Some people here want to compromise; I say no.
IOR's rewarded 50 FM and 960 dilithium for 15 minutes of gameplay.
Now F-Missions reward 0 FM and 630 dilithium for 15 minutes of gamplay.
dastahl stated in his post:
Hopefully this post helps to explain our position and why we continue to make the decisions we do. We want Fleet Progression to be a reward for Fleet Gameplay. We want players to earn more Dilithium. We want Foundry missions to have useful rewards. We want small Fleets to only be limited by group effort, not by artificial caps on progress.
We will continue to make progress towards those goals and welcome your feedback. Nothing is every "final" in MMOs, and your constructive comments are always valued.
It is not about what they want - it is about what we, the customers, want. The truth is that all they want is more money, but instead of earning it the right way - which is by creating new exciting content that we'd like and would pay for; they're just making it more difficult to obtain the existing (and rather dull) content they already created in S6.
If you wanted players to earn more dilithium and have f-missions with useful rewards; then why did you remove FM and reduce dilithium as rewards for f-missions?!?
Keep the customers happy; happy customers keep paying.
Make the customers unhappy; unhappy customers go somewhere else.
Here is what will keep us happy:
Forget the metrics that warn you that your year old additions to the game might be achieved this year by many gamers who worked diligently to obtain them; and instead concentrate on creating new missions and new content for us.
Eliminate the different marks - take the Omega/Romulan/FM and make just one mark.
Reduce the grind! Increase the fun! Every mission, including the episodes should earn marks and dilithium. You've already created some awesome missions - which can be played by a fleet (that's what my fleet does) - if you truly want us to have more and less grind - give us marks/dilithium for completing them.
In short - give us more across the game grid.
We are your customers. We are the ones spending our money for the product you produce. We are not metrics.
Improve the product and improve your income.
57. Good customers are as rare as latinum; treasure them.
58. There is no substitute for success.
89. Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits.
There are Four Lights... say no to ARCFleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
I could actually get behind the idea of a universal "Mark" system vs having three different marks we have to somehow earn. Marks and dill are amazingly hard to get vs the amount I have to spend to get anywhere in the game. Hardly any new content so to me the only goal is to grind, grind,grind in hopes I can advance my fleet and get the best of the best stuff for myself in return, just to get better at PVE's.
I understand the logic behind not wanting to limit the progression of smaller fleets, but personally I think there is/was a much better way this could have been done.
Starbases are huge and require a lot of personnel to run/maintain so those are perfect for the larger fleets. However, a huge starbase isn't logical for smaller groups or in this case fleets. The simplest solution would be to expand the current Fleetbase system to include a "fleet outpost".
Are you referring to the aesthetics of the starbase only? or would the personal equipment/ ships and such that a small fleet could attain be likewise limited? I could see it if reducing the grandeur reduced the building costs for small fleets as you are suggesting but I can not see it if the small fleets do not get the same access to good ships and such. After all, the Enterprise was the flagship, yet worked alone mostly rather than at the head of a huge fleet of ships.
Another point is that even huge fleets have empty halls in their starbases for the most part right now... except the same number of random wandering NPCs that the small fleets have on their bases. The granduer of the current bases seems out of place on BOTH large and small fleets. How many people hang out on their base at ALL? I bet there are people who would like to have some fresh reasons to though. Like increasing the Off of the Watch FM reward.
I think your missing the basic point, cryptic have had to increase the amount of Dilithium Ore obtainable, due to the increase in huge amounts of things to spend it on, that said, this kind of rampant escalation will not work.
I can spend my Dil on buying zen, fleet gear, stf gear, rom gear, embassy gear, starbase projects, embassy projects. You can earn unlimited amounts of Dil ore a day, but only refine 8K, thats the problem with dil. I had been in the situation before of having 3 days worth ore in stock waiting to refine it, so I didn't bother earning any, there was no point.
for example: the current 6 projects (tier 3 SB, tier 0 Em) that need Dil require at total of 1.2M dil, which takes 125 player days to refine.
End result, by handing out more Dil ore, nothing will change: restricting fleet marks, SB & Em projects will slow up even more.
