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Open letter to Dan Stahl and the rest of the devs
captainbrady
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
This is an open letter to the devs.
On behalf of my fleet "Terran Empire Special Forces" as well as any other like minded gamers, we are pleased to see your willingness to listen to your customers, and we certainly welcome your decision to restore dilithium (dil) to STFs as well as add dil to fleet missions. However, we think you can still do much better. Even with your compromise, you have taken far more from the customers than you have given, and we expect more out of you if you expect us to continue to participate in this game or support it financially.
When I started this game, crafting was free of any monetary input. Similar, the doff system was free to recruit, and had a nominal fee to upgrade. The idea was simple. It was a way for a player to "earn" something of value, instead of pulling out our credit cards. This is a feature in most MMORPGs whether the game is free to play or not. Since going Star Trek Online went free to play you have added unreplicable materials for 1000 dil., and the most expensive items (which are far from the best items in the game) are prohibitively expensive. The result has been a decline in crafting and makes it much more difficult for senior members of any fleet to help junior members.
Let me turn my attention to the doff system as this is the straw that broke the camel?s back for me. I strongly disapprove of the changes to crafting, but most of us put up with it. The decision to add incredibly high monetary inputs (dil) to the doff system has rendered the system useless. Before recruiting was free, now it costs 1000 (dil). Given that fleet base projects and now embassies require and obscene amount of doffs (e.g. tier iv tactical exercises requires 180doffs for a mere 1000xp). If we take the example in parentheses, most general recruiting missions give 1 green and 3 white doffs. Assuming all were security or tactical (which would never ever happen), the minimum cost is 60, 000 dil. Yes I am fully aware that tactical recruiting missions are available free of charge, but the time gate has been doubled.
This aspect of the doff mission is completely unacceptable.
You also made upgrading doffs way too expensive. For example:
Common doff reassignment: 600 dil (was 5)
Uncommon doff reassignment: 3000 dil (was 50)
Rare doff reassignment: 6000 dil (was 500)
Yeah,that's fair right? Especially since an input of 5 lower ranking doffs is required, and I might get something worthless like a bartender or a cook. I know the counter argument is that one can get very rare doffs exploration missions. There?s one problem with that argument. The doffs from exploration missions are less useful. None of the exploration mission doffs have resolve, which thanks to your planning, is a critical trait in many missions. The other disadvantage is those doffs are bound, so I can?t even trade them if I don?t like them.
Now I will address one of the most annoying insults to everyone?s intelligence you said in your post to the community. In one of your posts to the STO community, you said the following Mr. Stahl:
"This is in addition to the other rewards that STFs and Fleet Actions grant.
While this is still a change from Season 6, we hope that these new amounts will help the average player earn more Dilithium per day while maintaining the Dilithium that players who like to run STFs were receiving.
The additional Dilithium may impact the player-to-player Dilithium exchange rates in the future, but we would rather you were having fun in Season 7 than worrying about the economy. We have enough of that to deal with in the real world."
We know you aren't concerned about dil inflation given that the fleet projects cost incredible amounts of dil, and you have added a further dil sink, the fleet embassy, so please spare us the condescending talk of your "concern for dil prices." When you first introduced the exchange in Jan 2012, the dil/zen price was 450 per zen. Up until the launch of season 6, the price was steady between 250 and 300 dil. Following the launch of season 6, the dil exchange price was around 160. Currently the dil/zen is 143dil/ zen point. In fact I worked out the exact week when dil fell like a rock using excel and my own dil exchange history and determined that the price dropped by 50% within a week after the season 6 launch. (I wanted to share my data, but I apparently can't post images). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that projects with 200,000 dil are going to drive up the price of dil. The new fleet embassy will make this condition even worse.
