test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Star Trek Online, the once fun and popular game, turned major grind fest
ofdpt23p13
Member Posts: 5 Arc User
I have been playing Star Trek Online from day one. I used to play it very religiously every single day. I still find myself WANTING to play, but unable to because it is doing the same exact crappy thing over and over again. Let me elaborate on what it is that i'm talking about.
Started out as an epic game of epic proportions based on the Star Trek Universe. All nice and great. Could definitely have been better, but the game was new and released on a truncated time table. After the first year of play, we had our first anniversary event, which released the new and improved eye candy Earth Space Dock (the one that should have been there at launch, but we have it now and I'm happy). It looked the way it should even with ships flying outside the windows, even if they weren't actual player ships. It gave the game a sense of immersion. Half way through that second year, that was taken away with no reason as to why.
You then started to introduce "Feature Episode Series" that were, for a lack of better words right now, epic. They gave us a unique story line that we could play, and get a weekly "episode" of Star Trek. Everybody had something to look forward to. They started when? August of 2010? 5 episodes in 5 weeks, then a short "season break" then the next episodes were released. We all were like children waiting for the show to come on every Wednesday night to see what happened next! August to September 2010 for series 1...October-November 2010 series 2...February-March 2011 series 3....oh wait there was less than a month between series 1 and 2, but 3 months between series 2 and 3? we'll let it slide for now.....Series 4 February-March 2012...whoa wait, 2012???????? We waited a bloody year for series 4? WHY??? You promised us that they'd be a regular release, and that they'd be like 6 series a year....then you went down to 4 a year, and now it's whenever you feel like it? What's going on cryptic????
STF's, easier as they may be in some instances, have lost most of the immersion factor. They were meant to be a "movie Story line" type deal when the game first released and now are split up to be 15 minute fun flicks. They should still be paired up "infected space and ground" in one sitting, so on and so fourth. Now with it split up the way it is, it don't even tell a story. Then we had Terradome, which was broken from the start, and looked to be a promising story line....I really can't answer if it was or not cause I never got to play it past the first stage. Then it was just deleted, and never fixed.....**waves hands** we never saw anything!
Throughout the multiple seasons, game play mechanics were getting better and better, and new things to do (which got old quickly by the way) started to sprout up. The Duty officer system, the fleet starbases and fleet holdings...so on and so fourth. Fun at first but get very hard if you are a casual gaming fleet who happen to take the time out of our gaming lives to actually have a real life so we can make money and pay for the game that we play. So by not playing and grinding 24 hours a day / 7 days a week, we get penalized cause we don't sit down and grind grind grind all the time.
These fleet holdings are starting to get tiresome too.....I mean lets look at the dilithium mines......First off you have to pay dilithium to a dilithium mine in order to get discounts on dilithium spending? one of these things just doesn't belong here. And now we have to pay 200,000 Dilithium to the project holding just so we can have Dilithium crystals show up on the OUTSIDE of a DILITHIUM MINE?!?!?! What is this?
AND the last thing that I have to complain about is this. LOCKBOXES! A little box of trinkets within game that you can earn, IF you buy Lockbox Keys from the Zen Store in game, which requires Zen which requires money. I HAD no problems spending money to get ZEN in order to get items from the ZEN store. NOW I refuse to pay a damned dime because everything that is 'worth getting' are in them damned lockboxes and I am not going to be one of these people who spend $100's just for a small chance to get a rare ship. Now I just sit back and convert my 500 zen stipend into dilithium to put towards my dilithium mine so I can get a discount on spending dilithium so I can try and have some end game gear.
Started out as an epic game of epic proportions based on the Star Trek Universe. All nice and great. Could definitely have been better, but the game was new and released on a truncated time table. After the first year of play, we had our first anniversary event, which released the new and improved eye candy Earth Space Dock (the one that should have been there at launch, but we have it now and I'm happy). It looked the way it should even with ships flying outside the windows, even if they weren't actual player ships. It gave the game a sense of immersion. Half way through that second year, that was taken away with no reason as to why.