I won't be playing foundry missions any more, I don't need the "bonus" dil.
its just taken 1 and a half hours to make 50 fleet marks kdf side i like doing other stuff but its a waste of time Queing for fleet mark missions when im on KDF it takes about 15-20 mins sat doing nothing because no one wants to do a mission for 17 marks. its not worth my time if somethings not done soon i'm gone.
if it takes 15-20 mins of Queing at weekend whats it going to be like during the week 30-40 mins if i'm lucky.
COMPUTER GAMES ARE MEANT TO BE FUN NOT JUST SAT THERE HOPING OTHER PEOPLE Q FOR A MISSION WITH A LOW AMOUNT OF REWARD. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
still say cryptic are fools.
I tried to do some fleet missions. I mean really tried to grind a few, but their so bad, take so long, then to see the measly payout you get for all that time and effort. As he said above, queuing on the KDF side takes a long, long time.
Their not fools, but they seem misguided in their assumption that the players are just going to roll over and be driven around our game like a kiddie rollercoaster.((I say 'our' because we're the ones dropping money in their pockets.))
So far we've been good and kept our grievances on this forum. I wonder what would happen if the rest of the interweb started hearing how a game designer was trying to hold its player base over a barrel...
I posted the following earlier but it got drowned in the Bile River.
Nice. Very smooth. Way to get your point across.
Thought you were better.
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 think putting back fm wouldnt change anything right now. this was just the last drop.
the real problems are laying much deeper - in my opinion they are:
- massive grinding
- very poor designed and boring repetitive missions/events
- reuse/copy-paste of (already bugged) code and selling this as something new
- nerfing of things we like(d)
- afk-leechers in stf/fleet events - and to know that cryptic knows and just ignores it
- announcing amazing, fantastic and big new content and delivering something unfinished, untestet, economy-breaking that isnt fun to play
- understanding new content as small modifications in: running around and klicking on things or flying around and firing on things (and now - brand new - running around and firing on things. i think you got the point.)
- unable to deliver fixes for game-breaking things in time
And even though i can no longer belive a single word one "special" person here is saying that maybe or maybe not
will be happen in the future (hi dan 'i know something but i wont tell' stahl - no offense) - i truly believe that with each patch constantly
breaking more things than fixing is not their intention. so something must be going badly wrong internally or - they just have
no idea what they are doing. i dont like both options.
i have really no idea what we can hope for:
that cbs pulls the plug because they have to protect their ip from further harm
or a chinese phone call saying: why u not making money?
Bugs are a major problem. Especially in their highly touted Tau Dewa sector, where even the red alerts are broken.
Half the time missions don't give you the rewards their supposed to, and the rewards from the missions that happen to work are bread crumbs to the next measly payout. And stale bread crumbs at that...
There are major bugs that have been around since beta that players have incorporated into their game! How bad is it when you know you have a bug you have to plan your characters development around?
I don't think they realized the depth of a Star Trek fans dedication. Maybe they thought we were typical MMO players that just wanted to be driven around in their MMO world. This thread is the beginning of a message they need to hear. One they should have picked up on after the last debacle they tried, yanking dilithium out of STFs.
A large amount of great ideas have been put forth in this thread, but the one overriding fact is...
i think putting back fm wouldnt change anything right now. this was just the last drop.
the real problems are laying much deeper - in my opinion they are:
- massive grinding
- very poor designed and boring repetitive missions/events
- reuse/copy-paste of (already bugged) code and selling this as something new
- nerfing of things we like(d)
- afk-leechers in stf/fleet events - and to know that cryptic knows and just ignores it
- announcing amazing, fantastic and big new content and delivering something unfinished, untestet, economy-breaking that isnt fun to play
- understanding new content as small modifications in: running around and klicking on things or flying around and firing on things (and now - brand new - running around and firing on things. i think you got the point.)
- unable to deliver fixes for game-breaking things in time
And even though i can no longer belive a single word one "special" person here is saying that maybe or maybe not
will be happen in the future (hi dan 'i know something but i wont tell' stahl - no offense) - i truly believe that with each patch constantly
breaking more things than fixing is not their intention. so something must be going badly wrong internally or - they just have
no idea what they are doing. i dont like both options.
i have really no idea what we can hope for:
that cbs pulls the plug because they have to protect their ip from further harm
or a chinese phone call saying: why u not making money?
