I agree on some points made in this thread, and disagree strongly with others..
STO is far from the best MMO, though it may very possibly have the best F2P model going. PWI last financial statement certainly seems to show numbers that support that premise. (its available online.. I just did a google search.. easy peasy!)
Comparing it to other MMO's is a bit of a waste. People say WOW is dying.. yea well WOW still has over 7 million subscribers..and its what still 15 per month.. so its bringing in $105,000,000 per month, and they do have a cash shop besides.... Thats well over one BILLION dollars per year... honestly.. thay seem pretty far from being dead or dying! Its still the King of the MMO's because there is no MMO more polished. Polished in defferent ways.. but more polished? Not even possible. It's doing so well, that it supports thier more "artistic" games, and Battlenet.
(recall those other Blizzard products that don't have cash shops.. Like Starcraft-II)
From a game standpoint, it's got some problems under the hood. To many shineys made that have had the math pumped to the point where PvP play is a special subset of play that is far from enjoyable to the casual player. If you go into a PvP match with a ship and players are making one pass kills on you with a total engagement time against your ship of under 5 seconds, theres a problem there.. When your game players have to create a PvP boot camp just to introduce players to PvP and teach them its "secret" inner working... because it NOT obvious.. thats also a problem. Might as well just change the math and the system.. you get your shot off first you win.. I came to STO from a trek game that was all about PvP. And PvP there was entirely player skill based. SHips counted, but a skilled player could do things with even the tinest more fragile ships that would just blow peoples minds... I used to go into voice coms and play folks.. I had a promise I made.. If I couldn't improve your play with 15 min of coaching then you got your virtual money back (there wasn't any virtual money, but the thought counted!)
Its got one other problem and its the one I consider the 800 lbs gorilla in the closet. That problem is Star Trek. Star Trek was about exploring. It was about examining who, and what we are. Challenging our assumptions. It was also about saving "all we know" from horrific threats. We seem to have the "Horrific threat" portion in the game totally down for the most part.
The Borg
The Voth
The Undine
The Iconians
The Tholians
there's also a bunch of minor threats. But the story arc of the Alpha quadrant hasn't moved forward at all. it is STILL 2409, 4 years after the game has launched... we ever going to see 2410?
I can go on for pages. And I can get into detail.. a lot of detail.
STO is far from being the over all best MMO. Like it or not, fan or not.. the number pretty much say that WOW is still the top of the heap in the US. If you go to Korea the king of MMO's there is **** from NCsoft. Move around the globe and you'll find games you've never heard of which are amazingly good.
It may very well be the best F2P MMO in the US, as far as access to content in concerned and in some cases cash shop pricing.. a lot of other F2P titles have a whole lot of content locked behind pay walls, or have a P2W scheme going. We have PWI's other titles we can look at as an example, and they are not the worst of the lot.
DO not misunderstand me. If it wasn't for the IP I wouldn't be posting. I would have stopped playing years ago. As a "starship combat game" it stinks in multi player. To much stat creep. Too many synergies... too much in love with the numbers and not nearly sufficient attention to game play balance.. not between ships... but between PLAYERS.
If your going to have a PvP game then the gap between in game haves and have nots combat power needs to be whole lot narrower. The reason for this is called customer retention..
I wonder if Cryptic has even a clue how many players its lost because of the PvP imbalances.
If you PvP think about this.. Captain Joe X. He's got his shiney lock box ship.. hes got decent Mk XI and XII purple gear slotted, BOFF and DOFFS assigned. Capt Joe drops into a PvP arena.. Captain joe spend the next 15 min dying.. a lot. Captain Joe dig into the forums to figure out what he's doing wrong. After about 5 shots of doing this and just being slaughtered to add to some one elses life time kill count Captain Joe gives up on PvP after being quite disillusioned by it. Captain Joe, now having tasted PvP wants no more of it.. and now Captain Joe starts noticing all those little... flaws.. he never noticed before...
Captain joe stops spending money.. after a while Captain Joe is no more because he's moved on to another MMO.
This happens constantly. Customers that don't stay, don't spend. I'm concerned.
I am very concerned that the studio is paying a bit to much attention to their "Numerics"
The problem with polls, and numerics is the information you get from them is automaticly and arbitrarily effected by now the data is gathered. and, there are massive holes in the data.
one of the things I feel is missing, is the studio just is not collecting nformation from players that leave the game... mostly because they don't track them very well, if at all.. It's a F2P "casual" game.. so players that are no longer active simply fall off the chart. a player that logs in every few weeks is not an active player.. thats someone who checking in to see if things for them have improved. I would honestly love to know some of the real numbers.. I've been a life long gamer..(more then 4 decades) started playing computer games in the late 80's. I want ot see use statistic not total numbers. Big number are great "oh wow" stuff, but they don't tell you anything. Recall a few weeks back that great bit of numerics, x voth city ships destroyed etc.. great hype.. told me NOTHING about the state of the game. As information for someone analyzing whats happening with the product there was pretty much zero use full information there.
