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RSA Podcast Dumps STO, Claims Community is Dying
robertcrayven
Member Posts: 355 Arc User
In a recent post on their official site, the RedShirt Army Podcast announced that it is dumping STO as its primary focus and suggested that the player base is dying off. They do not cite any credible numbers other than the Steam player population.
This is the second podcast to make this claim as they shifted their focus away from STO (the first being the original STOked podcast, which ended its run earlier this year), but neither cited any sources to back up their claims. Is there somewhere that these numbers can be independently verified, or are the aforementioned podcasts just taking a couple of rage-fueled shots at the game as they head for the exits?
Based on my own completely casual observation of the population in STO, I do not feel like the servers are any less-full than they've ever been.
This is the second podcast to make this claim as they shifted their focus away from STO (the first being the original STOked podcast, which ended its run earlier this year), but neither cited any sources to back up their claims. Is there somewhere that these numbers can be independently verified, or are the aforementioned podcasts just taking a couple of rage-fueled shots at the game as they head for the exits?
Based on my own completely casual observation of the population in STO, I do not feel like the servers are any less-full than they've ever been.
Post edited by robertcrayven on
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While yes, numbers outline development pretty good, but there is more to a community than just X-number of players.
A community is a group of people working to enhance their experience of <whatever>, and I tend to agree with whoever says it's dying...
Right now, every single MMO I'm playing is full of people shrieking "the sky is falling! the game is dying!" So, I think it's just people being stupid....as usual.
You do not need demografics to realize that since f2p, account numbers increased, but that hype is slowly fading and thats what those demographs show i guess. But a core community still exists that will keep the game alive for atlest the next 1-2 years in my opinion, depending ofcourse on future game content.
While we may come and go as we loose and regain interest, its hard for a weekly podcast to do so.
The podcasts should just be honest and say they don't feel like contuining because they themselves have lost interest in the game. This was especially apparent with Chris from STOked. I never listened to RSA so I dunno what their deal is. But blaming the playerbase sounds like a cop-out to me.
1. Updating the website is all well and good but stay on top of it. It hasn't been updated in certain sections in quite sometime and their podcast forums are filled with TRIBBLE ads. Who wants to take the time to wade through x-rated stuff to comment or make a point about one of their shows (if the show notes even get posted as the last show on forums was show 50)?
2. Get hosts that are interested in the podcasts they are doing if they aren't Trek fans they have no business covering STO. If Cohas or morblades can't or won't show to do a show then get rid of them; I'm sure there are members of the Red Shirt Fleet that would be glad to replace them. In my opinion this is what finally did STOked in, Jeremy was clearly the heart and soul of the show and Chris seemed to be along for the ride, as his interested waned so did the show. I would LOVE to see Cryptic start a podcast of their own with Jeremy at the helm!
3. The show gets little attention from Cryptic.....quit trying for Cryptic's attention. Be rebels, its worked for you so far, its one of the reasons I've listened to RSA. I like that you guys gave your opinions about the game (good and bad) without sugar coating, it really set you apart from the other podcasts. I say wipe the whole site and start all over from scratch.
Overall I enjoy this podcast a lot and think its a shame that they can't keep it together. If these guys are going to "rebrand" they need to go much further with a name change and dropping the Trek theme. Red Shirt is a well known Star Trek reference, people looking for a Guild Wars 2 podcast won't think to look for a show via a podcast with a Star Trek name.
I'm really not interested in GW2, POE, or the other games mentioned on the RSA site so I won't be listening to future Red Shirt Podcasts. I wish these guys the best and thank them for all the work they've done in the past, it is a pity its ending.
Co-Leader of Serenity's Grasp
And i completely agree with them, there hasn't been anything majorly substantial to talk about with STO for some time, which i imagine makes things a bit hard for people who are meant to do regular podcasts about a game with no depth.
You can only talk about the doff system and the souless fleet starbase and cookie cutter el'cheapo fleet missions so many times before it gets dull and repetitive and boring.