You then started to introduce "Feature Episode Series" that were, for a lack of better words right now, epic. They gave us a unique story line that we could play, and get a weekly "episode" of Star Trek. Everybody had something to look forward to. They started when? August of 2010? 5 episodes in 5 weeks, then a short "season break" then the next episodes were released. We all were like children waiting for the show to come on every Wednesday night to see what happened next! August to September 2010 for series 1...October-November 2010 series 2...February-March 2011 series 3....oh wait there was less than a month between series 1 and 2, but 3 months between series 2 and 3? we'll let it slide for now.....Series 4 February-March 2012...whoa wait, 2012???????? We waited a bloody year for series 4? WHY??? You promised us that they'd be a regular release, and that they'd be like 6 series a year....then you went down to 4 a year, and now it's whenever you feel like it? What's going on cryptic????
STF's, easier as they may be in some instances, have lost most of the immersion factor. They were meant to be a "movie Story line" type deal when the game first released and now are split up to be 15 minute fun flicks. They should still be paired up "infected space and ground" in one sitting, so on and so fourth. Now with it split up the way it is, it don't even tell a story. Then we had Terradome, which was broken from the start, and looked to be a promising story line....I really can't answer if it was or not cause I never got to play it past the first stage. Then it was just deleted, and never fixed.....**waves hands** we never saw anything!
Throughout the multiple seasons, game play mechanics were getting better and better, and new things to do (which got old quickly by the way) started to sprout up. The Duty officer system, the fleet starbases and fleet holdings...so on and so fourth. Fun at first but get very hard if you are a casual gaming fleet who happen to take the time out of our gaming lives to actually have a real life so we can make money and pay for the game that we play. So by not playing and grinding 24 hours a day / 7 days a week, we get penalized cause we don't sit down and grind grind grind all the time.
These fleet holdings are starting to get tiresome too.....I mean lets look at the dilithium mines......First off you have to pay dilithium to a dilithium mine in order to get discounts on dilithium spending? one of these things just doesn't belong here. And now we have to pay 200,000 Dilithium to the project holding just so we can have Dilithium crystals show up on the OUTSIDE of a DILITHIUM MINE?!?!?! What is this?
AND the last thing that I have to complain about is this. LOCKBOXES! A little box of trinkets within game that you can earn, IF you buy Lockbox Keys from the Zen Store in game, which requires Zen which requires money. I HAD no problems spending money to get ZEN in order to get items from the ZEN store. NOW I refuse to pay a damned dime because everything that is 'worth getting' are in them damned lockboxes and I am not going to be one of these people who spend $100's just for a small chance to get a rare ship. Now I just sit back and convert my 500 zen stipend into dilithium to put towards my dilithium mine so I can get a discount on spending dilithium so I can try and have some end game gear.
Post edited by ofdpt23p13 on
0
Comments
system Lord Baal is dead
With FTP came Lockboxes, but those Lockboxes have managed to get the Dev team to 50, have brought us a free Expansion Pack with LoR, and they have announced a new EP for next year. Those are all good things.
As far as Lockboxes being the only good stuff in the game, sorry, nope. The Rep grinds will get you the best gear in the game. The C-Store and Fleet ships are every-bit as good as the Lockbox ships. If you actually think you need a Galor, D'kora, etc to play this game you're just fooling yourself.
Without FTP there'd be no STO at all. It would have gone the way of the dodo. Sad, but true.
cryptic is sitting on a literal gold mine with the star trek ip. the only other ip that can give star trek a run for it's money is star wars. this game has so much wasted potential. the only reason i'm still playing this game is because it's star trek. i have said it before and i'll say it again. if this game didn't have the star trek ip it would have died a long time ago. and another thing. i wonder if this game will survive for very long when star citezen comes out. you know the persistant universe open sandbox game being made by chris roberts, the guy who made wing commander and freelancer?
I'm not complaining about FTP. Far From it!. My gripe is is that I've been grinding grinding grinding, and I'm really not getting anywhere. As for the Lockboxes, it's a lottery! No, I don't need a Galor or D'kora to play, however it is content that I would very much be willing to pay for in the Z store, if I was guarenteed to get it! but no,, I have to play a freakin lottery!
Yes, the Expansion pack was nice, I have a 50 romulan....but you wanna know what, only half the mission line was unique missions, the other half were missions from the fed / klingon side that are not unique. Once i got to missions that I done 3 times over with my fed toons, I said enough is enough and helped other players in my fleet to level up, and leeching some exp to get 50.
If you're burned out take a break. Go play something else. I haven't played STO in 3 weeks. I have a dozen other games on my comp to keep me busy when I get burned out on something. I don't have to only play STO or nothing else - and you don't either.
