I am 42 and I totally agree. I actually spent all night starting over with the tutorial, listening to all dialog, and enjoying the experience.
The tutorial and Sphere of Influence were getting rave reviews because they accomplished what they were designed for. They're good, well-crafted story content.
The Dyson Sphere wasn't designed as story content. It was designed for replayability due to being tied to a reputation system. The problem is that it quickly stops being fun after the first go around(assuming it was even fun at all). Its the reason why the season is getting rotten reviews.
Perhaps it's because I am a lot older than most of you kids (49), but just the thrill of being inside a Dyson Sphere and taking in the awesome visualisation of what this place may actually look like was thrill enough for me.
So many younger people nowadays seem to have a very short appreciation span, I see it with my own kids, show them something new or give them a new toy and they are bored with it within minutes or at most a few hours and then want the next shiny. When I was a kid I had to wait for Christmas or birthdays to get that new toy experience. This meant that I had to use my imagination with the toys I had, it's a valuable life skill and allows you to appreciate the details that are all around you which so many younger people simply do not even see.
Season 8 has so many missions, so many tremendous artworks to take in, new areas for fleets, new weapons and systems to learn about, and a whole race of new (to STO) aliens to discover and conquer (at least at the moment, hoping for a relationship with them later) that a few hours is barely enough time to get more than just the flavour of it.
There are a huge amount of people whining on the forums, well nothing new there of course, but a large number of people, very creative people, have spent a lot of time building this entire adventure zone for us to explore and enjoy, it must be pretty demoralising for them to read the negative comments on this forum.
As an old dude I offer some advice, slow down, look around, try to visualise yourself actually here, explore and read everything before you even begin to fight. If you rush through it all in a few hours then all you have to look forward to is Season 9, which no doubt will generate plenty more whining threads.
Very much agreed! I have my dislikes too but am still quit satisfied with the content and the marks and pace of the missions.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
All I hear is whining and complaining. The people ask for a less grindy reputation and they provide you with one. Now you are saying it is to easy. Come on people make up your minds.
What happened to the diplomatic option? Have any peace delegations tried to open up talks with the Voth and say "please stop harvesting the particle that could ruin everything"? But no. The Federation is all about "Shoot first, don't even bother asking questions". Because the guys making the decisions at Cryptic know that "kill everything" is what sells, except that Trek is about the opposite of "kill everything".
How arrogant is the Federation to go to the other side of the galaxy to impose its will on another sovereign power while having such limited knowledge of what we're dealing with? Maybe the Voth have millions of years of experience with harvesting and using Omega particles? They can build ships the size of small moons. They take centuries to perfect technology before using it. They don't take crazy risks. So maybe they know what the hell they're doing.
Maybe we should ask them! They might be harvesting Omega to fight the Iconians. Maybe if Cryptic thought of creating gameplay other than "fly around and shoot the big dumb object and get a reward", this would feel like Star Trek and not "Generic space action MMO: now with space T-Rexes!".
Yeah, and after I spent all of those fleet marks getting my diplomacy skills up...
i find it funny every time someone says this season in good or great best they can say is the ARTwork not the mission was fun or great not that the new fleet holding is fun or great not that the new rep added is fun or great just the ARTwork is great from what i seeing is the scenery is great not the mission them self so on
hek the fed tutorial is getting better reviews then the whole season is
I'm overall pretty happy with Season 8, I think it could have used more episodes like spheres of influence but the Sphere is visually stunning, If i wasn't so busy with fleet marks and the reps, I'd have more time for it but right now for me it's: Ain't nobody got time fo dat
You guys may consider the fact that you're artificially inflating this thread with a (rahter pointless) nerd argument about something vague from a fiction work. You're just going to make it harder for the devs to collect any feedback.
I doubt they are reading this dribble. I would have read the first page or so and decided the flaming was enough. I would have moved on to reading something more delightful about those who appreciate my months of hardwork. It's one thing to give constructive feedback but its another to just rant about all that is wrong with S8.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Reason I didn't give rave reviews, it was "ooo ahhh" ok now what?
