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1000 Paper Cuts for Star Trek Online
astarte05
Member Posts: 35 Arc User
Hi!
So I was debating whether to ever come here, as EVE Online taught me a valuable lesson about game forums - if not forums in general - that can be summed up as follows. "If you post it, trolls will come". But whatever, not like I have anything to lose.
This is a chance for those who whine and complain about this game to, potentially, hopefully, do something about what they whine about. See, I'm also taking this idea from EVE's forums also: a post that describes all the little stuff about the game that isn't really an issue but is still a nuisance, from a gameplay standpoint. Hence the term "paper cuts". Maybe they're not exactly gameplay-ruining issues, but they're still annoyances.
The overall objective is that it somehow makes its ways to the devs, and at some point in the future, they do something about these "paper cuts". Someone on EVE's forums did it a while back, the thread got thousands of replies in the following months of people posting their 5-10 paper cuts, and the devs got wind of it and checked it out. A huge number of the issues were acknowledged, and quite a few were actually resolved over the next few patches and expansions.
So, it can work for the most assholish MMORPG in existence (and those of you who play/played it know what I mean) why can't it work here? I mean, if it works, I imagine depending on what the issues are, if they're actually fixed, it'd improve everyone's gaming experience, let alone those who complained about it in the first place.
So, let me start it off.
1. The Galaxy-X (Dreadnought)'s third warp nacelle doesn't light up when the ship goes to warp/transwarp.
2. STO seriously has about...eh, a dozen, I'd say...music tracks.
3. The time/effort-to-reward ratio for Starbase Fleet Defense, and No Win Scenario
4. The PM sound notification for KDF is barely audible compared to the Starfleet one.
5. The confusing chat interface.
Hopefully, it catches on. It won't if it turns into a spamfest, so please, let's stick to the objective here. I advise they be real, addressable issues ("NOBODY EVER GUARDS THE KANG" isn't really gonna be taken seriously, I'd imagine), and...yeah. Let's get those thousand, yeah? Have fun!
So I was debating whether to ever come here, as EVE Online taught me a valuable lesson about game forums - if not forums in general - that can be summed up as follows. "If you post it, trolls will come". But whatever, not like I have anything to lose.
This is a chance for those who whine and complain about this game to, potentially, hopefully, do something about what they whine about. See, I'm also taking this idea from EVE's forums also: a post that describes all the little stuff about the game that isn't really an issue but is still a nuisance, from a gameplay standpoint. Hence the term "paper cuts". Maybe they're not exactly gameplay-ruining issues, but they're still annoyances.
The overall objective is that it somehow makes its ways to the devs, and at some point in the future, they do something about these "paper cuts". Someone on EVE's forums did it a while back, the thread got thousands of replies in the following months of people posting their 5-10 paper cuts, and the devs got wind of it and checked it out. A huge number of the issues were acknowledged, and quite a few were actually resolved over the next few patches and expansions.
So, it can work for the most assholish MMORPG in existence (and those of you who play/played it know what I mean) why can't it work here? I mean, if it works, I imagine depending on what the issues are, if they're actually fixed, it'd improve everyone's gaming experience, let alone those who complained about it in the first place.
So, let me start it off.
1. The Galaxy-X (Dreadnought)'s third warp nacelle doesn't light up when the ship goes to warp/transwarp.
2. STO seriously has about...eh, a dozen, I'd say...music tracks.
3. The time/effort-to-reward ratio for Starbase Fleet Defense, and No Win Scenario
4. The PM sound notification for KDF is barely audible compared to the Starfleet one.
5. The confusing chat interface.
Hopefully, it catches on. It won't if it turns into a spamfest, so please, let's stick to the objective here. I advise they be real, addressable issues ("NOBODY EVER GUARDS THE KANG" isn't really gonna be taken seriously, I'd imagine), and...yeah. Let's get those thousand, yeah? Have fun!