It's not going to get any better. We're always going to be able to blow through content 100 times faster then they can make it. Why make yourself nuts about it? Play what you like and when you get bored play something else until new content brings you back again.
Any Star Trek MMO is better than no Star Trek MMO and this one really does have its moments.
Kirk's Protege.
However, STO I only play a few hours per week. So the game is still enjoyable and I don't get burned out as easily. Even the grind missions are not that bad. As I do a run per week. Have enough points to work off for a few log ons. If I can get on a few times per week. Granted it took me a few month to do the Romulan Rep grind. I started it after launch, and just finished last week. But in a way I never got burned out. Plus I have 3 others to send down it. Unlike the others, well you had to do that mission per day to gain rep. This one where you can rest and do something else in the meantime. Now I just started the Nukra Prime Rep. So far I'm enjoying it. The Rep grind is lot easier and not a chore type. Where it could be much worse. The other game, I grew to hate them. And avoided them at all costs.
This is my view of it. Comparing to other games I have played that has a grind to it.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I think if some content (not all) was added on a limited or less grindy basis it would keep a proportion of the players on more consistently. One off events such as the Black Friday event and similar activities would keep things interesting if they were put in on a rotating basis. Events that only require 1/4 or 1/3 attendance instead of the more than 2/3 like the summer event 25/35 would work better for casual players.
There are issues with the pearls/pictures of Q. In part they are useless once you complete the rep reward and there's no daily to do for players that buy all the pearls/pictures on day one so they can use the reward. For events inbetween the summer and winter events a reward which could be received multiple times. I don't know what the answer is but it would limit some of the angry threads about not enough time, time extensions and every other permutation.
I believe rotating some event content to keep it seemingly fresh would keep people playing and make sure people can't say they don't have something to do (while keeping it more casual friendly but giving more hard core players something to do).
It really bugs me when people say things like this. Not getting improvements is not you being penalized. I completely understand that small fleets have problems building their starbases. I know, i'm in one. But just because a big fleet gets a T5 starbase doesn't mean the devs are cheating you somehow.
Like someone else said, all the best stuff in the game comes from the rep system. The only fleet item I use is a fleet shield, and I just went to a larger fleet to get that.
Yes this game is a lot of grinding, but you don't HAVE to do it. You can just use gear from missions and that can be more than sufficient to get by. The only reason to grind is to get higher end gear, which is as it should be. You have to be willing to put the effort in to have nice stuff.
A MMORPG developer can never keep up with the demand for more content, and whenever they do it messes up the old content. This is why the solution is to completely scrap the themepark WOW-clone model and adopt a sandbox model.
Ugh people throw around the term "sandbox" around so much it loses meaning. It's like a political term these days. Like when someone says "freedom" or "democracy" it really means nothing, just like when people say "sandbox" it's meaning less and less these days. One day it will mean nothing.
I think I figured out why I'm bummed out most of the time whenever I think about politics or gaming. It's kinda the same thing. Like MMORPG's all the political parties are the same on all the essential issues, they only differ on minor surface issues; and the worse part is that most people are too stupid to see it. Gosh this stuff is depressing.
what is the real issue i feel is that people have been playing this game for 3-4 years and somehow expect to have the same enthusiasm as they did in the first year.
take the grind away and what would you have in its place? a few extra story missions? well if 30+ in LoR did nothing for you then would 35+ do any better?
grind is proven to work as it keeps people playing and paying and thus allows them to make more content. Again LoR did not happen by magic. all the grind, and f2p and dilithium conversions and lockboxes that people complain about is giving us back large updates and will continue to do so.
Make no mistake if they had the money and time the grind would have been in from day 1, just as with any MMO. grind is also necessary to any MMO. Perhaps they need to come up with grind that is more enjoyable. i dont think anyone will argue that the grind is a bit bland at the moment. the much desired territory wars are always a good example fo ways to improve. better pvp as well would help a lot.
that is a fact an can be seen when analising the user data, not even the official ones, but those from steam or MMOdata
it was grindy before and judging from any other MMORPG on the market (even those with subscription) it is just as grindy...and STO does actually a great job at making the grind appealing with the reputation system. It will take you more or less a month and each reputation requires 30 minutes playtime every day to get it maxed. A clear goal is much better than random chance.
also the zen - dilithium exchange is just awesome for a f2p game...every f2p game should have something similar.
the things the game needs imo, to make the package complete would be: PVP with rewards (rep. system) and where winning is slightly better rewarded than losing.
