Playing about the same amount time wise - I do find though that I've shelved two of my alts for the time being and am concentrating on progressing my main and my Tac alt atm.
Fleet is a little less active, but that's more due to the fact we like to cross faction team and do private PvP matches, which is impossible with the private queue system offline. The Starbase and Embassy project progression is actually moving a bit faster now that you only need common department specific Doffs across the board instead of job specific doffs now.
Like anything new, we're adjusting to the changes and finding ways to still max out returns with minimum grind where possible. I think they did go a bit overboard with the amount of new resource sinks in the game - but they have announced further changes coming Friday 11/30/12, that'll help counteract that a bit more.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 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..."
You must not have much experience in online gaming forums. Haters will troll the forum for months after they've "stopped playing". Season 7 just isn't that bad, regardless of how much some people want to pretend otherwise.
And you also must not have much experience in online gaming forums, to think that it's just haters who troll the forums. "Defenders", "Fans" and the "propaganda mungers":P, they too troll the forums, saying everything is great, no issues, "all the time".
Season 7 just is that bad, regardless of how much some people "including Cryptic", want to pretend otherwise.
Straight from the mouth of one of the leaders of the CDF - "I tell you what, Haven't spent any money either - I'm a lousy freeloader" - Jonsills 17/12/2014
I'm playing a lot less, and when I do I'm not really having much fun to speak of, just grinding rep or dil.
Our small fleet has come to a screeching halt on the base, if we even bother to complete enough projects to finish at Tier 2 I'll be surprised. With all the money grabbing and continued lack of development effort given to the KDF few players in our fleet feel any real motivation, we're just burned out.
I don't have any interest in any other online games, so I guess I should be glad I have more free time. :rolleyes:
I'm playing more, craving every chance I get to get into game. But, that mainly just coincides with the fact that season 7 came out around the same time a multi-year burnout on all things Trek ended and I came back to the game for the first time since launch. So, I really don't count.
Started to play with the rep system again durng the Thanksgiving holliday - I am glad they did reduce the timer per project, yet I still say the rep system is not my cup of tea.
I did get the chance to play with many of my low alts, mainly gearing up for the upcoming FE Replay event for the entire month of December. So due to the FE Replay event I've been logging on almost daily, near typical self.
However; prior to the FE Replay December annoucement, I barely logged on - maybe twice a week for about 30minutes.
I am having severe issues with obtaining Fleet Marks, which is the number one concern of mine next to the Dilithium shortage.
So I would say for the month of December expect to see me on a regular daily basis - but after that I will probably go back to twice a week for 30minutes.
on average about the same. i was not playing that much pre season 7 so its certainly gone up in the last month but on average i would say its all roughly the same as I usually do.
Honest answer, I log in more, but play a bit less.
Most of my playtime is spent in Infected Space Elite or Starbase 24, getting my hands on Omega Marks/gear (respectively) and dilithium (both). The rest is running my KDF toons. I'm finally leveling my KDF Lib Borg that I rolled after I went LTS, plus my other two already cap'd toons. This is almost entirely DOffing for Contraband, though, as I am trying to build a reserve of dil for Mk XII ground gear at the end of the Rep tunnel for five toons. I've got enough to fully outfit one toon and get one piece on another. I've got a ways to go. I'll probably bite the bullet and cash in my stipend next month to buffer it. Here's whatever's in the Winter Event strengthens the value of Zen some before then. >_<
I log in as much as before, which is usually twice a day, mostly for doffs and such, but when it comes to play time I definitely spend less.
It's just like I've lost all the incentive to play. Up until this point I wasn't even against any grind, as I've played the same six STFs over and over for both loot and dilithium. Now I've got two mark currencies to worry about in addition to dilithium, which completely put me off track.