Post edited by astarte05 on
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Comments
1. STO's soundtrack is incredibly generic and gets old very quickly.
2. Cryptic's ham-fisted attempts to force people to congregate in social zones plus their bad habit of filling them with hordes of pointless wandering NPCs makes them bloated and unweildy to the point of having to kill the client with the task manager and restart it just to load an area.
3. Turn in Contraband assignments reward a ridiculously small sum of Dilithium Ore for taking five hours to complete.
4. The prisoner DOFF assignment from the Security Officer gives lackluster rewards for using an otherwise valuable resource.
5. Antimatter Spread, a console one has to pay money for, no longer works on Borg Cubes, the enemy it was canonically designed to confuse. Love or hate AMS, this is something Cryptic is charging money for.
6. The Galaxy-R's saucer still shows up as a default Galaxy Saucer when docking after separation, even when using a Majestic or Venture saucer.
Not included in the above, but something I feel is worth mentioning: The Federation/KDF EVA suit is a hilariously and offensively priced single purchase EV suit with lackluster stats rather than an account wide alternate appearance for EV suits belonging to players of either faction.
- Cloaked ships decloaks as soon as somebody farts too loud on the bridge (Ok, ancient issue, probably known by every dev but still annoying as hell).
- I can still see my big ships AFTER they warped out & before the loading screen (far away & tiny BUT still there).
- After transwarping out of a system (and ship is not there anymore) a warp out of the system sequence plays (just without ship, but effects, camera swing and warp sound are there).
- Beaming off the bridge to switch to tactical view is stupid. If there has to be an animation make a "sits on captains chair" one.
- My 1st Commander/XO/No.1 which even is officially declared so does neither sit next to me on the bridge (Any bridge, but in my case the Aquarius) or even is recognized in any other situation outside of the window which declares the XO as XO.
- Lots of cheap looking clipping (feet in floor for example) on several if not all bridges (yeah yeah, ancient issue again, but an ancient cheap looking clipping error does still makes the game look cheap).
- Underused Boff stations on bridges. Bridges like the Aquarius could easily show 16 Boffs.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."
2- The game's soundtrack does get old quickly.
3- Stop taking productive means of generating game currency and/or resources and nerfing them into oblivion.
2. Players on both sides have to commit large-scale genocide on every routine mission they pick up. Klingons are warriors, no merciless killing machines. And I bet Starfleet does not approve the death of several thousand individuals while a frigging science ship explores an unknown system to scan for minerals. Give us the possiblity to disable enemy ships and persuade them to surrender or board them.
3. Cut the dropbox-TRIBBLE. Or at least don't terrorize the players not falling for it (that means let us disable dropbox drops entirely)
4. Let us customize our crew, our ship. You know, the thing frigging STAR TREK should be about. Let me decide where my BOFFs shall sit on the bridge.
5. While we are at it: give my ship's interior some purpose. I'm not talking about more DOFF-stuff (you know, the "mini game" requiring me to click through the same menu over and over again which somehow shall create the illusion that there is something to do)
6. Give us civillian/diplomatic missions. We aren't Space Marines. Play "Star Trek - 25th Anniversary" or "A final Unity" for inspiration.
7. Reduce the number of "enviromental NPCs" crowding social areas. You know what I'm talking about...
8. Why did you remove the feature to show our toons and their bio via the website? You know, for the people who actually gave a damn...
9. The music is too repetative.
10. I'm tired now.
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Pfft, speak for yourself, there's a reason my main character's name is Astarte.
...Though, to be fair, I'd be a Sister of Battle instead of Astartes, due to my actual gender, but no one would recognize "Sororitas" (Space Marines are Adeptus Astartes, Battle Sisters are Adepta Sororitas [And all this is from Warhammer 40k]), so...
You're doing great, guys, let's keep the ball rolling! What else irks you about this game?
1. Cryptic will place a bandaid over the paper cut so they can ignore it without having to actually deal with it.
2. Cryptic will completely ignore the paper cut until the pain goes away (ie people give up and stop voicing their displeasure about a given issue).