Very well put Buzz - these are among the many issues that concern me.
STO may be free-to-play but things like Fleets represent enormous amounts of investment in terms of time and/or money and the players investing their energy in creating these Fleets want STO to be around for a long time - we all do.
Cryptic's constant push to dazzle lapsed and potential players with shiny but insubstantial content is causing growing resentment amongst existing players (the ones that pay their salaries) and is constantly introducing new bugs and issues whilst old ones remain unresolved.
PWE may want to sacrifice long-term sustainability for short term profit, but as customers, that's not what *we* want - it's about time we hammered that message home.
I quit a game that i played for 3 years because all i did was grind and never had any fun.I look back now and see it was the best thing i did saves me alot of money and time. I see this game dieing because to much grinding at least 50% of the grinding should be removed.How many people can come on here and not have to grinded if you dont you get kick out of your fleet. Well in the next year a couple of big games are coming out this game will loose over over 50% of its players if they dont get less grinding in it so people can have some free time to have fun in it.
STO may be free-to-play but things like Fleets represent enormous amounts of investment in terms of time and/or money and the players investing their energy in creating these Fleets want STO to be around for a long time - we all do.
Let's put some numbers to this. The amount of dilithium to build a full T3 starbase (assuming one did solely non-dilith needing projects and none of the fluff ) is, per sto-wiki's compilation of projects:
For a grand total of 2,769,750 dilithium, or at the current exchange rate of about 90 dil/zen over $300.
I imagine the EC to dilith to zen to dollar calculations on the commodities/doffs/equipment would yield a similarly crazy number. And that's not even taking into consideration the fleet mark stupidity.
And that's just Tier 3.
The point of all this morning arithmetic is this: Cryptic has put into place a system whose sole purpose is to suck the equivalent of thousands of dollars out of their players, yet when anyone raises a voice to ask for improvements to said system they're told, in no uncertain terms, to shut up and offer up another wallet for sacrifice.
Making a T5 base should only be the realm of the super fleets - or if it takes a 300+ person fleet 10 months as it is right now then a 25 person fleet should take at least 2 years.
That said after several super fleets have reached T5 - perhaps they could open up a General Fleet store where all fleet gear/ships could be sold at a significally higher cost than at the fleets starbase - to account for the massive resources that people put in to reach T5
so for example a T5 ship or gear would cost at least 3 -4x as much - this would be fair as it would make up for the lower investment that those people made.
I think there IS an amount of dedication here that is given just because some of us are Trek fans. I walked from WoW (guild leader moved our lvl 25 guild to another server without a word, we all logged in one day and found we'd lost our guild, our guild bank, and all associated benefits) and Rift (devs shut down a server and forced an overnight move to new servers, guild leader was not online at the time the move was forced and it fractured our guild across multiple servers) and SWTOR (real life friends fought with our guild lead and quit playing so I quit) without a backward glance. Admittedly, I have had unusually bad luck with guilds prior to joining this game. I find I am no longer comfortable in a large guild/ fleet. Period. No matter how stable or long-standing it appears.
I guess I differ from others in that I am on the whole happy with the game. I do understand the points others are making about grinding and bugs so this is not a criticism of those concerns at all. My point is that this ONE change, and the associated announcements regarding fleets, was all it took to turn one of your players off from a game they loved. I am still here hanging on in these forums because I AM a Star Trek fan. I am certainly never motivated to hang on to WoW forums despite playing WoW for years.
I need to hear that the balance the devs are trying to achieve INCLUDES a balance between small and large fleets. I need to hear you won't deliberately squash the teeny fleet I finally found that I am willing to settle into.
I need to hear that the balance the devs are trying to achieve INCLUDES a balance between small and large fleets. I need to hear you won't deliberately squash the teeny fleet I finally found that I am willing to settle into.
Here's the thing...
Based on Stahl's posts in this thread, they're not bothering with either. It's pretty much "go zerg fleet or GTFO of the fleet holding system".