I blew up some dino's with lasers, took some areas that reminded me of SWTOR retreads in their pvp battle zones.
So honestly, what was worth a season's of conent? It was more like an opening epsiode and that's about it. Why I don't even call it a season.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
All I hear is whining and complaining. The people ask for a less grindy reputation and they provide you with one. Now you are saying it is to easy. Come on people make up your minds.
I guess you can't make everyone happy.
My thoughts as well. I am very happy about the rep changes. I have 15 toons and refused to do it on all but a couple because it was just too crazy and time consuming. I just leveled 3 people in one day to tier 1 Romulan by using that token. I'm excited that my alts will now be able to level up their reps in a reasonable amount of time and less grind.
As for the new rep, I'm very happy with marks awarded for ground. Cryptic has their cooldowns to pace things and I don't have to be restricted to playing space or ground. There are many different missions and type of activities to do both on ground in space and even in STF styled PvEs. With awards like they are I have hope that I can do all the things in game I need to now. N more do I have to decide do I need marks or dilithium? Do I have time for the big project or just the little one. I can earn everything at the same time and faster which allows me to play other game content too. Instead of just the grind for the reps.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Perhaps it's because I am a lot older than most of you kids (49), but just the thrill of being inside a Dyson Sphere and taking in the awesome visualisation of what this place may actually look like was thrill enough for me.
So many younger people nowadays seem to have a very short appreciation span, I see it with my own kids, show them something new or give them a new toy and they are bored with it within minutes or at most a few hours and then want the next shiny. When I was a kid I had to wait for Christmas or birthdays to get that new toy experience. This meant that I had to use my imagination with the toys I had, it's a valuable life skill and allows you to appreciate the details that are all around you which so many younger people simply do not even see.
Season 8 has so many missions, so many tremendous artworks to take in, new areas for fleets, new weapons and systems to learn about, and a whole race of new (to STO) aliens to discover and conquer (at least at the moment, hoping for a relationship with them later) that a few hours is barely enough time to get more than just the flavour of it.
There are a huge amount of people whining on the forums, well nothing new there of course, but a large number of people, very creative people, have spent a lot of time building this entire adventure zone for us to explore and enjoy, it must be pretty demoralising for them to read the negative comments on this forum.
As an old dude I offer some advice, slow down, look around, try to visualise yourself actually here, explore and read everything before you even begin to fight. If you rush through it all in a few hours then all you have to look forward to is Season 9, which no doubt will generate plenty more whining threads.
I like your post, but my experience of S8 is very different from yours.
I'm not much younger than you (44) and would agree about the short attention span of many people, though I don't think I have such a problem (I've recently read Buddenbrooks and War and Peace....good luck on that to those with ADHD). I'll start out by agreeing with you about the artwork - kudos to the designers on so many lovely vistas. The beauty of what they've done should not be overshadowed by my overall negative review of S8.
One more side point before getting to the meat of my post: I too deplore the negative nellies who consistently troll MMORPG forums. They are toxic and do a huge disservice to their community and to game developers. It seems that constructive criticism gets lost in the ocean of sewage that the number one sport in America - disgruntled anonymous sniping- produces. I don't post much in this forum because from prior MMORPG experience, I've found that the bile found in forums like this materially detracted from my enjoyment of the game. That said, I feel constructive criticism is essential and the sliver of a chance that it will be heard makes it worth the attempt to provide it.
In my opinion, STO has had a long-term problem that seems only to be getting worse. Between fleet holdings and reputation, there is simply too much grinding. We are given "bars to reach" that do not entice with pleasurable gameplay but mostly require repetitive action to achieve. Though I like a lot of the consoles available in the Fleet spire, for what purpose am I now improving my ships? So I can squash STFs faster?
I really enjoyed the episodes added in LoR a lot. I didn't particularly enjoy the S8 tutorial arc, particularly since the tutorial didn't lead to much but a whole new world of grinding. As beautiful as I find much of S8, it is a very empty beauty not backed up by the content which is for me one of two things: compelling storyline or compelling gameplay. I am disappointed in how little I enjoy going through this pretty content. For a moment, I was eager for more Elite STFs but my actual experience of them was flat.