STF like content...those are basically the dungeons of this scifi mmo, and 5 space and 4 ground may sound alot, but aren't much in reality.
an idea would be to convert all the fleet action content into 5 player STF like missions with scaling difficulty (normal - elite)
also really great was the introduction of adventure zones like nimbus 3 and new romulus, looking forward to an andorian and vulcan adventure zone.
Because I remember very well when this game used to be fun , when this game was going somewhere , when the Dev's were actually excited and you felt that you were getting a bang for your buck .
Being a "true" STO vet is hell on crutches .
(and I'm not talking about your "Vet" status being sold for profit either
That means you're a gamer .
Not all of us are .
For some of us , saying goodbye to STO is saying goodbye to Trek (again) .
And that's not always an easy thing to do .
So some do say goodbye , and some stick around for a while and rage against the whirlwind .
And it's perfectly ok that some players (and some Devs) don't understand why we rage against "success" .
A new EP ?
Or a new FE ?
Unless of course SarTrek Online is purchased by CCP Games
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You have either not read the OP , or you were not present in the game at the time the Featured Episodes (FE's) were released in a staggered fashion .
Cryptic actually has managed (back then) to create a timetable for these missions to be released , and they have more or less stayed on target for 3 of these episode series .
And that meant that we got a new story mission every weekend for a month .
The negative side to this was that this ambitious task took up most if not all of Cryptic's development ability , and it turned into a cycle that ppl often logged in only at the weekends .
I believe that with their current larger staff + with the current grind they could restart the production of the FE's and produce other content as well , because the grind ensures that ppl play more often then just the weekends .
But that is a question of ROI .
And right now , Cryptic 's happy to put out new story content every 4-6 months rather then every few weeks .
It may make sense from a money perspective , but as a player who has seen them do better ... , it leaves me and ppl like me to make posts such as the OP's .
About the Maquis .
I remember them being soooo popular in DS9 .
Up till a point .
Then they understand that this is what they're expected to do most of the year .... .
You might have noticed that the new Reputation that is planned for the end of this year was not greeted with much enthusiasm .
Atleast the old way you actully felt like getting something while doing STFs.... now its all about getting 2.8k rep a day ... i got to rep lvl 3 and got bored, to much of a grind for so little to gain. Atleast the old way i had mk X maco bits and bobs and the odd mX11 peice. now i have to grind the rep then grind TRIBBLE load of ore ect to get the item...... and while i grind for a item oh look my rep gain is stopped....
this is one of the main reason i havent bpthered with STO much anymore.
just try everquest, eveonline, WoW and some others.
in STO it takes only a month to get the top level stuff.
WoW? 5-6 month with a lot of luck and good guild.
eveonline? grindfest like no others. try to get a ship that worth of $5k that will be blown up in 15 minutes.
everquest? a year, may be even longer.
the only game i know which didn't required grinding was guildwars. sadly its dead.
wow is far from a grind the biggest problem was getting good raid groups.
Things I would like to see added:
1. More STF's.
2. New content out quicker.
3. Larger size group content that requires people to work with each other better.
As far I know they are working on those things and it will be coming out, so I am reasonable happy. I started to play on day one when the game came out and it's far different and far better then it was then, we can only hope that they keep on making it better.
yeah and when you have the raid grp, what do you do 3-4 times a week? grind raid dungeons maybe?
and the luck factor for loot? Even wow went away from it and introduced their own token system for raidcontent, which translate into grinding for loot nearly exactly like STO
but as i said before, grinding in an MMO is ok, if there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Repeating content over and over just to get lucky once is the real dumb grind
STO has vastly improved since launch. The process of reaching level cap has been made far less painful, interesting mechanics like the duty officer system have been added, the game's been made free so I can play it with my girlfriend, and acquiring endgame equipment has changed from being a question of absoute luck to being a direct reward of progress for effort. Is STO grindy? Yes. It's an MMO. Without the grind we'd all quit and there wouldn't be a game. But the grind hasn't increased in the last few years - the grind to level cap has decreased, and the grind once there has been made about the same for everybody rather than having some people luck out and get their top-tier space gear in three elite STF runs while others play day and night without getting anything.