I definitely think pricing has become an issue. Rather than offering a lot of things for a small amount of money/ dil each, they have gone the route of releasing fewer and fewer things which cost a phenomenal amount.
C-store prices and dil requirements have gone up and up and up, the purpose of MICRO transactions has been forgotten. I personally would happily spend more money, but I want more for what I'm spending at the moment.
Having single items, that are part of a set, taking hundreds of thousands of marks and tens of thousands of dilithium is a joke. And these issues that are being experienced are merely a symptom of the inflated pricing system that exists now to rake in as much money from the big spenders (ie, the idiots who drop like $300+ on lock boxes), while preventing many people from spending smaller amounts here and there in order to get things.
Making a T5 base should only be the realm of the super fleets - or if it takes a 300+ person fleet 10 months as it is right now then a 25 person fleet should take at least 2 years.
Disagree with the first part. As I have said, small fleets have Vice Admirals that need decent gear just like large fleets. However, I agree with the second part. I think members of small fleets already accepted it would be a harder road for them. Harder didn't equal impossible though.
That said after several super fleets have reached T5 - perhaps they could open up a General Fleet store where all fleet gear/ships could be sold at a significally higher cost than at the fleets starbase - to account for the massive resources that people put in to reach T5
so for example a T5 ship or gear would cost at least 3 -4x as much - this would be fair as it would make up for the lower investment that those people made.
This is a very interesting idea, though 3-4x as much might be harsh. Think in terms of fleet module cost. Consider how many players are not joining a fleet now until they reach T4... are those players to be likewise subjected to increased costs relative to their fleetmates?
Keep the customers happy; happy customers keep paying.
Make the customers unhappy; unhappy customers go somewhere else.
Here is what will keep us happy:
Forget the metrics that warn you that your year old additions to the game might be achieved this year by many gamers who worked diligently to obtain them; and instead concentrate on creating new missions and new content for us.
Eliminate the different marks - take the Omega/Romulan/FM and make just one mark.
Reduce the grind! Increase the fun! Every mission, including the episodes should earn marks and dilithium. You've already created some awesome missions - which can be played by a fleet (that's what my fleet does) - if you truly want us to have more and less grind - give us marks/dilithium for completing them.
In short - give us more across the game grid.
We are your customers. We are the ones spending our money for the product you produce. We are not metrics.
Improve the product and improve your income.
Yes, you have my vote to be the PWE chairman!
In one post you said everything we ever dreamed and developers never did.
The developers have done a good job in the anniversary episode, everyone liked. Why can not continue the good work?
More confusion like this and we not need to have the eighth season!
He who controls the oil (fleet marks in this case) controls the market (starbases in this case).
The powers that be want the game slowed down. Longer game player = more chances of getting some money in from someone, somewhere.
Sadly, money is all that matters to them it seems.
Just my 2 cents but isn't it better for everyone if the game is long lasting?
And the plain fact is you don't ever have to spend a penny in STO (unless you want things immediately, stamp, stamp), there are loads of ways to make mases of dil, ec, etc. In fact the only restricting factor I've found is the 8k/day dil conversion cap - i could do 5 times tha/day - hint, hint
Just my 2 cents but isn't it better for everyone if the game is long lasting?
And the plain fact is you don't ever have to spend a penny in STO (unless you want things immediately, stamp, stamp), there are loads of ways to make mases of dil, ec, etc. In fact the only restricting factor I've found is the 8k/day dil conversion cap - i could do 5 times tha/day - hint, hint
Run off and get me 100 FMs and let me know how long that takes you.
Just my 2 cents but isn't it better for everyone if the game is long lasting?
And the plain fact is you don't ever have to spend a penny in STO (unless you want things immediately, stamp, stamp), there are loads of ways to make mases of dil, ec, etc. In fact the only restricting factor I've found is the 8k/day dil conversion cap - i could do 5 times tha/day - hint, hint
I think you missed the point.
People don't want a short game. People are just tired of grinding the same thing over and over and over again. The only thing that passes for content nowadays is lockboxes (unless you count jacked-up C-store prices as additional content). The game as it is now is artificially long because of time gates on damned near everything, combined with the exorbitant cost of everything.