As much as i loved STO (i played nearly every day for over 2 years), the new content since F2P has been rather souless, done on the cheap, bland content, which has made me play much less and focus on other games with actual storytelling and new content, the exact same thing that has happened with these podcasts.
Chris never mentioned player populations in his decision. he had a number of reasons for leaving, some personal and financial. in fact due to f2p happening around the time he wanted to leave meant that the numbers of people playing were very big at the time. so i dont think we can link his choice to leave with RSA.
i cant speak for redshirt army but remember all the podcasters are just random fans who decided to make a podcast. any fan of the game can get bored and want to move on. it happens. its funny because you can love a game but once you get bored of it its easy to start seeing all the negatives.
the thing about free to play games is you dont need people to play 365 days a years. all you need is them is to have the game installed on their system and for them to come and go. the game population has dropped naturally since f2p happened but that is not surprising in the least. the population in game still feels quite healthy and once season 7 comes it will spike again.
there is not much to do at this exact moment but that happens every time between seasons as well. we had the exact same complaints between season 3 and 4 and the exact same complaints between 4 and 5. each one brought people back.
probably what is needed is a decent feature episode series to get everyone fired up again.
Edit - one other thing to consider is STO only came to steam about 5 months ago. everyone here before then, even the early free to play players was not playing through steam. so it is probably only showing the players added after f2p launched.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Ironically he is proving his own point
As far as just the number of players I only stf pug and ran into the same people once or twice ever
Actually Chris (formerly of STOked) DID mention STO player population in a way as I believe he claimed - "STOked has more viewers than STO has players." in one of his final rants (of course he never presented hard evidence to substantiate said claim.)
In the end, everyone has an opinion; BUT, if STO were performiong below expectations; I seriously doubt PWE would allow Cryptic to keep hiring, and expanding the STO Dev team. If you follow the news regarding MMOs, DStahl is right in one thing: Many MMOs that are failing and/or falling below expectations are laying off and cutting back:
SWToR[/B:] laid off 20% of its Dev team and 80% of its community team in the last few months; and in it's first 10 months went from 1.7 million subs to sub 500K subs and is going F2P (and they just did another set of server merges last week.)
The Secret World: Underperforming to the point Funcom is also doing a major staff reorganization and layoffs of staff.
Tera: Bluehole Studios is also laying off staff in North America and cutting back.
Again, in contrast, PWE is putting more money into STO and allowing Cryptic to hire for, expand the STO Dev team (and by contrast Cryptic's other currently running MMO "Champions Online" team is not being expanded - even after acquiring back former Cryptic staff from Paragon Studios and NCSoft closed Paragon Studios and announced the shutdown of "City of Heroes".)
^^^
The point in all this is - from the (ademittedly purely anecdotal at this point) evidence PWE doesn't seem to be putting it's resources into assests that aren't expanding or doing very well in PWE's eyes. Lately, floundering MMOs aren't seeing Dev team expansion.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I believe there no longer is many original players around but who cares about original players when you have tens of thousands of new ones.
I can see why pre f2p players want nothing to do with this game. It is grind and not Star Trek.
And you won't get many f2pers wanting to dedicate time for podcasts (IMHO)
But no, it isn't dieing.
Yes, you are right i did hear about that, and while i did not hear it first hand to hear the context i would like to believe that he did not explain himself very well or meant something slightly different because thats quite frankly a strange statement to make of a game that once reported in at 100k of players. considering f2p actually caused their server to become full i cant imagine chris was pulling in hundreds of thousands of people to watch his show.
IIRC, this was around the time Chris was claiming to have 'insider evidence' showing that the game was doomed and that the total population of the players was less than the number of people tuning in to see his show. He makes the statements in one of the last 2 or 3 episodes. Despite repeated requests to Chris to clarify his statement or substantiate his claims, he never did. He shut down the show shortly thereafter.
EDIT: I thought they were already dumping STO when SWtOR came out... how did that go?
Raptr profile
For the record, STOked didn't claim STO was dying. They claimed that their personal viewership wasn't enough to justify devoting time to, as professional video podcasters. They then lend the name out to a co-host to develop as a radio show.