That being said, I would like to point out that I did buy the lifetime subscription yesterday. I am not a hypocrite, I just can't resist a good sale. Joking aside, I actually bought the subscription for two reasons: if they could create episodes like the ones in LoR, I believe they can and will do it again in the future; and because I've got a great group of friends/fleet that I look forward to hanging out with in TS. I can't resist saying that the biggest draw this game has on me now is playing it with my fleetmates, who had me laughing so hard last night I couldn't catch my breath for almost 15 minutes. We're already nibbling at other games...STO's going to have to do better in the future to keep us. For now, we'll likely go back to grinding STF's and Defera invasion zone to make progress on our fleet, but that pleasure has already seen a great deal of wear and tear.
Again, great job on the visuals, folks. Very poor job on the story line and gameplay. Overall a very poor episode in my assessment.
Perhaps it's because I am a lot older than most of you kids (49), but just the thrill of being inside a Dyson Sphere and taking in the awesome visualisation of what this place may actually look like was thrill enough for me.
That may have been good for me if it was not WRONG... The Devs apparently have no concept of just how unbelievably and incomprehensibly BIG a Dyson's Sphere would be.
What do I mean? I mean that you can SEE the curvature of the sphere and details of the sphere behind the star... Really? Assuming that Star is somewhat close to the size of our sun then the sphere would need to be around at LEAST half the distance between us and Venus away from that Star in order to support life as we know it. That means that the Sphere would rest in an orbit that far out.
So with that in mind there is NO WAY you could even PERCEIVE the curvature of the Sphere's surface from inside it. Nor would you be able to make out ANY detail of the sphere behind the star. It would just be an ambient glow like when the sun shines on the Zodiac and we get false dawns here on Terra.
I know they did it for dramatic effect and to copy Halo but the Halo's were planet sized and it just does not work.
I mean that you can SEE the curvature of the sphere and details of the sphere behind the star... Really?
Being able to see it was probably an artistic choice. A big, empty void would have been scientifically accurate, but it also would have been boring. It wouldn't have looked any different from the space maps we're used to seeing and, ironically enough, might not have conveyed a sense of scale.
IMHO, showing the ceiling was prolly the best choice.
All I hear is whining and complaining. The people ask for a less grindy reputation and they provide you with one. Now you are saying it is to easy. Come on people make up your minds.
I guess you can't make everyone happy.
S8 is "less grindy"? Like to know which universe you are from, so I can play that STO. :rolleyes:
Let's forget about the Reputation grind, there is a new Fleet Holding that requires MORE Fleet Mark Grinding and Dilithum Grinding using the same content that's nearly 2 years old now. And small fleets are dying because Cryptic doesn't care about them, people literally drudge for hours working on Fleet Marks so their fleet can somewhat compete with Large Fleets, but Large Fleets get done with the new content within a month, while we have to work for hours on end working on Fleet Marks and dilithum and 6 months later unlock Tier 2.
Please, please, tell me what about this is "fun" and not something to complain about?
S8 is "less grindy"? Like to know which universe you are from, so I can play that STO.
I plan on having everything I need to max out the Voth rep by roughly a week after launch, without doing any special grinding.
small fleets are dying because Cryptic doesn't care about them
I run a small fleet myself, and hopefully that'll be fixed someday. In the meantime, there are entire organizations devoted to giving fleet stuff away for free.
I run a small fleet myself, and hopefully that'll be fixed someday. In the meantime, there are entire organizations devoted to giving fleet stuff away for free.
I haven't seen people offer to go into their completed Fleet Holdings without paying a tens of millions of EC.
Besides, you still need Fleet Credits, Dilithium, and Provisions to buy Fleet Items. Which you need Fleet Marks to do so. If nobody is running Fleet Events even during the Fleet Mark event, you can't buy anything.
I'm assuming stockpiling on Voth Implants and convert them into Dyson Commendations?
I hadn't even thought of that, but no, it's not necessary.