Compounding that are the nerfs and bugs that go unfixed.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Run off and get me 100 FMs and let me know how long that takes you.
See you in a few hours...
On the Fed side I can get 330 FM during the 2 hour bonus event - with 5 toons
KDF is a bit different - although I Q'd for Colony invasion KDF yesterday and only waited 30 sec during the bonus event and we finished the mission in 5 min - my best time fed side was 7 min.
But on the whole KDF wait times are longer - but they have been improving after this change - the one benefit of the change.
Let's put some numbers to this. The amount of dilithium to build a full T3 starbase (assuming one did solely non-dilith needing projects and none of the fluff ) is, per sto-wiki's compilation of projects:
For a grand total of 2,769,750 dilithium, or at the current exchange rate of about 90 dil/zen over $300.
I imagine the EC to dilith to zen to dollar calculations on the commodities/doffs/equipment would yield a similarly crazy number. And that's not even taking into consideration the fleet mark stupidity.
And that's just Tier 3.
The point of all this morning arithmetic is this: Cryptic has put into place a system whose sole purpose is to suck the equivalent of thousands of dollars out of their players, yet when anyone raises a voice to ask for improvements to said system they're told, in no uncertain terms, to shut up and offer up another wallet for sacrifice.
Couple of points:
1) The first - and perhaps only SOLO T3 starbase was completed in Oct by Levi3
2) I have heard from him recently - although he only plays 1/10 the amount of time he used to - he is in the process of upgrading to a SOLO T4 starbase!! - just firing off the T4 sci upgade last I checked with him - with Mil and Eng being at 90k - and he never used the new IOR system - only doffing 9 toons for marks/dilithium. And He has not spent a dime of outside money.
Considering this case - although extreme - puts the small fleets can't do it argument into the airlock.
3) Mr Stahl has stated that their goal WAS to make thounsands of dollars per starbase.
Every character not in a fleet raises the average, not lowers it. The absolute MINIMUM that average can be is 121.
So unless you're criticizing me for pegging the bottom of average, I'm not seeing what you meant.
Are you seriously arguing that the less people there are in fleets the higher the average fleet population is when the fleet number stays constant?
Let's do some math here...
500 people in 10 fleets. That's a 50 person average.
250 people in 10 fleets. That's a 25 person average.
25 is in no way shape or form greater than 50.
I'm criticizing you for using completely incorrect math on top of already suspect numbers to try and support a notion that fundamentally consigns small fleets to second class status simply by nature of them being small.
Not sure if it's been suggested before, but how about adding a project to the Omega Reputation that will allow you to convert Omega Marks to Fleet Marks at a 1:1 ratio? This would be a massive boon to KDF players who can sometimes sit for an hour or more without a Fleet Mark event popping, but can almost always get into an STF.
1) The first - and perhaps only SOLO T3 starbase was completed in Oct by Levi3
2) I have heard from him recently - although he only plays 1/10 the amount of time he used to - he is in the process of upgrading to a SOLO T4 starbase!! - just firing off the T4 sci upgade last I checked with him - with Mil and Eng being at 90k - and he never used the new IOR system - only doffing 9 toons for marks/dilithium. And He has not spent a dime of outside money.
Considering this case - although extreme - puts the small fleets can't do it argument into the airlock.
3) Mr Stahl has stated that their goal WAS to make thounsands of dollars per starbase.
1 +2) So because a single individual did something that probably 95% of the playerbase doesn't have the time, patience or resources to do, everyone else has zero standing to raise a stink? Also, by Stahl's logic the CXP to FM payouts shouldn't exist since they're 100% solo, but that's neither here nor there...
3) That's precisely my point. When you prioritize profits over an enjoyable mechanic the end result is a playerbase that's royally pissed off. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what we have right now.
3) That's precisely my point. When you prioritize profits over an enjoyable mechanic the end result is a playerbase that's royally pissed off. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what we have right now.
And further to this, all this investment - all these hours sunk in fleets and all this money (Dilithium and Zen) - what has it gotten us?
A developer that keeps its players in the dark, constantly comes up with new ways to suck out the fun and increase the grind and delivers half-finished, bug-ridden insubstantial content whilst closing off sources of in-game revenue and hoping we'll put our hands in our pockets again.