Creating a "Game" is an artistic endevor. It's not like building a car, or a house, or anything else. Everything your dealing with is an intangible. As a computer game it so wonderfully lucrative.. You build a 3d object in the game once, and its built forever. If it take 3 artists getting paid oh heck lets be generous.. $50 per hour 80 hours each to create a ship, and the interior of the ship, and extra parts, and textures etc. ok, so do the math.. one ship complete.. $12,000 (and yes I am going over the top.. its an example) to create that one ship. So its a premium ship.. going to sell it for $25.. you only need to sell 480 of them to make your money back.. after that its all profit.. every last penny over and above operating costs and maintenance. Some ships sell better then others, but eventually you reach the break even point and after that its all gravy. Not the most exact or specific example, with a great deal left out... but it gives the general idea... even if it cost the studio over all 30 grand to make a ship model and interior eventually those cost are recouped, and after that it pure profit. And if you can find a way to get your customers to over pay for the product (lock box ships) thats even better! Oh how the money rolls in.
Got nothin against the studio, it's employees, its exectives and management, owner, and their stock holders making money.. even lots of money. Just don't be pulling our collective legs on how difficult it is when it pretty obvious its not that difficult at all once you get rolling. And STO hit that point about a year back.
I rather doubt that it running Cryptic 12 grand per ship model. But, I could be wrong.. but they only have to make the ship one time. It might change a little later, get refined a tad (like the dreadnaught cruiser) but for the most part its a one time expense! And, at a certain level, its a capital expence. You spend the money to make the money..
Grocery store operate as businesses making pennies on the dollar. An MMO operator has it so much easier once you have an actuall product. STO is just the frame work for the product.. what the studio and PWI make thier money on is not the STO MMO.. it's free to play. They make thier money on the cash shop... (and a truely indecent amount of it on chance boxes.. just my opinion but still.. sheesh!).
STO Makes dollars on the penny. A lot of dollars on the pennies. I don't think its terribly, or even remotely unfair to ask for a quantum increase in over all quality. Turn half the game profit back into the game to improve it, and we'll get a whole lot of improvement once the lag between hired, and skilled closes (3 months to a year depending on personnel available). We've all ready seen this happen once. Worked great the first time.. do it again! Add another 15-30 dev staff, and start planning long term so the ponies are all ready lined up at release. so you get that same sort of mostly seam less transition (like what blizzard manages to do ya know?)
Find a way some how to give us more of that Star Trek spirit in the game. Pew pew, kill kill and get the goodies is all well and good, but its very shallow game play. My previous trek game I played was all about pew pew, kill kill, and there were no goodies to speak of.. and technically it wasn't a MMO to begin with. It was a single player game with a multiplayer game added on. At first pretty much arena style play.. Later a full on war/campaign was added to the series and it flat took off and turned into an MMO.. (and Sierra/Dynamix had no clue what they had..the only people then with any experience with MMO also didn't have to much in the way of clues either.. MMO's were so new, that they wern't even called MMO yet) But strangly nuff... for all the pew pew, kill kill, it somehow managed to still be star trek.. It just felt right.
(...and it was not prime universe, or JJ verse... it was all licenced from Paramount, not CBS, and the core game from a table top game maker known as ADB/Task force games.. it was a conversion of a table top game and is STILL the best starship combat game on many level thats ever been made for computer play)
I don't know where STO is going.... there are no obvious direction. It feels muddled, and like a accretion of a bunch of disparate elements. The only thing I do in game that even remotely makes me feel like a star ship captain is DOFF missions. But I don't send my BOFF's off to do anything... aren't they supposed to be my ships department heads? There are game elements common to MMO that have entirely fallen by the wayside. I haven't really done any crafting in game since they added dilithium to crafting. Why should I spend how ever much dilithium to make a MK XI weapon when I can spend nearly the same amount at a fleet vendor to get a Mk XII fleet version of a weapon that is sooooooooooo much better?
I've been here 4 years, and I am not happy with STO. To many things un done, un completed. To many changes that have not improved PvP balance, only made it far far worse.
even more grind added.. Hey.. a "casual" MMO? if its a casuall MMO what the hell is with all the grinding? Grinding is not casual.. its work. And it gets un fun real fast. Grind content is not story content. Grind content does not move the story for the game or the player forward.
I promised myself only 4 paragraphs.. I've gone way beyond that.