You need 40 commendations in order to max it out. Just fighting in the battlezone for an hour or two every day can give you a one from a daily, and five from a special project. Since I'd totally be fighting dinosaurs in real life right now if I could, this is not a hard goal to meet.
6 commendations a day means you can get to 40 in a week. The dilithium's pretty good, too.
I haven't seen people offer to go into their completed Fleet Holdings without paying a tens of millions of EC.
Nerds of Prey do.
If nobody is running Fleet Events even during the Fleet Mark event, you can't buy anything.
Can't say I've ever had this problem. Just about everything gives fleet marks, now, including the new Elachi Alert and all the Voth ones.
That may have been good for me if it was not WRONG... The Devs apparently have no concept of just how unbelievably and incomprehensibly BIG a Dyson's Sphere would be.
What do I mean? I mean that you can SEE the curvature of the sphere and details of the sphere behind the star... Really? Assuming that Star is somewhat close to the size of our sun then the sphere would need to be around at LEAST half the distance between us and Venus away from that Star in order to support life as we know it. That means that the Sphere would rest in an orbit that far out.
So with that in mind there is NO WAY you could even PERCEIVE the curvature of the Sphere's surface from inside it. Nor would you be able to make out ANY detail of the sphere behind the star. It would just be an ambient glow like when the sun shines on the Zodiac and we get false dawns here on Terra.
I know they did it for dramatic effect and to copy Halo but the Halo's were planet sized and it just does not work.
You probably just don't realize how immensely big your ship is, lol.
Can't say I've ever had this problem. Just about everything gives fleet marks, now, including the new Elachi Alert and all the Voth ones.
But that's comparing a trickle to a river. That's a lot more work to advance a fleet, especially small fleets that are such in a situation you can only focus on one fleet holding at a time, unlike large fleets who can do projects in all holdings.
Which exactly why S8 is more of a grind, because there is more fleet holdings and not every fleet has even finished their Embassies (especially with it costing 2 million dilithium).
But that's comparing a trickle to a river. That's a lot more work to advance a fleet, especially small fleets that are such in a situation you can only focus on one fleet holding at a time, unlike large fleets who can do projects in all holdings.
Which exactly why S8 is more of a grind, because there is more fleet holdings and not every fleet has even finished their Embassies (especially with it costing 2 million dilithium).
On the upside, I did notice that Dithithium prices towards fleet projects are much, much less than previous holdings; a little over 10,000 Dilithium the first 2 projects I slotted for my fleet, which is fairly achievable by small fleets. But AFAIK, the price'll only go up instead of staying where it's at. We'll see.
At least there is one great feature to season 8 ..... the new Fed tutorial
but what really grinds my gears is the complete lack of thought for the overall STO story. Feds are at war with the klingons but both willing to be in alliance with each other for almost everything?? the romulans are more federation like than the federation and where are the borg on the dyson sphere? surely they would have found out about it since they make regular incursions in every sector block and omega is meant ti be their version of perfection :rolleyes:
I think everyone is over reacting. I logged in and 10:02 am on the 12th and went to the sphere. when i got to the contested zone there were so many ships in there i couldnt get a shot off. However between space and ground i got nearly 300 marks in a couple hours. Its strikes me as ironic that people are complaining about not having to wait in queues to log in. If we did have these issues you all would be in here griping about how you can play cause the servers are inadequate. Are you hoping for emergency maintnence and and downtimes? enjoy the game, cause that is what it is.
Atleast you can log in and not get disconnected before trying to select a character
I do honestly think the reason for that though is the loyal player base that would come around for a few months after each new season heard or saw what season 8 was about and decided not to return TBH.
Was a risky move with the voth but as much as I would like STO to succeed I think the title of the thread isn't far from the tree.
Ok so its free content but I went to the sphere and it didn't seem to have that much structure like other posters have said it steers you to the ground missions and as an engineer im all for ground missions.
but when you get into space its typical "dps = win" mechanics.
I asked if there were stfs I didn't even realise there was the breech which I completed and I thought its fun but then I felt. Hey isn't this a giant floating city isn't this like the breen bombing earth.
so I felt bad.