*shakes head* I can't believe I'm writing that about the developer of a Star Trek game - this should be one of the greatest MMOs ever - where did it go so wrong?
Comments
IOR's rewarded 50 FM and 960 dilithium for 15 minutes of gameplay.
Now F-Missions reward 0 FM and 630 dilithium for 15 minutes of gamplay.
dastahl stated in his post:
It is not about what they want - it is about what we, the customers, want. The truth is that all they want is more money, but instead of earning it the right way - which is by creating new exciting content that we'd like and would pay for; they're just making it more difficult to obtain the existing (and rather dull) content they already created in S6.
If you wanted players to earn more dilithium and have f-missions with useful rewards; then why did you remove FM and reduce dilithium as rewards for f-missions?!?
Keep the customers happy; happy customers keep paying.
Make the customers unhappy; unhappy customers go somewhere else.
Here is what will keep us happy:
Forget the metrics that warn you that your year old additions to the game might be achieved this year by many gamers who worked diligently to obtain them; and instead concentrate on creating new missions and new content for us.
Eliminate the different marks - take the Omega/Romulan/FM and make just one mark.
Reduce the grind! Increase the fun!
Every mission, including the episodes should earn marks and dilithium. You've already created some awesome missions - which can be played by a fleet (that's what my fleet does) - if you truly want us to have more and less grind - give us marks/dilithium for completing them.
In short - give us more across the game grid.
We are your customers. We are the ones spending our money for the product you produce. We are not metrics.
Improve the product and improve your income.
57. Good customers are as rare as latinum; treasure them.
58. There is no substitute for success.
89. Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits.
Fleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
Are you referring to the aesthetics of the starbase only? or would the personal equipment/ ships and such that a small fleet could attain be likewise limited? I could see it if reducing the grandeur reduced the building costs for small fleets as you are suggesting but I can not see it if the small fleets do not get the same access to good ships and such. After all, the Enterprise was the flagship, yet worked alone mostly rather than at the head of a huge fleet of ships.
Another point is that even huge fleets have empty halls in their starbases for the most part right now... except the same number of random wandering NPCs that the small fleets have on their bases. The granduer of the current bases seems out of place on BOTH large and small fleets. How many people hang out on their base at ALL? I bet there are people who would like to have some fresh reasons to though. Like increasing the Off of the Watch FM reward.
I can spend my Dil on buying zen, fleet gear, stf gear, rom gear, embassy gear, starbase projects, embassy projects. You can earn unlimited amounts of Dil ore a day, but only refine 8K, thats the problem with dil. I had been in the situation before of having 3 days worth ore in stock waiting to refine it, so I didn't bother earning any, there was no point.
for example: the current 6 projects (tier 3 SB, tier 0 Em) that need Dil require at total of 1.2M dil, which takes 125 player days to refine.
End result, by handing out more Dil ore, nothing will change: restricting fleet marks, SB & Em projects will slow up even more.
I won't be playing foundry missions any more, I don't need the "bonus" dil.
Only 8K, no way....
I tried to do some fleet missions. I mean really tried to grind a few, but their so bad, take so long, then to see the measly payout you get for all that time and effort. As he said above, queuing on the KDF side takes a long, long time.
Their not fools, but they seem misguided in their assumption that the players are just going to roll over and be driven around our game like a kiddie rollercoaster.((I say 'our' because we're the ones dropping money in their pockets.))
So far we've been good and kept our grievances on this forum. I wonder what would happen if the rest of the interweb started hearing how a game designer was trying to hold its player base over a barrel...
Nice. Very smooth. Way to get your point across.
Thought you were better.
i think putting back fm wouldnt change anything right now. this was just the last drop.
the real problems are laying much deeper - in my opinion they are:
- massive grinding
- very poor designed and boring repetitive missions/events
- reuse/copy-paste of (already bugged) code and selling this as something new
- nerfing of things we like(d)
- afk-leechers in stf/fleet events - and to know that cryptic knows and just ignores it
- announcing amazing, fantastic and big new content and delivering something unfinished, untestet, economy-breaking that isnt fun to play
- understanding new content as small modifications in: running around and klicking on things or flying around and firing on things (and now - brand new - running around and firing on things. i think you got the point.)