To the OP. STO could possibly eventually turn out to be "the best" MMO on the market, but its not there yet. On the other hand it could possibly turn out to be the most profitable MMO on the market by far with in the next couple years. My feeling is in reality thats where the game is headed.. just sufficient product quality to get by. My feeling form "out Here" is the product is more about making money. And to be realistic it needs to be... Its a great racket if you can break into it as the saying goes. But I want desperately to see more of the "Quality goes in before the name goes on".
I hope the game will improve.. but the future is still very muddled.
Could you possible be more trite?! And you're flat-out wrong too, btw. In a seller/buyer relationship, the optimum, for both parties involved, is where the customer is 100% satisfied: the seller thus gets to sell everything, and the buyer wants to buy everything. Anything < 100% customer satisfaction is where both suffer.
To put this in the proper historical perspective I will give you a slightly edited quote that shows you what ACTUAL manufacturers really think: "Players can have any color of ship they want as long as they want grey."
Guess who said the non edited version? I'll give you a hint, he was one of the most successful (and famous) automobile manufacturers in history.
To some people STO is the best MMO, to others its not, its all a matter of opinion.
I think its not bad, its not the best IMO, it would be very hard for me to pick which MMO I think is the best. I am playing a lot of SWToR at the moment and very little of STO but that's just because I'm enjoying ToR at the moment... not that I think its better. I am rambling, I do like the character customization for STO and that you can hide the armor, reminds me of SWG, I used to spend more time changing my character than anything else.
And 99% of the things I've asked for have been utterly ignored. Egocentrism has a funny way of applying just to yourself.
It does apply to just myself, which means in my opinion things are more or less fine. I've never insinuated I speak for anyone else.
Could you possible be more trite?! And you're flat-out wrong too, btw. In a seller/buyer relationship, the optimum, for both parties involved, is where the customer is 100% satisfied: the seller thus gets to sell everything, and the buyer wants to buy everything. Anything < 100% customer satisfaction is where both suffer.
You're looking at this as a singular buyer/seller relationship in a very traditional way. MMOs are not a traditional business model. They are made up of demographics, marketing decisions, and trying to please whatever demographic pays the most.
If I want pink polka dots on my starships with glowy particles, and another player does not want that, then you can not possibly satisfy both. There's no 100% satisfaction when it comes to MMOs. They are a series of compromises. They always have been, they always will be.
As previously stated, the playerbase of STO can never be united on any issue, so I do believe you are the one who is wrong on this point.
Textbook psycho-babble. Q would have a field day with you.
This is not about Cryptic not being allowed to make mistake (very touching; honestly, there could be tears). This is about Cryptic wilfully ignoring their mistakes: never fixing long-standing bugs (because there's always the next buck around the corner that takes priority). This is about ppl saying "We don't want a lockbox system!" Then Cryptic introduces it anyway. This is about ppl saying "We don't want Arc!" Then Cryptic passiive-aggressively removes one forum 'backend' feature after another, slow-boiling you into having to use Arc anyway.
So, don't give me the downtrodden "We're all just human." routine.
I'm amused that you think 'ppl' are united on this subject. 'ppl' are never unanimous in any decision in terms of STO, as previously pointed out.
However, you did answer your own criticism. It's about money. The game is f2p. Lockboxes are optional and a way to make additional income. Arc is... well, it's not the end of the world and while I may not be 100% happy with it, it's going to happen. What's really funny is this isn't going to bother most people. If it was, I think they'd have noticed that.
The fact they're willing to be open to feedback regarding Arc is a type of compromise. Yes, they're shoving Arc onto us. This is a negative.
The compromise is they're shoving it onto us with the auspice that they are reading and responding to feedback. They know many people are not happy with it, but this is what compromise is.
While I agree with the forum utilities being removed or being made more convoluted, this is ultimately not pertinent to the game itself.
You make good points, but in the end you don't prove anything other than 'ppl' are in disagreement over various things -- and you show a very sincere ignorance regarding revenue intake in regards to the MMO industry. You don't speak for a majority of people anymore than I do.
To put this in the proper historical perspective I will give you a slightly edited quote that shows you what ACTUAL manufacturers really think: "Players can have any color of ship they want as long as they want grey."
Guess who said the non edited version? I'll give you a hint, he was one of the most successful (and famous) automobile manufacturers in history.
I'm going with DeLorean. Am I right? What do I win?
Originally Posted by markhawkman
To put this in the proper historical perspective I will give you a slightly edited quote that shows you what ACTUAL manufacturers really think: "Players can have any color of ship they want as long as they want grey."
Guess who said the non edited version? I'll give you a hint, he was one of the most successful (and famous) automobile manufacturers in history.
I'm going with DeLorean. Am I right? What do I win?
Delorean was FAR from successful ultimately. It was probably Henry Ford.
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..."