I wouldn't say its a failure but I dunno it doesn't really hark to that much content its grinding veiled as content and I never was one for mindless grinding to get stuff.
I asked if there were stfs I didn't even realise there was the breech which I completed and I thought its fun but then I felt. Hey isn't this a giant floating city isn't this like the breen bombing earth.
Ok so its free content but I went to the sphere and it didn't seem to have that much structure like other posters have said it steers you to the ground missions and as an engineer im all for ground missions.
but when you get into space its typical "dps = win" mechanics.
I love ground combat and I have to say that I really enjoy playing in the Battlezone.
New stf's not bad's, they will be ok for some week's.
New reputation is good, just played 1 day and 1200+ dyson mark, daily missions are very fast, so will not problem with this reputation.
space adventure zones are very boring
ground adventure zone is just a little boring
totally s8 is boring unfortuantely.
On the upside, I did notice that Dithithium prices towards fleet projects are much, much less than previous holdings; a little over 10,000 Dilithium the first 2 projects I slotted for my fleet, which is fairly achievable by small fleets. But AFAIK, the price'll only go up instead of staying where it's at. We'll see.
That depends if you completed the Dilithum Mine. The two fleets I'm at, just recently completed Tier 2, which is only like 1/2 of the discount. And it's not enough, especially cutting down that insane 1million Dilithium uipgrade projects (which is now like 950000).
Fleet marks aren't the problem, nor are the general commodities needed for base rep projects. It's the dilithium and DOFF requirements IMO.
PWE is hoping people in those small fleets will buy ZEN to convert to dilithium for rep projects rather than grind it out for a decade or so.
Exactly they want us to, but my fleet will not. We refuse to spend real money for bad content. And we have been burnt out on grinding before S8 rolled out, S8 is just a kick in the groin. All we need is someone act as Shang Tsung and say "Finish him!" to deliver the impact.
first huge spike was the F2P launch, next huge Spike was LoR...
and with S8 the numbers are going up again slightly, it is too early to tell how big this spike will be (lets give it a week or two) but so far ... lets zoom in a little on the last few days
i see there is a clear increase from a 3000 average over the last week more towards 4000
so i'd say... roughly 25% increase in Playerbase numbers so far.
Of course there are more players than just Steam, but its a good indication of what is going on percentage wise.
Personally, for a huge Season update, i have not seen everything so far, but this feels rather lackluster so far.
What i really don't get is why Cryptic keeps insisting on creating more of these "Adventure Zones" and Reputation and Fleet Systems... neither Defera, Nukara or New Romulus were really that awesome, granted they are getting better at doing those things, but why keep polishing something that the players don't want anyway?
We want new weekly FE Series, where are those Foundry improvements from Neverwinter... that are being talked about for 2 years now?
The DOff System is stagnating since Heretic left, anything PvP or Exploration would be very welcome too.... nope more Reputation Stuff... more Fleet grind... that i don't even need to participate in because my fleet has the stuff filled while i don't even bother to log in anymore.
The PvE content is so easy mode that i don't need the power creep from the Reputation System anyway and PvP is so dead they could just delete it, i wouldn't notice.
But maybe i'm just burned out after 6000 hrs playtime over 4 years and 11 Characters... i will force myself to log in a few more times to explore a bit more of the new content. But i don't see me getting back into grind mode again.
Because I could actually log into the game and play it within the first hour of release. I don't consider a new expansion to be a success unless I actually have trouble logging in with all the other players stretching the server capacity to its limit. Like with LoR.
Because I can do the Breach on elite once per day and have my reputation projects filled for that day.
Because the Dyson sphere doesn't offer anything beyond "fly around and shoot and grind for marks".
Because Voth ships tank and do nothing else. I took out a fleet of 3 Voth battleships and various frigates by myself in a JHDC and the most annoying part was that it just took a while.
Because I encountered one or two players at the most in every Dyson space map.
Because the control levels in each zone mean nothing and do nothing to advance the allied presence in the Dyson Sphere besides letting me fly around a little faster than usual.
