PRIORITY (not just a promise) tro get content for the Klingon faction and VA levels into the game.
(note: these are a few ... a very few items that seem to be at the forefront of discussions)
That being said, the reality is Patient and understanding gets nothing done. Some of you might think its being supportive but your actually hurting the product. In the real world these days its only a uproar that gets things noticed... and gets things fixed. Thats just the reality and I mean in life in general. This is why "Loud mouth a-holes" we all know and hate IRL is almost always getting their way because they speak up for themselves, now im not advocating being loud mouthed and ignorant but I am saying speak up, its the only way people listen these days.
Especially with Cryptic, history has PROVEN they listen to who yells loudest, most everything that got changed or fixed in the game since launch happened as a result of vocal players.
However, it's just an opinion.
Would I like more content added? Most assuredly. However, I, personally, don't find STO boring. If I were to do all the missions all the time by myself, perhaps I would. But I normally don't, and even though I've done most missions many times (I have 17 characters - 11 Fed, 6 KDF), with company they're still fun (as I tend to 'RP' some on the missions with the people I play with - why are the Cardassians always sending ships to meet the Devidians? What are the Breen interested in? What happened to the ship that we're finding wreckage for on this planet, etc.).
Or new, ->fun<- fleet actions?
Playing the same stf's over and over again surely is not it....