- unable to deliver fixes for game-breaking things in time
And even though i can no longer belive a single word one "special" person here is saying that maybe or maybe not
will be happen in the future (hi dan 'i know something but i wont tell' stahl - no offense) - i truly believe that with each patch constantly
breaking more things than fixing is not their intention. so something must be going badly wrong internally or - they just have
no idea what they are doing. i dont like both options.
i have really no idea what we can hope for:
that cbs pulls the plug because they have to protect their ip from further harm
or a chinese phone call saying: why u not making money?
Half the time missions don't give you the rewards their supposed to, and the rewards from the missions that happen to work are bread crumbs to the next measly payout. And stale bread crumbs at that...
There are major bugs that have been around since beta that players have incorporated into their game! How bad is it when you know you have a bug you have to plan your characters development around?
I don't think they realized the depth of a Star Trek fans dedication. Maybe they thought we were typical MMO players that just wanted to be driven around in their MMO world. This thread is the beginning of a message they need to hear. One they should have picked up on after the last debacle they tried, yanking dilithium out of STFs.
A large amount of great ideas have been put forth in this thread, but the one overriding fact is...
Cryptic, your game is fail.
Very well put Buzz - these are among the many issues that concern me.
STO may be free-to-play but things like Fleets represent enormous amounts of investment in terms of time and/or money and the players investing their energy in creating these Fleets want STO to be around for a long time - we all do.
Cryptic's constant push to dazzle lapsed and potential players with shiny but insubstantial content is causing growing resentment amongst existing players (the ones that pay their salaries) and is constantly introducing new bugs and issues whilst old ones remain unresolved.
PWE may want to sacrifice long-term sustainability for short term profit, but as customers, that's not what *we* want - it's about time we hammered that message home.
Let's put some numbers to this. The amount of dilithium to build a full T3 starbase (assuming one did solely non-dilith needing projects and none of the fluff ) is, per sto-wiki's compilation of projects:
64800 + 216000 + 648000 = 928800 (Starbase tier upgrades)
(32400 + 108000 + 324000) x 3 = 1393200 (Category tier upgrades)
15750 + 108000 + 324000 = 447750 (Transwarp conduits)
For a grand total of 2,769,750 dilithium, or at the current exchange rate of about 90 dil/zen over $300.
I imagine the EC to dilith to zen to dollar calculations on the commodities/doffs/equipment would yield a similarly crazy number. And that's not even taking into consideration the fleet mark stupidity.
And that's just Tier 3.
The point of all this morning arithmetic is this: Cryptic has put into place a system whose sole purpose is to suck the equivalent of thousands of dollars out of their players, yet when anyone raises a voice to ask for improvements to said system they're told, in no uncertain terms, to shut up and offer up another wallet for sacrifice.
That said after several super fleets have reached T5 - perhaps they could open up a General Fleet store where all fleet gear/ships could be sold at a significally higher cost than at the fleets starbase - to account for the massive resources that people put in to reach T5
so for example a T5 ship or gear would cost at least 3 -4x as much - this would be fair as it would make up for the lower investment that those people made.
I guess I differ from others in that I am on the whole happy with the game. I do understand the points others are making about grinding and bugs so this is not a criticism of those concerns at all. My point is that this ONE change, and the associated announcements regarding fleets, was all it took to turn one of your players off from a game they loved. I am still here hanging on in these forums because I AM a Star Trek fan. I am certainly never motivated to hang on to WoW forums despite playing WoW for years.
I need to hear that the balance the devs are trying to achieve INCLUDES a balance between small and large fleets. I need to hear you won't deliberately squash the teeny fleet I finally found that I am willing to settle into.
Here's the thing...
Based on Stahl's posts in this thread, they're not bothering with either. It's pretty much "go zerg fleet or GTFO of the fleet holding system".
C-store prices and dil requirements have gone up and up and up, the purpose of MICRO transactions has been forgotten. I personally would happily spend more money, but I want more for what I'm spending at the moment.