You have made this game far too expensive to enjoy, and many in my fleet are considering quitting. In order to reduce the number who leave due to the incredible financial burden you have placed on my fleet members, my fleet will cease participating in your overly expensive fleet project/embassy system. We have decided that the costs far outweigh the benefits. We will cease parcipating in any type of fleet projects, if we play your game at all (and no trolls you can't haz (sic) my stuff) unless the doff mission returns to pre-season 7 conditions. We also want the dil paid out on STFs restored to pre season 7 levels. Sorry, for elite STFs, we are entitled to 1000 dil. As a gesture of good will, we would appreciate that you eliminate or reduce the unreplicable materials requirement for crafting. Given that the fleet base/embassy projects cost such a large amount of dil, there is no cause for concern regarding dil prices. Adding the dil tax on crafting and now doffs will do very little to keep the price of dil up (compared to the bases) and it simply makes PWE look greedy (which is why so many of us are angry, in case you haven?t noticed). We hope other fleets will make the wise decision and cease participating in fleet projects as well until the devs, PWE and its shareholders come to their senses. In addition, I have canceled my gold membership, and have no intention of subscribing until sanity returns
to PWE.
One warning to Mr. Stahl, the dev team, and the community managers about censorship. Should you feel the need to censor this post, because you can't stand to hear the truth, please be aware that the internet is a market place of ideas, and your forum isn't the only place online to post about Star Trek online. Please keep that in mind, as censorship only highlights the weakness of your position, especially if the post contains nothing in violation of your own forum rules (flaming, trolling, etc) If this post is censored it will demonstrate to everyone that you have no argument against what I have said.
Kind Regards,
Fleet Admiral Brady (Terran Empire Special Forces)
On behalf of my fleet "Terran Empire Special Forces" as well as any other like minded gamers, we are pleased to see your willingness to listen to your customers, and we certainly welcome your decision to restore dilithium (dil) to STFs as well as add dil to fleet missions. However, we think you can still do much better. Even with your compromise, you have taken far more from the customers than you have given, and we expect more out of you if you expect us to continue to participate in this game or support it financially.
When I started this game, crafting was free of any monetary input. Similar, the doff system was free to recruit, and had a nominal fee to upgrade. The idea was simple. It was a way for a player to "earn" something of value, instead of pulling out our credit cards. This is a feature in most MMORPGs whether the game is free to play or not. Since going Star Trek Online went free to play you have added unreplicable materials for 1000 dil., and the most expensive items (which are far from the best items in the game) are prohibitively expensive. The result has been a decline in crafting and makes it much more difficult for senior members of any fleet to help junior members.
Let me turn my attention to the doff system as this is the straw that broke the camel?s back for me. I strongly disapprove of the changes to crafting, but most of us put up with it. The decision to add incredibly high monetary inputs (dil) to the doff system has rendered the system useless. Before recruiting was free, now it costs 1000 (dil). Given that fleet base projects and now embassies require and obscene amount of doffs (e.g. tier iv tactical exercises requires 180doffs for a mere 1000xp). If we take the example in parentheses, most general recruiting missions give 1 green and 3 white doffs. Assuming all were security or tactical (which would never ever happen), the minimum cost is 60, 000 dil. Yes I am fully aware that tactical recruiting missions are available free of charge, but the time gate has been doubled.
This aspect of the doff mission is completely unacceptable.
You also made upgrading doffs way too expensive. For example:
Common doff reassignment: 600 dil (was 5)
Uncommon doff reassignment: 3000 dil (was 50)
Rare doff reassignment: 6000 dil (was 500)
Yeah,that's fair right? Especially since an input of 5 lower ranking doffs is required, and I might get something worthless like a bartender or a cook. I know the counter argument is that one can get very rare doffs exploration missions. There?s one problem with that argument. The doffs from exploration missions are less useful. None of the exploration mission doffs have resolve, which thanks to your planning, is a critical trait in many missions. The other disadvantage is those doffs are bound, so I can?t even trade them if I don?t like them.
Now I will address one of the most annoying insults to everyone?s intelligence you said in your post to the community. In one of your posts to the STO community, you said the following Mr. Stahl:
"This is in addition to the other rewards that STFs and Fleet Actions grant.