I tend to advance all of my six characters at the same pace, without focusing on only the main or something, so I think this was the major blow for me, as I can't do it anymore without excessive grinding. And in the end, it struck me - I'm not having fun anymore. I'm being forced to play specific content for specific rewards, which I can't ignore as it's the only way to progress the "endgame" content. At least previously I could do certain missions and be rewarded with universal across the board dilithium ore. Now it seems we're going back to pre-S5 status, with more and more artificial currencies being introduced. For my playtime I need to choose - do I want the dilithium, or do I want the marks? Or perhaps CXP? And what about EC? As commodity cost seem to increase and my bank reserves are dropping quite significantly recently.
Add to that the fact that private challenges are off, which basically killed all the STF games aside from perhaps Infected (which people still tend to fail at... how do you do that?!?!), and that the new S7 "content" is basically a new system, while the actual missions are either "press F to collect stuff" or some easy and dumb team based space pew pew pew - none of which reward any amount of dilithium...
inb4 "can I haz ur stuff", I think I just had enough. People complain that their fleets are dead, and rightfully so - with such drastic changes most projects are on a hold. Our KDF fleet, which already is a joint venture of two different FED fleets, is practically dead, as I haven't seen anyone providing even a small amount of dilithium for any projects for several days now - everything goes for themselves and their alts. "Discouraging" is a mild way to put it.
Perhaps things will change once I eventually reach reputation T5, so I can ignore all the grind content and turn everything for dilithium (which seem fair - 50 Marks = 500 dilith ore), but that's assuming I'll be willing to force myself through all the romulan stuff for more than a week...
Seriously, Cryptic - less gimmicks and systems (with even more bugs), and more variety of things to do - this should be your goal for S8, not yet another short term excuse to suck money out of diminishing playerbase.
YES! MUCH LESS! :mad:
spent before sometimes a half day in sto - now i log in a few times and log out fast again.
fleet(base) is dead.
lost fun in sto at the moment.
season 7 is an epic fail!
never thought i would say this, but i started already to play other games.
before there are no big changes i save my time for other games and would never spend a buck for this game again!
I dont bother with STO anymore...........Lineage II is getting my attention at this time, enjoying the many many many many quests, such a change from the chore that STO has tunred into with S7.....fun Cryptic.....a game should be fun to play, not a chore.
I too play far less than before,and getting people to join a small fleet is just a waste of time,no one is willing to contribute or even run a few missions to get Fleet marks.It's discouraging to say the least.
But why are we even posting this on the forums,we all know they don't read this till after their 'metrics' show something is wrong.Momma Gump was right...stupid is as stupid does....and at Cryptic they are plenty stupid.
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
The grind cliff is so high I actually can't be bothered to log in. Most of my characters are living off dilithium earned by cashing in my S6 STF gear.
Once the OM and RM grind is gone, the pressure will be less, but having them all blob at day zero turned this game from fun and progression into a chore.
"Have you remembered to run your RM projects"
"Have you remembered to buy regenerators"
"Did you get all the dilithium you need?"
"Did you get fleet marks for the base?"
"Did you set the DoFF's moving?"
"Don't forget the embassy projects"
Yeah think i'll just watch some You Tube for a bit longer before logging in. (currently been stalling playing for 3 hours at time of typing this)
Although im just playing for 3 weeks now i must say i was pretty sad seeing that sto goes the same as all the other mmos by making it a farm and grind game.
Maybe the probekt costs of the starbase should factor in the number of players in a fleet or something like that. We are like 3 people and needing like 200k dili here and 900 fleet marks there is just well practically unreachable.
My playtime is also way down. I wasn't really a huge grinder to begin with, once I got my STF sets I stopped running them on those toons. But there was always an amount of "work" to do to gear my characters that I don't really bother with anymore.
My solo base is dead in the water, which may be what Cryptic wanted.
In other words, the higher prices, fewer rewards, and more grind mostly forced me out.
As for the reputation system, the design actually makes a lot of sense objectively but the truth is it's not fun to grind. I literally fell asleep during a Tau Dewa Sector Patrol.