Because the Fleet Spire is just another fleet holding that I can build without doing any of the Season 8 content.
Because the most fun part of Season 8 that I had was Sphere of Influence. Y'know, the only mission that advanced the plot.
But what's worse than Season 8 being a failure is that it is a disappointment.
Here's a TLDR summary of the above that's simpler:
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..."
That depends if you completed the Dilithum Mine. The two fleets I'm at, just recently completed Tier 2, which is only like 1/2 of the discount. And it's not enough, especially cutting down that insane 1million Dilithium uipgrade projects (which is now like 950000).
We haven't even gotten to Tier 2 on the Dilithium Mine, and I'm seeing that all we need to donate Dilithium-wise is a little over 10k, though like I said, I suspect the price'll go up, which is not a good idea IMO.
Comments
The tutorial and Sphere of Influence were getting rave reviews because they accomplished what they were designed for. They're good, well-crafted story content.
The Dyson Sphere wasn't designed as story content. It was designed for replayability due to being tied to a reputation system. The problem is that it quickly stops being fun after the first go around(assuming it was even fun at all). Its the reason why the season is getting rotten reviews.
Very much agreed! I have my dislikes too but am still quit satisfied with the content and the marks and pace of the missions.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I guess you can't make everyone happy.
- Lewis Burwell "chesty" Puller
How Romulans Should Choose What Faction They Are In
Yeah, and after I spent all of those fleet marks getting my diplomacy skills up...
hek the fed tutorial is getting better reviews then the whole season is
system Lord Baal is dead
I doubt they are reading this dribble. I would have read the first page or so and decided the flaming was enough. I would have moved on to reading something more delightful about those who appreciate my months of hardwork. It's one thing to give constructive feedback but its another to just rant about all that is wrong with S8.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I blew up some dino's with lasers, took some areas that reminded me of SWTOR retreads in their pvp battle zones.
So honestly, what was worth a season's of conent? It was more like an opening epsiode and that's about it. Why I don't even call it a season.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
My thoughts as well. I am very happy about the rep changes. I have 15 toons and refused to do it on all but a couple because it was just too crazy and time consuming. I just leveled 3 people in one day to tier 1 Romulan by using that token. I'm excited that my alts will now be able to level up their reps in a reasonable amount of time and less grind.
As for the new rep, I'm very happy with marks awarded for ground. Cryptic has their cooldowns to pace things and I don't have to be restricted to playing space or ground. There are many different missions and type of activities to do both on ground in space and even in STF styled PvEs. With awards like they are I have hope that I can do all the things in game I need to now. N more do I have to decide do I need marks or dilithium? Do I have time for the big project or just the little one. I can earn everything at the same time and faster which allows me to play other game content too. Instead of just the grind for the reps.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
I like your post, but my experience of S8 is very different from yours.
I'm not much younger than you (44) and would agree about the short attention span of many people, though I don't think I have such a problem (I've recently read Buddenbrooks and War and Peace....good luck on that to those with ADHD). I'll start out by agreeing with you about the artwork - kudos to the designers on so many lovely vistas. The beauty of what they've done should not be overshadowed by my overall negative review of S8.
One more side point before getting to the meat of my post: I too deplore the negative nellies who consistently troll MMORPG forums. They are toxic and do a huge disservice to their community and to game developers. It seems that constructive criticism gets lost in the ocean of sewage that the number one sport in America - disgruntled anonymous sniping- produces. I don't post much in this forum because from prior MMORPG experience, I've found that the bile found in forums like this materially detracted from my enjoyment of the game. That said, I feel constructive criticism is essential and the sliver of a chance that it will be heard makes it worth the attempt to provide it.
In my opinion, STO has had a long-term problem that seems only to be getting worse. Between fleet holdings and reputation, there is simply too much grinding. We are given "bars to reach" that do not entice with pleasurable gameplay but mostly require repetitive action to achieve. Though I like a lot of the consoles available in the Fleet spire, for what purpose am I now improving my ships? So I can squash STFs faster?