While this is still a change from Season 6, we hope that these new amounts will help the average player earn more Dilithium per day while maintaining the Dilithium that players who like to run STFs were receiving.
The additional Dilithium may impact the player-to-player Dilithium exchange rates in the future, but we would rather you were having fun in Season 7 than worrying about the economy. We have enough of that to deal with in the real world."
We know you aren't concerned about dil inflation given that the fleet projects cost incredible amounts of dil, and you have added a further dil sink, the fleet embassy, so please spare us the condescending talk of your "concern for dil prices." When you first introduced the exchange in Jan 2012, the dil/zen price was 450 per zen. Up until the launch of season 6, the price was steady between 250 and 300 dil. Following the launch of season 6, the dil exchange price was around 160. Currently the dil/zen is 143dil/ zen point. In fact I worked out the exact week when dil fell like a rock using excel and my own dil exchange history and determined that the price dropped by 50% within a week after the season 6 launch. (I wanted to share my data, but I apparently can't post images). It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that projects with 200,000 dil are going to drive up the price of dil. The new fleet embassy will make this condition even worse.
You have made this game far too expensive to enjoy, and many in my fleet are considering quitting. In order to reduce the number who leave due to the incredible financial burden you have placed on my fleet members, my fleet will cease participating in your overly expensive fleet project/embassy system. We have decided that the costs far outweigh the benefits. We will cease parcipating in any type of fleet projects, if we play your game at all (and no trolls you can't haz (sic) my stuff) unless the doff mission returns to pre-season 7 conditions. We also want the dil paid out on STFs restored to pre season 7 levels. Sorry, for elite STFs, we are entitled to 1000 dil. As a gesture of good will, we would appreciate that you eliminate or reduce the unreplicable materials requirement for crafting. Given that the fleet base/embassy projects cost such a large amount of dil, there is no cause for concern regarding dil prices. Adding the dil tax on crafting and now doffs will do very little to keep the price of dil up (compared to the bases) and it simply makes PWE look greedy (which is why so many of us are angry, in case you haven?t noticed). We hope other fleets will make the wise decision and cease participating in fleet projects as well until the devs, PWE and its shareholders come to their senses. In addition, I have canceled my gold membership, and have no intention of subscribing until sanity returns
to PWE.
One warning to Mr. Stahl, the dev team, and the community managers about censorship. Should you feel the need to censor this post, because you can't stand to hear the truth, please be aware that the internet is a market place of ideas, and your forum isn't the only place online to post about Star Trek online. Please keep that in mind, as censorship only highlights the weakness of your position, especially if the post contains nothing in violation of your own forum rules (flaming, trolling, etc) If this post is censored it will demonstrate to everyone that you have no argument against what I have said.
Kind Regards,
Fleet Admiral Brady (Terran Empire Special Forces)
Post edited by captainbrady on
0
Comments
Because of this, I didn't read your letter, therefore, I can't say whether I agree with you or not.
The Armada
Original join date: Feb 5, 2010
Twitter: @davejl_99, & @STO_BBArmada
There I changed it. Happy now?
I wouldn't be against a minor buff to the actual rewards IF a cap increase occured.
Also, there are MANY ways to get doffs outside of the Academy. You probably haven't been around long enough to see them. Or were too lazy.
For resolve doffs, just about any chain created after The 2800 gives resolve doffs. Officer exchanges on Bajor, Cardassia, and Ferasa, the new cat chain, the asylums on Bajor, Cardassia, and Ferasa...
And a fair share of lockbox stuff too, from my experience.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
I love how you go straight for ad homenem attacks. "OR are too lazy". Who do you think you are keyboard cowboy? Actually not that's not the case. I work full time and don't have time for a second unpaid job such as STO. I am well aware of the officer exchanges you have listed and I have certainly made use of them. In fact my ship is more or less parked in those sectors so I use them. My point is, there is no reason to justify a 12000%-1200% increase as I'm not getting 12000%-1200% more product. Also given the cost of fleet projects and the prevelence of doffs in those projects, the 1000 dil is a huge burden.