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
And if they don't know, that just proves their incompetence even more. If they are so insulated from their own game they are completely unaware of its bugs etc then it begs the question what exactly they are working with if not the game.
- Gear choices lack meaningful effect. A ship should feel very different in combat when using various shields/deflector/weapon types but does not. It is all determined by the boff abilities you are packing.
- Lack of gear options like kits. I can never find a ground kit I like for any character.
- Very few low rank boff space powers available or desirable. Is there anyone who doesn't use tac team with an ensign tac or epower to shields with their engineer?
- I find it silly to have 2 copies of the same boff ability on my toolbar. If I have 2 Epower to shield I's can't they just share the same slot? I swear every ship I fly has atleast 3 abilities that are double copies of the same and it gets annoying in combat when it starts I press 1, 2, 3. Then 15 seconds later Shift 1, Shift 2, Shift 3. Rinse and repeat.
- Lack of consistency. Hull heal skill console grants less skill bonus than the Shield heal one. Why?
- Under-Utilization of existing content/systems. All this sweet custom gear from FEs, specific missions, etc that level up to VA but thats it. I was hoping with the fleet store, dilithium store, something, you would be able to upgrade them to Mk 12. This can also be expanded to no reason to run missions/dailies on elite and various other things added to the game and then forgot about.
- Forced Paths for some Rewards. Dilithium was done properly because of the variety of ways to obtain it. Solo, foundry, doffs, STFs, etc etc. But it started with the STF rewards, Romulan Set, and is now expanded to fleet marks. You want them you must do 5 man missions. Or Nukara but i'm not touching that.
- Time Gates are annoying. I'm looking at you Vault mission.
- While the PuG 5 man grinds for shinies appeal to one part of the player base, another part would really like to know when the next FE will be here.
I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they have the skill- just not the resources or inclination to fix them. How many times have we heard, "Yeah we know that doesn't work." or "We'd like to be able to do this" But, "we just can't because ...."
- i hate it when i'm running and i bump into an obstacle, my movements become frozen. It's like everytime i bump..time gets slower.
- there should be a distortion effect like the one when you get assimilated, when you use full impulse, because you are moving close to the speed of light
- MK XII stf gear should be available with EDC or some other tokens. or give the full costume option to the MK XI set...but only if all bonus objectives are completed.
Bind the costume options to the accolades for the bonus missions...not the gear
1. Bridge officer uniform customization and ship crew uniform customization. I use the veteran uniform for my BO, but I would like to use the Vice Admiral one. For ship crew it bugs me that they wear the Jupiter one while the Bo wears something else.
2. Where my Bridge Officers sit on my bridge. I hate where most of the people sit for some bridges.
3. Warp out of a system is messed up. Why does the sound have to be off?
4. Bound items...WHY U NO account bound?? Hate that my main has extras of stuff that the alts need.
5. Confusing chat system. Need I say more?
Thanks for doing this!
Kyle
That's something I don't get, in general. I do play 40k, I have an own SM chapter although I'm more invested in the Tau enclaves. I don't have anything against action and combat, but we are supposed to play Star Trek here. I don't want a 40k-ish feeling in this, else I'd play a totally different game. Yet, all what STO gets content-wise is fighting, fighting and more fighting and character gear that'd put a Techmarine to shame (as I said, the DOFF-system is not content). If this is the way the playerbase wants it, why does it have to be Star Trek? Star Wars is all about fighting, as well as any other SF franchise in existence but Trek always had a kind of intellectual tone to it. A message to think first and shoot later - yet, nothing in this game makes it necessary for me to think at all.
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It's for the pewpew fanatics. I mean, seriously, "peace and exploration" can only get you so far, would YOU play an MMO that involved the Federation's "true" mission, i.e. "Scan This Nebula for A Week and Report To Starfleet With Findings"?
Every franchise has its fans that are more geared towards their favorite captain/ship/etc. blowing stuff up than the whole "explore strange new worlds" thing. The exploration, diplomacy, problem-solving aspect does get tiring and tedious, as opposed to just "Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure".