I am not sure what they could do to fix this. I've been thinking of writing a post on how S7's design is a wild miss in so many different areas but I can't even be arsed to do that. Basically, this is what happens when someone designs a game they don't actually play. It's pretty telling that almost none of the development team play STO in their off hours like we do (doffing and having 1 max rank toon doesn't count).
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it! No, seriously! ...Why are you laughing so hard?
I log-in more, since i have more free time this month, but play less and i'm more often afk.
I also play less the content I enjoy, I have to admit that the random loot at the end of stf was a lot more engaging than a rep system with guaranteed rewards I don't really need or want. I can't even sell them on the exchange. I've been playing my STFs for Mk XII drops since I had all my sets on my two main characters but now they're gone, and my reason to play STFs too.
I like challenging content, though, and I enjoy it a lot but I feel pretty alone in this case and it's really a pain to set up a team for the new STFs or for the old IGE or CGE. That's even more discouraging, people are focusing only on easy TRIBBLE I don't enjoy at all. All good STF players are gone, playing only infected space like robots.
Doffing (which used to be half of my play time) was my favourite activity and it's dead now. Blue and purple doffs have absolutely no market value and no use except crafting Mk X blue trash equipement, they have no use in the starbase systems anymore, and are a complete waste of time since the rewards aren't worth it at all. When I do such an activity requiring a lot of planning, a lot of time, knowledge, and a lot of ressources, I expect a high ROI on my time (at the very least 2-3M EC a day, which is obviously not possible anymore with season 7).
I really liked playing for energy credits and hate playing for dilithium. I don't like having a glass ceiling above me, preventing me to do whatever i want to do no matter how good i am or what i do, and that's what season 7 is about, with all the good rewards gone in the dilithium stores (there's a refinement cap and i can't even earn dilithium with the regular exchange too). All the good stuff used to be on the exchange and that was a great incentive to play smartly the game because i could achieve my goals as fast as i wanted to. Now I have to wait and farm dil with hard limits. And I don't enjoy hard limits at all.
So now i'm forced to play content I don't enjoy much, I pvp a bit more but pugs are worse than ever. I like the new content, especially mine trap and new romulus but once you've done this 10-15 times it's a bit repetitive, and since 20 man instances can't be full of good player you know, you have to have very low expectations. Again no thrill and no challenge.
So, with:
- extrelemy low and easy requirements to the rep system, which isn't engaging at all considering i don't need anything more
- a dead doff system
- no one willing to play interesting content
- people busy farming and using bugs in fleet actions (thank you, multiple commander boffs)
- insane collective "starbase" and "embassy" project requirement no one is willing to fill anymore, after 5 months to play again and again the same stupid instances for fleetmakrs
- hard ceilings everywhere and no incentive to be a good player
Which is weird as I use to play daily and at the weekend for hours on end.
But I wouldn't put that down just to S7.
I guess its just a general disconnect as to the path this game is taking.
I have a real world job and don't need to do another one in my free time.
I still log on and dabble in the rep system but its half hearted at best.
The only things I still enjoy is the odd session blowing enemies up which never gets old :-) the foundry and its missions and catching up with fleets and friends.
When the foundry editor is back up I will be on more as I want to get some of my missions finished off at last
Until the direction of the game shifts to story above grind this cash hamster is laying off the hamster wheel.
Since update there is more to do. Basic hours have increased, lots of just logging in checking doffs and reputation projects. So much in the Romulan zone makes it hard to get bored!
I should add that I was away for about a year doing some 'mining' in another space MMO, and am only back since October...but I like it and am engaged.
i too play less, as i find the option of loggin in and farming all day less inviting..
being a fleet admiral in one of the larger more active fleets, i see a large decline in the amount of users online.. peeps who used to be there all the time are currently logging in less and less. i also feel that quea times have increased (meaning less peeps in them).
i logged in at least once a day in season 6. i log in every couple of days now..