Don't get me wrong. STO has a laundry list of problems, many of them completely arbitrary and easily fixable. But in spite of it's myriad issues, after about a half a year of bouncing from MMO to MMO, I can safely say that Star Trek Online stands tall as the best MMO on the market, and here's why:
1. What's in a name? A lot actually.
I can name my captain whatever I want. That might seem like a silly thing to put as No. 1 but after seeing 50 variations of XXXSUPER_HAXORS_360NOSCOPES_1997XXX it makes me really happy to be able to name a character "Steve Buscemi" and call it a day. As an added perk, it's easier to see your captain as an actual character in a story if they have a real name. It's hard to be immersed in a story if you're characters name is ULTIMATE90SGIRL27.
Bonus Round: Want to change your name in STO? It's about $4 USD. In TERA? About $10. Not even kidding.
If I'm bored, I can walk up to any tailor in any social zone and immediately change my captain into a completely different character if I so wish. Sure it costs a little bit of Energy Credits, but you can get them without trying. In other MMO's I've tried? Be prepared to fork over $10 or even $20 USD every time you feel like wearing a different haircut.
3. Fear the Tux. Fear it.
In STO, what armour you have on has no impact on what you actually look like. In fact, other than Champions, APB Reloaded, and the now defunct CoH/CoV I don't know of any other MMO's that do this. In every other MMO, it's always "Too bad that 10th level armour looks so cool with it's gold flame patterns, it's stats are terrible compared to that 30th level potato sack with the all the high res texture quality of mud.
Bonus Round: Some MMO's let you use premium outfits to change end level gear. Too bad you wasted $20 because the new patch is out, and all the new endgame sets are much better than anything you currently have.
4. Time limits are terrible.
In far, far too many MMO's, items you earn are temporary. Felt like taking a break? Wanted to play something else for a little while? Too bad. It's been 30 day's since you last logged out and all your best items/costumes have disappeared. Don't have enough money to buy them again? Time to grind for them all over again~! At least the time limits in STO GIVE you stuff.
5. Community? Well, I hear it's a show.
Many, many MMO forums are complete utter wastelands. Nary a post, nary a community manager, not a single dev. STO however has one of the most vibrant and colourful communities on the internet.
6. Devs that listen.
Okay, okay, they're not perfect, and a lot of requests go ignored. (William Ware Theiss costumes? Where are they!?!?!) But they do visit the forums, and it's fairly easy to talk to them if you know where to look. Sure, it might take them 3 1/2 years but they do listen.
And I think I'll stop it here. I've given enough ammo for the trolls to blow over for now. :P
#1 - Paid name changes via automated systems = ridiculous in any game.
#2 & #3 - the "dress up" system you hyped across two points came from Champions Online, in spite of your claim, and other games do it all as well or better, for free.
#4 - STO has limited duration items too and no amount of passed time rewards players with anything for free.
#5 - Is nonsense, this is just another MMO wasteland.
#6 - The last time I read this much vacuous nonsense it was coming from the Pro-Cryptic propaganda team during the "Thread War over the Galaxy Announcement Backlash" where they steadfastly posted wave after wave of fanboigurl comments, forum rules be damned!
Next time you want to "demo-reel" for Cryptic to show them you have "the right stuff", post a video on YouTube.
EDIT: Oh and before I forget - STO only exists because of the Star Trek IP; if you want a good game from Cryptic Champion's Online (which was used for much of this game's base development) is superior by factors of "huge numbers."
EDIT: Oh and before I forget - STO only exists because of the Star Trek IP; if you want a good game from Cryptic Champion's Online (which was used for much of this game's base development) is superior by factors of "huge numbers."
I will readily admit that the likelihood of my having even tried this game if it were not a Star Trek game would have been slim to none. But that alone would not have made me stay here, nor start spending more time here than in other games. I'm not going to name names, but there are some truly clueless game developers and publishers out there; Cryptic and PWE are doing considerably well, and I expect that to continue to be the case (I also expect them to improve). If the game should become terrible, the Star Trek name on it wouldn't keep me here.
While this game does still have room for improvement, some gamers would complain no matter how excellent it became; I've seen it in other games from other developers and other publishers, and it is usually at least somewhat ridiculous (even in those cases where the games are in serious need of improvement), but here, the negativity expressed by some is simply outrageously irrational.
Don't get me wrong. STO has a laundry list of problems, many of them completely arbitrary and easily fixable. But in spite of it's myriad issues, after about a half a year of bouncing from MMO to MMO, I can safely say that Star Trek Online stands tall as the best MMO on the market, and here's why:
1. What's in a name? A lot actually.
I can name my captain whatever I want. That might seem like a silly thing to put as No. 1 but after seeing 50 variations of XXXSUPER_HAXORS_360NOSCOPES_1997XXX it makes me really happy to be able to name a character "Steve Buscemi" and call it a day. As an added perk, it's easier to see your captain as an actual character in a story if they have a real name. It's hard to be immersed in a story if you're characters name is ULTIMATE90SGIRL27.