Related to the issue of "grinding" and STO becoming like a second job. The missions paying dil to meet the 8000 cap are fewer. We only recently had the dil on STFs restored. I have a limited amount of time I can spend reaching the cap and on most weekdays can't reach it anyway. Why is that? I have a real job and real life outside of STO.
Red Herring, dismissed out of hand.
Agreed with the op sentiments , but not on the above .
When I'll have the EXACT equivalent of drops & awards in Dil , EDC , Rare & Proto Tech from 2-4 hours of S.6 STF game play ... -- then I'll consider the "STF's restored" .
I'm not asking for "more" .
I'm asking for what was before , because you (Cryptic) have not given me any reason not to ask for that .
Those were the awards that YOU decided to give me in S.5 , per X amount of time spent in game doing Y amount of things at Z amount of difficulty .
Cryptic can giveth and Cryptic can taketh away ?
They are not the only ones .
I didn't know that! I stand corrected.
...
NO!
also :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x-ATlpqo1M&feature=related
Season 7 is a game killer. That's not hyperbole. It literally has killed the game for about half of us.
If you don't agree, then you may continue playing the now-empty servers all you want. You may continue paying money to a greedy company intentionally driving a game into the ground. Have fun! I can also offer to kick your crotch for the low low price of $5 per kick! Act now because next month it goes up to $20 for 2 kicks!
So, yeah. Have fun. The rest of us with actual mores and standards will not be with you.
This original post as well as so so many others (even those deleted/hidden by the forum mods) are quite appropriate. The devs are at such a disconnect with their playerbase that it has become catastrophic. I haven't logged in for days, and I normally play each of my 4 characters a little bit each day. I am not alone.
The discontent has grown so great I don't even think removing ALL of the patch and reverting to purely Season6 code would help. The damage is done. The last veil of legitimacy on the part of the game devs has been shed. They are PWE shills, nothing more.
I understand this is a business and I feel I've contributed a fair amount in the hopes of keeping it alive (as I am a huge star trek fan and deeply devoted to my fleet).
All that being said, I also have to express a fair amount of disappointment with season 7.
Dilithium sinks everywhere, grind quests in every corner and a smattering of busy-work on "New Romulus".
It is what it is, but where are the missions and truly unique end-game content? Honestly, where is this "fun" that people are supposed to have without worrying about the economy?
It seems to me (as apparently many in the community) that this season was essentially all about the economy and not really driven towards content.
My opinion would've been very different if there where another 4 or 5 missions added to the Romulan mission set leading to these changes (a unique item, wouldn't of hurt either), something for players to actually have "fun" in.
After the patch, I logged in to discover that the new content was a 3 minute cut-scene about New Romulus and then introduced to a dozen mini grind missions for marks that I need for yet another resource sink; everything else is a Ferengi quest by Cryptic but I'm not going to waste any more time complaining about that.
I'm unclear as to what, exactly, was intended for the benefit of players here in season 7... personally, my game-play was heavily struck down by all of the changes with little, really, in the way of content I can actually enjoy from everything I've seen (with the exception of the Embassy).
I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but season 7 sure doesnt look like it was designed from the ground up to be "fun". I speak for no one except myself.
Its worth noting that pre-Season 7, the daily steam users for STO were around 1 thousand, after Season 7 its about 3 thousand. Steam users don't represent the full playerbase, but if that shows a three-fold increase, then its reasonable to assume that - at least for now - Season 7 is not killing the game, and that the servers are far from empty. Facts > Hyperbole.
To nynik: at the start of every Season there is always an increase of people logging on to check out the changes,it doesn't mean that all those people will log on for a second or third time.And with the way things are going in this Season up till now (granted,the Season is still young) it's not looking good.
We have seen how big changes to a game can drive people away for good,and lets face it,the changes in how we earn and spend our Dilithium are changes that affect all of us in a big way.People are now forced to play the game in ways Cryptic wants us to play,play the content they want us to play.And it leaves not a whole lot of time to have fun playing the content we enjoy in ways we enjoy.That's the main thing I hear people complain about: I don't have fun playing the game anymore,it's a second job with poor pay.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Yes, indeed! If only you have facts relevant to the topic. See carcharodon1975's response for more specifics. Steam stats don't amount to a hill of beans, really.