I am recently returning from a several month hiatus. I lurk the forums and come back to check out the new changes as each season is implemented.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered the ?Hello Kitty Online? bunny chasing and water sampling with no new content for the KDF. Honestly, you would think a game designer would strive for some kind of challenging content for their player base and at least attempt balanced factions.
Anyway, I notice this has been a recurring theme with me. I leave after the annual celebration (April) and return with the latest implementation at the end of the year (October). Judging by bunny chasing, this year won?t be any different.
Comments
When a game becomes a job, it is no longer fun to play. I therefore only do the minimum in sto and go have fun in other games....
Fleet is a little less active, but that's more due to the fact we like to cross faction team and do private PvP matches, which is impossible with the private queue system offline. The Starbase and Embassy project progression is actually moving a bit faster now that you only need common department specific Doffs across the board instead of job specific doffs now.
Like anything new, we're adjusting to the changes and finding ways to still max out returns with minimum grind where possible. I think they did go a bit overboard with the amount of new resource sinks in the game - but they have announced further changes coming Friday 11/30/12, that'll help counteract that a bit more.
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..."
And you also must not have much experience in online gaming forums, to think that it's just haters who troll the forums. "Defenders", "Fans" and the "propaganda mungers":P, they too troll the forums, saying everything is great, no issues, "all the time".
Season 7 just is that bad, regardless of how much some people "including Cryptic", want to pretend otherwise.
Our small fleet has come to a screeching halt on the base, if we even bother to complete enough projects to finish at Tier 2 I'll be surprised. With all the money grabbing and continued lack of development effort given to the KDF few players in our fleet feel any real motivation, we're just burned out.
I don't have any interest in any other online games, so I guess I should be glad I have more free time. :rolleyes:
the other 10% is minimum grind to keep things ticking over.
gg Cryptic.
Epic Fail Season 7.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
I did get the chance to play with many of my low alts, mainly gearing up for the upcoming FE Replay event for the entire month of December. So due to the FE Replay event I've been logging on almost daily, near typical self.
However; prior to the FE Replay December annoucement, I barely logged on - maybe twice a week for about 30minutes.
I am having severe issues with obtaining Fleet Marks, which is the number one concern of mine next to the Dilithium shortage.
So I would say for the month of December expect to see me on a regular daily basis - but after that I will probably go back to twice a week for 30minutes.
Most of my playtime is spent in Infected Space Elite or Starbase 24, getting my hands on Omega Marks/gear (respectively) and dilithium (both). The rest is running my KDF toons. I'm finally leveling my KDF Lib Borg that I rolled after I went LTS, plus my other two already cap'd toons. This is almost entirely DOffing for Contraband, though, as I am trying to build a reserve of dil for Mk XII ground gear at the end of the Rep tunnel for five toons. I've got enough to fully outfit one toon and get one piece on another. I've got a ways to go. I'll probably bite the bullet and cash in my stipend next month to buffer it. Here's whatever's in the Winter Event strengthens the value of Zen some before then. >_<
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
It's just like I've lost all the incentive to play. Up until this point I wasn't even against any grind, as I've played the same six STFs over and over for both loot and dilithium. Now I've got two mark currencies to worry about in addition to dilithium, which completely put me off track.
I tend to advance all of my six characters at the same pace, without focusing on only the main or something, so I think this was the major blow for me, as I can't do it anymore without excessive grinding. And in the end, it struck me - I'm not having fun anymore. I'm being forced to play specific content for specific rewards, which I can't ignore as it's the only way to progress the "endgame" content. At least previously I could do certain missions and be rewarded with universal across the board dilithium ore. Now it seems we're going back to pre-S5 status, with more and more artificial currencies being introduced. For my playtime I need to choose - do I want the dilithium, or do I want the marks? Or perhaps CXP? And what about EC? As commodity cost seem to increase and my bank reserves are dropping quite significantly recently.