Bonus Round: Want to change your name in STO? It's about $4 USD. In TERA? About $10. Not even kidding.
If I'm bored, I can walk up to any tailor in any social zone and immediately change my captain into a completely different character if I so wish. Sure it costs a little bit of Energy Credits, but you can get them without trying. In other MMO's I've tried? Be prepared to fork over $10 or even $20 USD every time you feel like wearing a different haircut.
3. Fear the Tux. Fear it.
In STO, what armour you have on has no impact on what you actually look like. In fact, other than Champions, APB Reloaded, and the now defunct CoH/CoV I don't know of any other MMO's that do this. In every other MMO, it's always "Too bad that 10th level armour looks so cool with it's gold flame patterns, it's stats are terrible compared to that 30th level potato sack with the all the high res texture quality of mud.
Bonus Round: Some MMO's let you use premium outfits to change end level gear. Too bad you wasted $20 because the new patch is out, and all the new endgame sets are much better than anything you currently have.
4. Time limits are terrible.
In far, far too many MMO's, items you earn are temporary. Felt like taking a break? Wanted to play something else for a little while? Too bad. It's been 30 day's since you last logged out and all your best items/costumes have disappeared. Don't have enough money to buy them again? Time to grind for them all over again~! At least the time limits in STO GIVE you stuff.
5. Community? Well, I hear it's a show.
Many, many MMO forums are complete utter wastelands. Nary a post, nary a community manager, not a single dev. STO however has one of the most vibrant and colourful communities on the internet.
6. Devs that listen.
Okay, okay, they're not perfect, and a lot of requests go ignored. (William Ware Theiss costumes? Where are they!?!?!) But they do visit the forums, and it's fairly easy to talk to them if you know where to look. Sure, it might take them 3 1/2 years but they do listen.
And I think I'll stop it here. I've given enough ammo for the trolls to blow over for now. :P
All the positives you mention here are mostly either cosmetic or unquantifiable. And i'm not trying to be funny, but the PW gaming community that i know of, from both STO and Neverwinter, is terrible. One of the worst communities i ever came across in an MMO in the last 10 years of playing MMO's. Maybe its just how people are these days, but its certainly not great.
Lets cut to the chase here. The reason so many people rave about this game is for one of two reason:
1) They either love star trek or they have not been playing for long and still have that 'new car smell' on everything. This quickly evaporates once the L50 rep grind begins and you are running the same 5-6 STF's over and over and over.....
2) It DOES have a great F2P model. There is no denying that, and this is the real crux of it. This is why people like STO so much. All the leechers and farmers, that for reasons only known to themselves, think it is great never to pay a dime towards a game they invest a large portion of their time playing. I don't get how anyone thinks this is reasonable. Especially when the same leechers will go on to slander parts of the game where they feel they have not been gifted enough reward. It borders on craziness.
Where the F2P model fails is that for people who do wish to spend money on the game, to buy some of the cooler stuff, it is substantially more expensive than some other MMO's.
SWTOR for example, i can sub to that for £9 a month. And i get everything. Then i can choose to spend more real life cash to buy certain cosmetic items and some extra cool gear. Even then, the cool stuff still costs considerably less in RL cash than it does in STO. Not to mention, SWTOR has a great deal of end game content, and a hell of a lot of content in general.
£9 a month in STO gets me some dil or some keys. Not enough to buy anything of any game value. For a ship, you are looking at 40 keys which is around 4500 Zen and thats if its a relatively cheap lockbox ship say the 70-80 million EC range. More expensive ships cost substantially more. Same goes for BOFF's, consoles, traits. Some are in the range of 20-30 million EC. Thats 10-20 keys or 1000-2000 Zen. Expensive if you want anything without grinding for months refining dil.
So yeah if i am a F2P leech, STO is great, better than other MMO's. If i have money, then STO can be very expensive compared to some other MMO's.
Anyway, here are my brief bad points of this game over other MMO's:
Content - Very little. Look at the 'big' much hyped LoR expansion. What new content did it bring to the game for long time players? It wasn't an expansion like for other MMO's, dropping lots of new content, end game stuff. It was an expansion to generate more revenue through attracting more new players and to encourage old players to make more characters. Since then we have had 2 new space STF's from season 8.5. So in almost a year, we have had 2 new space STF's to add to the already ancient content of Borg STF's etc. And they weren't even particularly good. Lets be generous and say 3 because of Crytsalline entity. Or go wild and say 4 if you add Elachi alert, even though it was the easiest STF known to STO players ever.