Having single items, that are part of a set, taking hundreds of thousands of marks and tens of thousands of dilithium is a joke. And these issues that are being experienced are merely a symptom of the inflated pricing system that exists now to rake in as much money from the big spenders (ie, the idiots who drop like $300+ on lock boxes), while preventing many people from spending smaller amounts here and there in order to get things.
Disagree with the first part. As I have said, small fleets have Vice Admirals that need decent gear just like large fleets. However, I agree with the second part. I think members of small fleets already accepted it would be a harder road for them. Harder didn't equal impossible though.
This is a very interesting idea, though 3-4x as much might be harsh. Think in terms of fleet module cost. Consider how many players are not joining a fleet now until they reach T4... are those players to be likewise subjected to increased costs relative to their fleetmates?
Yes, you have my vote to be the PWE chairman!
In one post you said everything we ever dreamed and developers never did.
The developers have done a good job in the anniversary episode, everyone liked. Why can not continue the good work?
More confusion like this and we not need to have the eighth season!
Just my 2 cents but isn't it better for everyone if the game is long lasting?
And the plain fact is you don't ever have to spend a penny in STO (unless you want things immediately, stamp, stamp), there are loads of ways to make mases of dil, ec, etc. In fact the only restricting factor I've found is the 8k/day dil conversion cap - i could do 5 times tha/day - hint, hint
Run off and get me 100 FMs and let me know how long that takes you.
See you in a few hours...
I think you missed the point.
People don't want a short game. People are just tired of grinding the same thing over and over and over again. The only thing that passes for content nowadays is lockboxes (unless you count jacked-up C-store prices as additional content). The game as it is now is artificially long because of time gates on damned near everything, combined with the exorbitant cost of everything.
Compounding that are the nerfs and bugs that go unfixed.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
On the Fed side I can get 330 FM during the 2 hour bonus event - with 5 toons
KDF is a bit different - although I Q'd for Colony invasion KDF yesterday and only waited 30 sec during the bonus event and we finished the mission in 5 min - my best time fed side was 7 min.
But on the whole KDF wait times are longer - but they have been improving after this change - the one benefit of the change.
Couple of points:
1) The first - and perhaps only SOLO T3 starbase was completed in Oct by Levi3
2) I have heard from him recently - although he only plays 1/10 the amount of time he used to - he is in the process of upgrading to a SOLO T4 starbase!! - just firing off the T4 sci upgade last I checked with him - with Mil and Eng being at 90k - and he never used the new IOR system - only doffing 9 toons for marks/dilithium. And He has not spent a dime of outside money.
Considering this case - although extreme - puts the small fleets can't do it argument into the airlock.
3) Mr Stahl has stated that their goal WAS to make thounsands of dollars per starbase.
Every character not in a fleet raises the average, not lowers it. The absolute MINIMUM that average can be is 121.
So unless you're criticizing me for pegging the bottom of average, I'm not seeing what you meant.
Are you seriously arguing that the less people there are in fleets the higher the average fleet population is when the fleet number stays constant?
Let's do some math here...
500 people in 10 fleets. That's a 50 person average.
250 people in 10 fleets. That's a 25 person average.
25 is in no way shape or form greater than 50.
I'm criticizing you for using completely incorrect math on top of already suspect numbers to try and support a notion that fundamentally consigns small fleets to second class status simply by nature of them being small.
1 +2) So because a single individual did something that probably 95% of the playerbase doesn't have the time, patience or resources to do, everyone else has zero standing to raise a stink? Also, by Stahl's logic the CXP to FM payouts shouldn't exist since they're 100% solo, but that's neither here nor there...
3) That's precisely my point. When you prioritize profits over an enjoyable mechanic the end result is a playerbase that's royally pissed off. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what we have right now.
And further to this, all this investment - all these hours sunk in fleets and all this money (Dilithium and Zen) - what has it gotten us?
A developer that keeps its players in the dark, constantly comes up with new ways to suck out the fun and increase the grind and delivers half-finished, bug-ridden insubstantial content whilst closing off sources of in-game revenue and hoping we'll put our hands in our pockets again.
*shakes head* I can't believe I'm writing that about the developer of a Star Trek game - this should be one of the greatest MMOs ever - where did it go so wrong?