Add to that the fact that private challenges are off, which basically killed all the STF games aside from perhaps Infected (which people still tend to fail at... how do you do that?!?!), and that the new S7 "content" is basically a new system, while the actual missions are either "press F to collect stuff" or some easy and dumb team based space pew pew pew - none of which reward any amount of dilithium...
inb4 "can I haz ur stuff", I think I just had enough. People complain that their fleets are dead, and rightfully so - with such drastic changes most projects are on a hold. Our KDF fleet, which already is a joint venture of two different FED fleets, is practically dead, as I haven't seen anyone providing even a small amount of dilithium for any projects for several days now - everything goes for themselves and their alts. "Discouraging" is a mild way to put it.
Perhaps things will change once I eventually reach reputation T5, so I can ignore all the grind content and turn everything for dilithium (which seem fair - 50 Marks = 500 dilith ore), but that's assuming I'll be willing to force myself through all the romulan stuff for more than a week...
Seriously, Cryptic - less gimmicks and systems (with even more bugs), and more variety of things to do - this should be your goal for S8, not yet another short term excuse to suck money out of diminishing playerbase.
spent before sometimes a half day in sto - now i log in a few times and log out fast again.
fleet(base) is dead.
lost fun in sto at the moment.
season 7 is an epic fail!
never thought i would say this, but i started already to play other games.
before there are no big changes i save my time for other games and would never spend a buck for this game again!
But why are we even posting this on the forums,we all know they don't read this till after their 'metrics' show something is wrong.Momma Gump was right...stupid is as stupid does....and at Cryptic they are plenty stupid.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
The grind cliff is so high I actually can't be bothered to log in. Most of my characters are living off dilithium earned by cashing in my S6 STF gear.
Once the OM and RM grind is gone, the pressure will be less, but having them all blob at day zero turned this game from fun and progression into a chore.
"Have you remembered to run your RM projects"
"Have you remembered to buy regenerators"
"Did you get all the dilithium you need?"
"Did you get fleet marks for the base?"
"Did you set the DoFF's moving?"
"Don't forget the embassy projects"
Yeah think i'll just watch some You Tube for a bit longer before logging in. (currently been stalling playing for 3 hours at time of typing this)
Maybe the probekt costs of the starbase should factor in the number of players in a fleet or something like that. We are like 3 people and needing like 200k dili here and 900 fleet marks there is just well practically unreachable.
To me its just bad game design
My solo base is dead in the water, which may be what Cryptic wanted.
In other words, the higher prices, fewer rewards, and more grind mostly forced me out.
As for the reputation system, the design actually makes a lot of sense objectively but the truth is it's not fun to grind. I literally fell asleep during a Tau Dewa Sector Patrol.
I am not sure what they could do to fix this. I've been thinking of writing a post on how S7's design is a wild miss in so many different areas but I can't even be arsed to do that. Basically, this is what happens when someone designs a game they don't actually play. It's pretty telling that almost none of the development team play STO in their off hours like we do (doffing and having 1 max rank toon doesn't count).
take care of DOFF's,
then check if the reputation projects on my 2 toons which i decided to involve in this grind are running,
if not i grind the needed marks by doing an STF or the Tau Dewa patrol mission.
i check the fleet, if there is something i could contribute, i do it, although i leave at least 50% Dill for myself,
then, if i have time i enjoy a little PVP
looking forward to enjoy the foundry when the missions are fixed..
once in a time i check on my newer toons (lvl 24 and 27 in the KDF) and go through a mission.. but not very often.
i do need average 3 to 4 hours for this, having 12 toons.. trying to manage the 7 max'd out KDF toons i do care about.
i do not really care about Omega reputation, cause i already have my MK XI sets and the new bonuses are somehing i do not need for my playstyle.
The Romulan reputation is interesting, looking forward to try to implement the Romulan gear into my tactics.
All the Dill i have left after feeding the fleet gets converted to Zen, as i hope the prize will rise someday..
See.. now i believe this because the game seems busier... but it seems my fleet is much less active...not good.