Challenge - Very little. power creep is so insane now that Borg STF's can be completed with over 10 minutes left on the optional timers. 10 MINUTES. Think about that. That timer used to be a countdown to when you would have 'made' the optional. Now its a timer for how fast you can DPS the whole thing down. The laughable part is, these Borg STF's are still generally the most challenging PVE part of the game except for No Win Scenario.
PVP - Enough said. Just browse the PVP gameplay section of the forums.
These are 3 crucial factors in any MMO for holding onto a fanbase. Compared to Captain's names, outfit changes and other chaff, these things i mention are far more key to keeping the game alive. And no one wants to play a dead game, especially after investing a lot of hours or real money.
To summarise, all the money that gets pumped into this game, seems to be fed back into generating more revenue through new players by revamping tutorials, making alts more appealing, etc, than it does into pleasing old players and giving them exciting new content. If you think about that, it is a terrible business model for consumer loyalty. Basically means they will happily take a hit on losing older players that may have already paid into the game, as long as they can keep attracting new players that will restart the whole cycle of writing OP threads like this one and the possibility of dropping some cash for Zen.
I know this is extremely cynical, but don't get me wrong, i LOVE this game. This just makes it even more important to me that it succeeds and they start thinking about long term rather than making the quick cash and harvesting as many new players as they can.
" Experience is a hard mistress, she gives the tests first, and the lessons after... "
If you PvP think about this.. Captain Joe X. He's got his shiney lock box ship.. hes got decent Mk XI and XII purple gear slotted, BOFF and DOFFS assigned. Capt Joe drops into a PvP arena.. Captain joe spend the next 15 min dying.. a lot. Captain Joe dig into the forums to figure out what he's doing wrong. After about 5 shots of doing this and just being slaughtered to add to some one elses life time kill count Captain Joe gives up on PvP after being quite disillusioned by it. Captain Joe, now having tasted PvP wants no more of it.. and now Captain Joe starts noticing all those little... flaws.. he never noticed before...
Captain joe stops spending money.. after a while Captain Joe is no more because he's moved on to another MMO.
This happens constantly. Customers that don't stay, don't spend. I'm concerned.
I am very concerned that the studio is paying a bit to much attention to their "Numerics"
.
THIS. But people seem to not be aware of how important are the "little" fails of the game. 10 are not a problem. 20 are not a problem. 50 its a bit concerning. 100, well thats a problem. 300 its a HUGE problem and STO is positioned in this last spot, unfortunately. But not only about pvp, but about all the game content itself. As you said, if someone is dissapointed with something in the game, well he can always forgot about it and spend time doing other things, but if he starts seeing again, thousands of glithchs and fails everywhere, then, that player definitely will stop playing and moving to another game really sooner rather than later. And honestly, i am really surprised that no more players are doing this, since STO right now is the heaven of bugs and fails everywhere. I started being a monthly gold member. After 2 months, i was dissapointed to the way cryptic was doing things, i cancelled my sub. Instead of being a monthly gold member, i just bought some zen every month, and that was my way to contribute to the game. But after a few months after that, now i dont even bother to charge zen anymore, since im so dissapointed with the game, that i see stupid to pay for anything. The company behind the game doesnt deserve my money anymore. And i keep playing because it is Star Trek, im sure 200% that by this time i was playing another mmorpg if the main theme was not star trek. So, no its not by far the best f2p out there, because if the main theme was not star trek.. well... almost nobody will be playing, for sure.
But this doesnt change cuz the ammount of lfs players and the ones who spent thousands of zen every month is still growing, or not decreasing. For cryptic those are the only important players, and if they have a really base of those ones, they are happy and they dont even need to worry about fixing anything, cuz their lfs will be still there buying their stupidily high priced life time subscriptions. Something that it really makes me wondering if people wants this game killed asap or what the hell they want lol. Cryptic will try to gain even more money to save it, until it will be too late because too many bugs and fails will make the game just impossible to play. And because people is not so stupid (i think?..). So they will keep creating new content, new ships, new things for sale avoiding any kind of fix or improvement. And one day, suddenly they will announce the dead of STO, but it will not matter cuz they will have their pockets already full. Fortunately for em, nobody is aware of their strategy (too many kids playing, maybe).
Comments
STO is far from the best MMO, though it may very possibly have the best F2P model going. PWI last financial statement certainly seems to show numbers that support that premise. (its available online.. I just did a google search.. easy peasy!)
Comparing it to other MMO's is a bit of a waste. People say WOW is dying.. yea well WOW still has over 7 million subscribers..and its what still 15 per month.. so its bringing in $105,000,000 per month, and they do have a cash shop besides.... Thats well over one BILLION dollars per year... honestly.. thay seem pretty far from being dead or dying! Its still the King of the MMO's because there is no MMO more polished. Polished in defferent ways.. but more polished? Not even possible. It's doing so well, that it supports thier more "artistic" games, and Battlenet.