It's for those who loved every time the Enterprise fired phasers. The ones that preferred, say ST: First Contact and Nemesis to, say, ST: The Voyage Home in terms of action. That there's so many enemies ensures there's never a shortage of fighting. There's an actual war with a recurring antagonist, the Klingons. There's the Romulans, Cardassians, Jem'Hadar, Breen, so like I said, there will always be someone to blow up. This is NOT at all the Imperium, or 40k, because Star Trek would have to take quite a slide indeed to even rival 40k's overall feelings of cynicism, helplessness, and depression.
I will, however, drop a paper cut on the subject (I actually have quite a few, but I'm spacing them out, so I can bump my thread and keep it relatively on track)...
- The doff missions of Starfleet vs the KDF. It looks like the Klingons are the only ones trying to win a war here. Namely, the type of doff missions "Capture/Raid/Board/Disable/etc." and the amounts of prisoners and materiel you bring back from successes. Starfleet's missions are typical Federation missions, yes, but there's still a war going on...
- UI colour customization.
- Ship interior lighting colour customization
- QoNos needs a redesign. Why the hell do I need to run all the way across the map just to go from the skill trainer to the bank or exchange? Or at least shrink/condense the map somewhat. -_-
- Let me make gorn the size of the gorn on Qo'nos, dammit. My gorn, even maxxed out for size, don't come close.
- Let gorn have more than 1 costomizable racial trait
- Let me wear boots with the Orion loincloth option.
- Give us NORMAL boots for the KDF. Spikes are soooo 2350
- Jem'hadar facial options please. Chin/jawline spikes and facial "makeup" are missing
- Let me simply click where on the skillbar I'd like to set my skills to please. Having to click the arrows up to four times per skill is tedious.
- Why can't we simply choose whether to go to ESD or the Academy on the blue side or the first city, academy or the shipyard on the red side immediately upon entering the system? Why do we need to full impulse to somewhere first? Particularly red side, the distance is quite a ways from the spawn-in point. Especially for the shipyard.
- Can we have more people actually DOING stuff in the ship and less people walking around being freeloaders please? :P I wanna see people working on consoles or half sticking out of jeffries tubes. Just having them walking back and forth between two points is just silly.
- Give me an actual reason to use the ship interiors please. And not just another time-sink.
- Less time sinks in general please. Particularly the klingon walkaround missions and the bajor mission from the dominion FE is just criss-crossing back and for across the map. Over and over and over again.
- More variety than just "go there, shoot that" missions. Particularly red side.
- Why can't I visit the Gorn or Nausican homeworlds? More importantly, why can't Gorn or Nausican characters start on their homeworlds?
- Give me a reason to have a science ship for PVE please. STF's are generally just DPS rushes. The new fleet STF's seem better
- Make endgame content less "grindy" please. Simply making stf's take longer and adjusting their payouts would go a long way in this regard. It would be important not to go too over-the-top with it though, or keep a few short ones, so people can still log in and knock off a stf or two before work or during lunch or whatever.
- KDF bridge-packs for the non-klingon ships please.
- Seperate the doff assignment chains section into completed and not completed please.
I'm sure there's more but that's all the I can think of at the moment
Rrezeth, Gorn Tactical, primary alt
Nari, Orion Science, secondary alt
1) the ground STF missions optional timer trigering points need to be reset from the update, the timers have been nerfed to the point that near enought NO-ONE can actually achieve the optional.
2) the drop rates of the prototype borg tech are WAY TOO LOW! infact youve got as much chance of finding a hay coloured needle in haystack (bad analogy i know) but thats how rare they are, i understand that cryptic want us to work for the good end game stuff, but theres a very clear line between making us work for something, and just being stingy towards players and making them suffer an un-needed and prolonged
3) the amount of time it takes a starbase project to complete is just too long, i understand the upgrade missions taking as long as they do but over 12 hours for the normal projects is just rediculous.