I also play less the content I enjoy, I have to admit that the random loot at the end of stf was a lot more engaging than a rep system with guaranteed rewards I don't really need or want. I can't even sell them on the exchange. I've been playing my STFs for Mk XII drops since I had all my sets on my two main characters but now they're gone, and my reason to play STFs too.
I like challenging content, though, and I enjoy it a lot but I feel pretty alone in this case and it's really a pain to set up a team for the new STFs or for the old IGE or CGE. That's even more discouraging, people are focusing only on easy TRIBBLE I don't enjoy at all. All good STF players are gone, playing only infected space like robots.
Doffing (which used to be half of my play time) was my favourite activity and it's dead now. Blue and purple doffs have absolutely no market value and no use except crafting Mk X blue trash equipement, they have no use in the starbase systems anymore, and are a complete waste of time since the rewards aren't worth it at all. When I do such an activity requiring a lot of planning, a lot of time, knowledge, and a lot of ressources, I expect a high ROI on my time (at the very least 2-3M EC a day, which is obviously not possible anymore with season 7).
I really liked playing for energy credits and hate playing for dilithium. I don't like having a glass ceiling above me, preventing me to do whatever i want to do no matter how good i am or what i do, and that's what season 7 is about, with all the good rewards gone in the dilithium stores (there's a refinement cap and i can't even earn dilithium with the regular exchange too). All the good stuff used to be on the exchange and that was a great incentive to play smartly the game because i could achieve my goals as fast as i wanted to. Now I have to wait and farm dil with hard limits. And I don't enjoy hard limits at all.
So now i'm forced to play content I don't enjoy much, I pvp a bit more but pugs are worse than ever. I like the new content, especially mine trap and new romulus but once you've done this 10-15 times it's a bit repetitive, and since 20 man instances can't be full of good player you know, you have to have very low expectations. Again no thrill and no challenge.
So, with:
- extrelemy low and easy requirements to the rep system, which isn't engaging at all considering i don't need anything more
- a dead doff system
- no one willing to play interesting content
- people busy farming and using bugs in fleet actions (thank you, multiple commander boffs)
- insane collective "starbase" and "embassy" project requirement no one is willing to fill anymore, after 5 months to play again and again the same stupid instances for fleetmakrs
- hard ceilings everywhere and no incentive to be a good player
It's a bit hard to feel committed to the game.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Which is weird as I use to play daily and at the weekend for hours on end.
But I wouldn't put that down just to S7.
I guess its just a general disconnect as to the path this game is taking.
I have a real world job and don't need to do another one in my free time.
I still log on and dabble in the rep system but its half hearted at best.
The only things I still enjoy is the odd session blowing enemies up which never gets old :-) the foundry and its missions and catching up with fleets and friends.
When the foundry editor is back up I will be on more as I want to get some of my missions finished off at last
Until the direction of the game shifts to story above grind this cash hamster is laying off the hamster wheel.
I should add that I was away for about a year doing some 'mining' in another space MMO, and am only back since October...but I like it and am engaged.
BSG-Benne Gesserit Consortium
I logged for 10 minutes today, that was it and even then it was just to see how far the Dilithium rate had fallen.
What an awful failure for Cryptic this has become.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
being a fleet admiral in one of the larger more active fleets, i see a large decline in the amount of users online.. peeps who used to be there all the time are currently logging in less and less. i also feel that quea times have increased (meaning less peeps in them).
i logged in at least once a day in season 6. i log in every couple of days now..
Imagine my surprise when I discovered the ?Hello Kitty Online? bunny chasing and water sampling with no new content for the KDF. Honestly, you would think a game designer would strive for some kind of challenging content for their player base and at least attempt balanced factions.
Anyway, I notice this has been a recurring theme with me. I leave after the annual celebration (April) and return with the latest implementation at the end of the year (October). Judging by bunny chasing, this year won?t be any different.
After: Log in with 1 char, do epohh quests. Play maybe 1 stf. Save up 1000 dil.
Average playtime stayed the same.