(recall those other Blizzard products that don't have cash shops.. Like Starcraft-II)
From a game standpoint, it's got some problems under the hood. To many shineys made that have had the math pumped to the point where PvP play is a special subset of play that is far from enjoyable to the casual player. If you go into a PvP match with a ship and players are making one pass kills on you with a total engagement time against your ship of under 5 seconds, theres a problem there.. When your game players have to create a PvP boot camp just to introduce players to PvP and teach them its "secret" inner working... because it NOT obvious.. thats also a problem. Might as well just change the math and the system.. you get your shot off first you win.. I came to STO from a trek game that was all about PvP. And PvP there was entirely player skill based. SHips counted, but a skilled player could do things with even the tinest more fragile ships that would just blow peoples minds... I used to go into voice coms and play folks.. I had a promise I made.. If I couldn't improve your play with 15 min of coaching then you got your virtual money back (there wasn't any virtual money, but the thought counted!)
Its got one other problem and its the one I consider the 800 lbs gorilla in the closet. That problem is Star Trek. Star Trek was about exploring. It was about examining who, and what we are. Challenging our assumptions. It was also about saving "all we know" from horrific threats. We seem to have the "Horrific threat" portion in the game totally down for the most part.
The Borg
The Voth
The Undine
The Iconians
The Tholians
there's also a bunch of minor threats. But the story arc of the Alpha quadrant hasn't moved forward at all. it is STILL 2409, 4 years after the game has launched... we ever going to see 2410?
I can go on for pages. And I can get into detail.. a lot of detail.
STO is far from being the over all best MMO. Like it or not, fan or not.. the number pretty much say that WOW is still the top of the heap in the US. If you go to Korea the king of MMO's there is **** from NCsoft. Move around the globe and you'll find games you've never heard of which are amazingly good.
It may very well be the best F2P MMO in the US, as far as access to content in concerned and in some cases cash shop pricing.. a lot of other F2P titles have a whole lot of content locked behind pay walls, or have a P2W scheme going. We have PWI's other titles we can look at as an example, and they are not the worst of the lot.
DO not misunderstand me. If it wasn't for the IP I wouldn't be posting. I would have stopped playing years ago. As a "starship combat game" it stinks in multi player. To much stat creep. Too many synergies... too much in love with the numbers and not nearly sufficient attention to game play balance.. not between ships... but between PLAYERS.
If your going to have a PvP game then the gap between in game haves and have nots combat power needs to be whole lot narrower. The reason for this is called customer retention..
I wonder if Cryptic has even a clue how many players its lost because of the PvP imbalances.
If you PvP think about this.. Captain Joe X. He's got his shiney lock box ship.. hes got decent Mk XI and XII purple gear slotted, BOFF and DOFFS assigned. Capt Joe drops into a PvP arena.. Captain joe spend the next 15 min dying.. a lot. Captain Joe dig into the forums to figure out what he's doing wrong. After about 5 shots of doing this and just being slaughtered to add to some one elses life time kill count Captain Joe gives up on PvP after being quite disillusioned by it. Captain Joe, now having tasted PvP wants no more of it.. and now Captain Joe starts noticing all those little... flaws.. he never noticed before...
Captain joe stops spending money.. after a while Captain Joe is no more because he's moved on to another MMO.
This happens constantly. Customers that don't stay, don't spend. I'm concerned.
I am very concerned that the studio is paying a bit to much attention to their "Numerics"
The problem with polls, and numerics is the information you get from them is automaticly and arbitrarily effected by now the data is gathered. and, there are massive holes in the data.
one of the things I feel is missing, is the studio just is not collecting nformation from players that leave the game... mostly because they don't track them very well, if at all.. It's a F2P "casual" game.. so players that are no longer active simply fall off the chart. a player that logs in every few weeks is not an active player.. thats someone who checking in to see if things for them have improved. I would honestly love to know some of the real numbers.. I've been a life long gamer..(more then 4 decades) started playing computer games in the late 80's. I want ot see use statistic not total numbers. Big number are great "oh wow" stuff, but they don't tell you anything. Recall a few weeks back that great bit of numerics, x voth city ships destroyed etc.. great hype.. told me NOTHING about the state of the game. As information for someone analyzing whats happening with the product there was pretty much zero use full information there.