4) the amount of pointless NPC ins social hub maps (like ESD or DS9) should be reduced to help people with lower end machines actually access the map without having to actually close the game because it hangs during loading the map and then restart the client to load into the map. this would also reduce the amount of memory the game needs at one instance so people dont end up having the game crash because the game eats up too much memory at once. (by now this has officially become a rant...)
5) WE NEED A NEW SOUNDTRACK on top of what we already have, including new ambient sounds which we can use in the foundry to help establish the mood of our mission instead of just using the maps default ambient sounds.
these are just some of my peeves with this game at current, id post more but youd have a VERY LONG post to read and this one is already big enough.
NPCs have nothing to do with this. The load hangs at popular maps are caused by players, actually. When you load in, the game sends state data (player's location, costume, etc) to you. The problem is this data is timestamped and by the time your game client recieves all the data packets they may be rejected for being out of date, starting the process anew. NPCs dont move or change costumes or anything really. The only fix is to force all the players in the instance to sit still or for Craptic to buy some better hardware.
This game is pretty much on maintenance mode, unfortunately. The devs don't read the forums, because its just people crying about broken aspects of their game. They don't know how bad the experience is, because when they test things its on an internal server with premade 50s. They can't fix anything anyway, because there's all of like five people working on STO and four of them just design new Catian hairdos for the Z-Store all day.
Its pretty clear the company is throwing all their resources at Neverwinter at the moment, hoping that it won't be a trainwreck at launch, so as to finally restore some credibility to the name Cryptic.
Its a pretty poor strategy too, since Trekkies obviously spend lots of money and would be willing to spend even more if they got anything they begged for, but Cryptic's policy from the start has been to ignore community feedback and instead pursue design ideas that their players almost universally acknowledge as being poorly thought out and terribly unfun.
2 - ship costume variety. How much harder is it offer the option for us to CHOOSE what set look our ship has, if we have acquired the set? I.e. I wanna have the looks of the Reman shield, but I want to have the MACO shield slotted! It doesn't matter in PvE or PVP what the ship looks like skin wise, especially if you can turn the visuals off anyways... so it's not a target acquisition/knowledge/silhouette issue, as that's addressed by ship type/model. You have the basis of the tech (I assume) with the costume options for the MACO and OMEGA ground sets! I can have MACO on, but have the look of the OMEGA set.
3 - Secruity DOFF shows me NO assignments for Espionage, but the Tactical DOFF shows 5 and sector space shows 3. Is my security chief THAT out of touch? Why are there even espionage tasks ON the Tactical DOFF list?
4 - something in Marauding besides "Purchase XYZ Turret." Seriously, those are WAY too common for a category called MARAUDING.
5 - Trading seems to be a common thing... why not get it's own DOFF officer tab? Or maybe put trade stuff in with Diplomacy instead of Operations?
6 - why not have a SHIP UNIFORM option? This would allow us to quickly set-up a base uniform for all our crew instead of modifying each one at a time. The Save/Load functionality is dysfunctional, btw.
7 - why even have personal loot bags in STFs? Just have it go right to your INV on completion?
8 - Having a BOFF ground crew seems incredibly useless at endgame since most of the "good stuff" requires a player team of 5 or more. Can we get someway to introduce ground BOFFS back into the game besides repeating old missions?
9 - Make the STF set bonuses really something to consider when putting on gear. The legacy Borg set should not out-class them! Just the name LEGACY implies older. The MACO XI gear (120 EDCs to acquire without drops) should blow the Borg set (15EDCs total) away. Make gear decisions MATTER: "do I want the shield and hull buffs from the Borg set or do I want this terrible 3min CD mediocre damaging Beam attack from the MACO set?" is not a hard choice to make! I mean really... the KDF HonorGuard 3 piece bonus: short range PBAoE cloak, every 3mins? How is that useful beyond flavor/rp... especially in STFs?!