I really enjoyed the episodes added in LoR a lot. I didn't particularly enjoy the S8 tutorial arc, particularly since the tutorial didn't lead to much but a whole new world of grinding. As beautiful as I find much of S8, it is a very empty beauty not backed up by the content which is for me one of two things: compelling storyline or compelling gameplay. I am disappointed in how little I enjoy going through this pretty content. For a moment, I was eager for more Elite STFs but my actual experience of them was flat.
That being said, I would like to point out that I did buy the lifetime subscription yesterday. I am not a hypocrite, I just can't resist a good sale. Joking aside, I actually bought the subscription for two reasons: if they could create episodes like the ones in LoR, I believe they can and will do it again in the future; and because I've got a great group of friends/fleet that I look forward to hanging out with in TS. I can't resist saying that the biggest draw this game has on me now is playing it with my fleetmates, who had me laughing so hard last night I couldn't catch my breath for almost 15 minutes. We're already nibbling at other games...STO's going to have to do better in the future to keep us. For now, we'll likely go back to grinding STF's and Defera invasion zone to make progress on our fleet, but that pleasure has already seen a great deal of wear and tear.
Again, great job on the visuals, folks. Very poor job on the story line and gameplay. Overall a very poor episode in my assessment.
That may have been good for me if it was not WRONG... The Devs apparently have no concept of just how unbelievably and incomprehensibly BIG a Dyson's Sphere would be.
What do I mean? I mean that you can SEE the curvature of the sphere and details of the sphere behind the star... Really? Assuming that Star is somewhat close to the size of our sun then the sphere would need to be around at LEAST half the distance between us and Venus away from that Star in order to support life as we know it. That means that the Sphere would rest in an orbit that far out.
So with that in mind there is NO WAY you could even PERCEIVE the curvature of the Sphere's surface from inside it. Nor would you be able to make out ANY detail of the sphere behind the star. It would just be an ambient glow like when the sun shines on the Zodiac and we get false dawns here on Terra.
I know they did it for dramatic effect and to copy Halo but the Halo's were planet sized and it just does not work.
Being able to see it was probably an artistic choice. A big, empty void would have been scientifically accurate, but it also would have been boring. It wouldn't have looked any different from the space maps we're used to seeing and, ironically enough, might not have conveyed a sense of scale.
IMHO, showing the ceiling was prolly the best choice.
S8 is "less grindy"? Like to know which universe you are from, so I can play that STO. :rolleyes:
Let's forget about the Reputation grind, there is a new Fleet Holding that requires MORE Fleet Mark Grinding and Dilithum Grinding using the same content that's nearly 2 years old now. And small fleets are dying because Cryptic doesn't care about them, people literally drudge for hours working on Fleet Marks so their fleet can somewhat compete with Large Fleets, but Large Fleets get done with the new content within a month, while we have to work for hours on end working on Fleet Marks and dilithum and 6 months later unlock Tier 2.
Please, please, tell me what about this is "fun" and not something to complain about?
I plan on having everything I need to max out the Voth rep by roughly a week after launch, without doing any special grinding.
I run a small fleet myself, and hopefully that'll be fixed someday. In the meantime, there are entire organizations devoted to giving fleet stuff away for free.
I'm assuming stockpiling on Voth Implants and convert them into Dyson Commendations?
I haven't seen people offer to go into their completed Fleet Holdings without paying a tens of millions of EC.
Besides, you still need Fleet Credits, Dilithium, and Provisions to buy Fleet Items. Which you need Fleet Marks to do so. If nobody is running Fleet Events even during the Fleet Mark event, you can't buy anything.
I hadn't even thought of that, but no, it's not necessary.
You need 40 commendations in order to max it out. Just fighting in the battlezone for an hour or two every day can give you a one from a daily, and five from a special project. Since I'd totally be fighting dinosaurs in real life right now if I could, this is not a hard goal to meet.
6 commendations a day means you can get to 40 in a week. The dilithium's pretty good, too.
Nerds of Prey do.
Can't say I've ever had this problem. Just about everything gives fleet marks, now, including the new Elachi Alert and all the Voth ones.