It's a different animal, running an online TV network.
Also, I think Chris has indicated that he believed that his viewership wasn't reflecting the changes in playerbase demographics and catered more to pre-F2P active players, who likely constitute a minority of current players.
With RSA, it's little surprise given their dual focus on Klingons and PvP, two features that are both undersupported (I'll concede that) and generally not popular in the STO community. And from there, the argument becomes chicken and egg as to whether it's unpopular because it's undersupported or undersupported because it isn't the most popular set of features. I think the truth is probably a lot of both.
STO was available through Steam since launch from 2010, but was taken down some time before the launch of F2P. Then, it became available again some time after F2P launched. Even when it was no longer available on Steam to purchase, people (including myself) who had bought STO on Steam were still playing via Steam. However, I'm not entirely certain statistics from back then carried over when STO was re-released on Steam, or were just wiped.
You can make a reasonable guess if you can figure what percentage of players spend money, what percentage buy lockboxes, how many lockboxes they buy, and what the ship droprate on lockboxes is. Then observe number of lockbox ships awarded per hour as an average and run that number back through the guesses.
I know it's possible to reintegrate it to Steam later but I just didn't bother. There are few benefits.
Concerning STOked: The funniest thing is what Chris replaced STOked with. A show about conspiracy theories (they claim it's "critical" journalism) and a radio show where someone talks about programming. Uh ... yeah, Go Go Chris!
I forgot about that... and thought it was an absurd claim that had to come from MMO-Data's numbers or something. MMO-Data dramatically under-reports everyone but EvE and ********.
I would dispute the Champs thing. I do think the target staff size for Champs is much lower than it is for STO but there are job ads currently for Champs positions.
STOked 124 - Perfect World Disappoints. Chris makes his claim that more people watch his show than the number of people who play STO, then goes on a rant with Mav about how Cryptic / Perfect World are ruining the game. The fun starts at the 22:00 mark.
He makes a couple other wild statements throughout the episode as well.
Now is STO dying? To me, yes and no. STO's population didnt drop like a rock, like what happened with TOR. And pretty much things are slower now because its the school season. But another reason why the population has declined is mainly due to Cryptic adding another grindfest in the name of Fleet Starbases, which has little or no reward with major moneysinks (from real currency to EC to Dilithium), and people are just turned off by it. Though when Cryptic adds something new, they would come back for a short while and try it out.
That's why I think when Season 7 happens, the population will be very active compared to know, where everyone is off for the holidays and curious of the new treats in store. But would that last? Maybe a month or two, then people go back into hiding til the next big thing.
So all in all, if STO is really dying, its a very slow death. But be nice if Cryptic made things less grindy or having more reward for your grinding efforts.
As you are welcome to do; however, I think this thread may have derailed a bit. My original intent was not to bash STOked and RSA, but rather to try and find out where these two podcasts are getting their 'facts' from.
Always amusing to see claims like this without the slightest bit of real evidence. Besides instead of activity accounts I would want to see how much money sto is bringing in. I would say that might be more of a basis if it will die or not. As long as there is decent activity and it is bringing in a fair share of money I don't see why they wouldn't keep it going.
I agree , but I do see a huge delay between demand and supply .
Examples :
- No plans to deliver new PVP (systems or even maps) in the next 6 months .
- New STF coming after 2+ years of no new STF's and 1 year from the re-mastered STF's .
- No new FE's for the last 6 months , w/possibly no new ones for the next 6 months .
- New Fleet Actions introduced with the Starbases after about 2+ years between the previous ones .
- No new KDF specific content planned
All of the above content is in demand , and I believe Cryptic will deliver ... , but with a giant lag ... and podcasts should not constrain themselves to the role of "filler" (in this case , time filler) .
Having said that , I'm sure there will be lot's to talk about when Season.7 hits .
But inbetween Seasons , all of the real STO news seems to consist of C-Store updates , lockboxes and Starbase Projects . And sometimes that ain't enough .