10 - Make EDCs, Salvage, and Tech ACCOUNT bound. Or at least EDCs. What is wrong with me grinding on 1 toon to gear up 2 others. I'm still playing the content.
11 - Revisit the costs for achieving Starbase tiers that unlock mediocre at best weapons and gear AND revisit that gear to add more flavors, like you have in the STF store for General Merchandise, where you can get a Covariant Shield with CAPx3, or CAP/REG/AP, or CAP/REGx2, etc. etc.
12 - GPL... what is it good for besides the occasional DOFF mission and wasting time playing DABO? Why are Lobi crystals bound? If they stay bound, how about some kind of Lobi/GPL conversion station? Ultimately- SOMETHING to do with the dismissed and black-sheep currency that is Gold Pressed Latinum. You gave us a system to exchange the massive junk piles from the christmas lockboxes into GPL, and I think we all assumed that meant something might be coming that makes GPL worth it. Still waiting for something besides Ship HoloEmitters. O_O A lobi/gpl converter would do the trick.
13 - Revisit and rename the ranks. It has never made sense to me that there are hundreds or even thousands of Admirals running around wildly in STO. I think if you renamed the ranks, maxing at Captain and then going up from there if the cap is raised would NOT TRIBBLE people off. It would be just a name change, and any fan of the shows KNOWS that Captain is where it's at and all Admirals did was desk-work back a Starbase or SanFran Starfleet HQ!
It would look like: Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer, Ensign, Lt. Junior Grade, Lt., Lt. Com., Commander, Captain. And you can do Rear-Admiral (no halves!) for the first/next level bump, Vice Admiral for second, Fleet for 3rd, and Just Admiral for the 4th.
I could go on, but these 13 standout the most to me. They are not in any particular order of importance after 1 and 2. I love the game, but I want it to be better.
If you want to get right down to it, it doesn't make sense for a starship captain to be ranked as anything BUT captain. Show me one instance anywhere, Sci-fi or RL, where an ensign is the ship's commander.
It should be something more like:
Captain, novice(or 1st grade)
Captain, junior(or 2nd grade)
Captain, intermediate(or 3rd grade)
etc
etc
Or, just get rid of rank altogether and make XP relevant to skills only. Which happens to make the most realistic sense.
Rrezeth, Gorn Tactical, primary alt
Nari, Orion Science, secondary alt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_promotion
R.I.P
2) ship board NPC costumes it really breaks my immersion that the ship NPCs are wearing different uniforms then my bridge crew. uniforms are called uniforms for a reason lol
3) UI color change i have chronic migraines and the red interface of the KDF makes it so where i can not play for more then about 10-20 minutes at the very least give us the option to make it the fed interface as i do enjoy playing as a klingon just ont the interface
2) less npc's in interiors
3) more hair options
4) Blow up K7 we can't have a T-5 connie so one of the games main starbases shouldn't be the base originally made for grain storage
Actually many times in RL a Ship's commander is not always the rank of Captain. The commander of a ship may be any rank but they are always the Captain even if they are a Lieutenant if they are in command of the vessel they are the Captain.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commanding_officer
In the United States Navy, commanding officer is the official title of the commander of a ship, but they are usually referred to as "the Captain" regardless of their actual rank, or informally referred to as "Skipper".
In the Royal Navy, Commanding Officer is the official title of the commander of any ship, unit or installation. However, they are referred to as "the Captain" no matter what their actual rank, or informally as "Skipper" or even "Boss".
Tachyon Beam is TRIBBLE. I really like the skill and want to use it, but it does less damage than a single phaser beam.
Escorts should be flying towards the target, fire, and then fly over away, coming about for another pass. Right now, it's more beneficial to just stand still and fire to the front the entire time.
You should be able to set abilities to auto cast (with right click) so it fires every time it is ready. For example distribute shields. So that tac team won't be needed as much anymore.
Abandon ship should be a useful skill. Instant respawn. Or no damage-debuff. It should also have this effect while being killed within the countdown.