But that's comparing a trickle to a river. That's a lot more work to advance a fleet, especially small fleets that are such in a situation you can only focus on one fleet holding at a time, unlike large fleets who can do projects in all holdings.
Which exactly why S8 is more of a grind, because there is more fleet holdings and not every fleet has even finished their Embassies (especially with it costing 2 million dilithium).
but what really grinds my gears is the complete lack of thought for the overall STO story. Feds are at war with the klingons but both willing to be in alliance with each other for almost everything?? the romulans are more federation like than the federation and where are the borg on the dyson sphere? surely they would have found out about it since they make regular incursions in every sector block and omega is meant ti be their version of perfection :rolleyes:
I do honestly think the reason for that though is the loyal player base that would come around for a few months after each new season heard or saw what season 8 was about and decided not to return TBH.
Was a risky move with the voth but as much as I would like STO to succeed I think the title of the thread isn't far from the tree.
Ok so its free content but I went to the sphere and it didn't seem to have that much structure like other posters have said it steers you to the ground missions and as an engineer im all for ground missions.
but when you get into space its typical "dps = win" mechanics.
I asked if there were stfs I didn't even realise there was the breech which I completed and I thought its fun but then I felt. Hey isn't this a giant floating city isn't this like the breen bombing earth.
so I felt bad.
I wouldn't say its a failure but I dunno it doesn't really hark to that much content its grinding veiled as content and I never was one for mindless grinding to get stuff.
My feelings exactly
I love ground combat and I have to say that I really enjoy playing in the Battlezone.
New reputation is good, just played 1 day and 1200+ dyson mark, daily missions are very fast, so will not problem with this reputation.
space adventure zones are very boring
ground adventure zone is just a little boring
totally s8 is boring unfortuantely.
That depends if you completed the Dilithum Mine. The two fleets I'm at, just recently completed Tier 2, which is only like 1/2 of the discount. And it's not enough, especially cutting down that insane 1million Dilithium uipgrade projects (which is now like 950000).
Exactly they want us to, but my fleet will not. We refuse to spend real money for bad content. And we have been burnt out on grinding before S8 rolled out, S8 is just a kick in the groin. All we need is someone act as Shang Tsung and say "Finish him!" to deliver the impact.
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=9900&from=1325372400000&to=End+Time
first huge spike was the F2P launch, next huge Spike was LoR...
and with S8 the numbers are going up again slightly, it is too early to tell how big this spike will be (lets give it a week or two) but so far ... lets zoom in a little on the last few days
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=9900&from=1377986400000&to=End+Time
i see there is a clear increase from a 3000 average over the last week more towards 4000
so i'd say... roughly 25% increase in Playerbase numbers so far.
Of course there are more players than just Steam, but its a good indication of what is going on percentage wise.
Personally, for a huge Season update, i have not seen everything so far, but this feels rather lackluster so far.
What i really don't get is why Cryptic keeps insisting on creating more of these "Adventure Zones" and Reputation and Fleet Systems... neither Defera, Nukara or New Romulus were really that awesome, granted they are getting better at doing those things, but why keep polishing something that the players don't want anyway?
We want new weekly FE Series, where are those Foundry improvements from Neverwinter... that are being talked about for 2 years now?
The DOff System is stagnating since Heretic left, anything PvP or Exploration would be very welcome too.... nope more Reputation Stuff... more Fleet grind... that i don't even need to participate in because my fleet has the stuff filled while i don't even bother to log in anymore.
The PvE content is so easy mode that i don't need the power creep from the Reputation System anyway and PvP is so dead they could just delete it, i wouldn't notice.
But maybe i'm just burned out after 6000 hrs playtime over 4 years and 11 Characters... i will force myself to log in a few more times to explore a bit more of the new content. But i don't see me getting back into grind mode again.
That is pretty much my first impression so far.
Here's a TLDR summary of the above that's simpler:
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
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..."
We haven't even gotten to Tier 2 on the Dilithium Mine, and I'm seeing that all we need to donate Dilithium-wise is a little over 10k, though like I said, I suspect the price'll go up, which is not a good idea IMO.