The Steamrunner class escort is almost certainly skewing these results given that its probably the best pure escort since the bug ship.
IMHO the doff system is partially wrecked.
I wont be spending all that Dili on making inferior doffs better and i wont do the doff-mission > General recruitment < where you get the doff pack as it costs 1000 dili
The rest of the system seems to be working as it used too, so i'll stick to the no-dili-sinkhole missions and have fun with the other parts of the game
I have a day job too and that leaves me only a few hours to play during weekdays and even if i had unlimited time, the refinement cap is still 8000 each day.
For now i will keep my Dili and see what the devs do in the next few months.
Long live the Empire
Radaki
LOL for the Adam Sandler reference. You made me smile.
I said that because I know -exactly- how much effort it takes to get a doff mission started.
Virtually none at all.
Granted, FINDING the missions isn't a cakewalk, but all you need is about 100k EC (for commodities), a crapton of colonists, and some luck with the mission list to finish a colony chain. Which in turn gives all the purples you can wish for, which in turn provide a LOT of whites.
And your post was practically a written confession. You are well aware of these methods of getting good doffs, yet you still cry about the doffgrinder. I wonder why... :rolleyes:
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
They're hardly empty. It's not my fault you're going into empty instances. :P
As has been stated in above posts, the Steam count doesn't mean ANYTHING. But yeah, I agree that the servers are far from empty, as I said above.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
This is a game forum. 95% of posts are negative regardless of the games situation. Game forums are where people come to ***** and complain.
Right now I'm looking at a ESD packed full of ships. Ad I haven't been able to get in a damn tholian alert all day because too many people are queueing into the zone(fix it cryptic, this has been a problem with alert for a while now)
As to the OPs post, the dilithium requirement is small and this post is ridiculous, it takes 10 minutes to earn 1k dilithium
Spoken like a PWE sock account. Give my regards to your supervisor.
I'm missing a paycheck then. Also, you're pathetic. Check my posting history and you'll see I was ranting over dilithium reductions to STFs a couple days ago.
Ah argumentum ad hominem now is it? That's the lamest yet. You're a write off, dismissed out of hand.
Don't forget EC from item drops too, its the backbone of EC economy in STO.
It is a game killer. Before S7 I was spending time in this game, now I log in to refine stockpiled dil and check if anything changed for better. When I run out of unrefined dil, I will make a decision if I am to stay or just find another game.
Really? Before S7 almost every sector block had 2 or 3 instances, now there are single ones, with rarely more than 40 players.
As for "ESD packed full of ships" - this is caused more be DS9's death as social zone than anything else.
pwebranflakes: this system is currently in place and working the way it should.
moradum: I got banned for saying "I started my day with cutting off 3 MM off of the bottom of my cabinet"
Careful devs, trolls and socks, this post contains facts.
You're not even good at this. Have fun.
The rep system is, to say the least, a pain in the posterior. Huge timesink and Dilithium sink.
Most MMOs have reputation as a passive gain, generated through stuff you're having some fun with anyway. Instead Cryp have gone the route of overly complicating it.
Before S7 I'd pretty much stopped playing again. I started S7 and within a few days I find myself at the stage of not bothering to logon most days as it is simply far too much hassle to get anything done.
Projects that last days (and thus stymie my progress) are not a good way to get people repeat playing.
And nerfing the rewards on ESTFs? Why?? We used to get: an Item (random from table but including the chance of mkXII drop), dilithium (a decent amount, I could actually generate my daily amount in the playtime I have available), tokens of some cumulative value....oh and a lockbox but lets not get into those eh?
Now we get........Marks, a little Dilithium and a single collectible token. And that's only on ESTF, normals get no token.
The overall reward against time formula is now completely stuffed. So it's no longer worth putting my time into it.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.