Creating a "Game" is an artistic endevor. It's not like building a car, or a house, or anything else. Everything your dealing with is an intangible. As a computer game it so wonderfully lucrative.. You build a 3d object in the game once, and its built forever. If it take 3 artists getting paid oh heck lets be generous.. $50 per hour 80 hours each to create a ship, and the interior of the ship, and extra parts, and textures etc. ok, so do the math.. one ship complete.. $12,000 (and yes I am going over the top.. its an example) to create that one ship. So its a premium ship.. going to sell it for $25.. you only need to sell 480 of them to make your money back.. after that its all profit.. every last penny over and above operating costs and maintenance. Some ships sell better then others, but eventually you reach the break even point and after that its all gravy. Not the most exact or specific example, with a great deal left out... but it gives the general idea... even if it cost the studio over all 30 grand to make a ship model and interior eventually those cost are recouped, and after that it pure profit. And if you can find a way to get your customers to over pay for the product (lock box ships) thats even better! Oh how the money rolls in.
Got nothin against the studio, it's employees, its exectives and management, owner, and their stock holders making money.. even lots of money. Just don't be pulling our collective legs on how difficult it is when it pretty obvious its not that difficult at all once you get rolling. And STO hit that point about a year back.
I rather doubt that it running Cryptic 12 grand per ship model. But, I could be wrong.. but they only have to make the ship one time. It might change a little later, get refined a tad (like the dreadnaught cruiser) but for the most part its a one time expense! And, at a certain level, its a capital expence. You spend the money to make the money..
Grocery store operate as businesses making pennies on the dollar. An MMO operator has it so much easier once you have an actuall product. STO is just the frame work for the product.. what the studio and PWI make thier money on is not the STO MMO.. it's free to play. They make thier money on the cash shop... (and a truely indecent amount of it on chance boxes.. just my opinion but still.. sheesh!).
STO Makes dollars on the penny. A lot of dollars on the pennies. I don't think its terribly, or even remotely unfair to ask for a quantum increase in over all quality. Turn half the game profit back into the game to improve it, and we'll get a whole lot of improvement once the lag between hired, and skilled closes (3 months to a year depending on personnel available). We've all ready seen this happen once. Worked great the first time.. do it again! Add another 15-30 dev staff, and start planning long term so the ponies are all ready lined up at release. so you get that same sort of mostly seam less transition (like what blizzard manages to do ya know?)
Find a way some how to give us more of that Star Trek spirit in the game. Pew pew, kill kill and get the goodies is all well and good, but its very shallow game play. My previous trek game I played was all about pew pew, kill kill, and there were no goodies to speak of.. and technically it wasn't a MMO to begin with. It was a single player game with a multiplayer game added on. At first pretty much arena style play.. Later a full on war/campaign was added to the series and it flat took off and turned into an MMO.. (and Sierra/Dynamix had no clue what they had..the only people then with any experience with MMO also didn't have to much in the way of clues either.. MMO's were so new, that they wern't even called MMO yet) But strangly nuff... for all the pew pew, kill kill, it somehow managed to still be star trek.. It just felt right.
(...and it was not prime universe, or JJ verse... it was all licenced from Paramount, not CBS, and the core game from a table top game maker known as ADB/Task force games.. it was a conversion of a table top game and is STILL the best starship combat game on many level thats ever been made for computer play)
I don't know where STO is going.... there are no obvious direction. It feels muddled, and like a accretion of a bunch of disparate elements. The only thing I do in game that even remotely makes me feel like a star ship captain is DOFF missions. But I don't send my BOFF's off to do anything... aren't they supposed to be my ships department heads? There are game elements common to MMO that have entirely fallen by the wayside. I haven't really done any crafting in game since they added dilithium to crafting. Why should I spend how ever much dilithium to make a MK XI weapon when I can spend nearly the same amount at a fleet vendor to get a Mk XII fleet version of a weapon that is sooooooooooo much better?
I've been here 4 years, and I am not happy with STO. To many things un done, un completed. To many changes that have not improved PvP balance, only made it far far worse.
even more grind added.. Hey.. a "casual" MMO? if its a casuall MMO what the hell is with all the grinding? Grinding is not casual.. its work. And it gets un fun real fast. Grind content is not story content. Grind content does not move the story for the game or the player forward.
I promised myself only 4 paragraphs.. I've gone way beyond that.
To the OP. STO could possibly eventually turn out to be "the best" MMO on the market, but its not there yet. On the other hand it could possibly turn out to be the most profitable MMO on the market by far with in the next couple years. My feeling is in reality thats where the game is headed.. just sufficient product quality to get by. My feeling form "out Here" is the product is more about making money. And to be realistic it needs to be... Its a great racket if you can break into it as the saying goes. But I want desperately to see more of the "Quality goes in before the name goes on".
I hope the game will improve.. but the future is still very muddled.
Guess who said the non edited version? I'll give you a hint, he was one of the most successful (and famous) automobile manufacturers in history.
My character Tsin'xing
I think its not bad, its not the best IMO, it would be very hard for me to pick which MMO I think is the best. I am playing a lot of SWToR at the moment and very little of STO but that's just because I'm enjoying ToR at the moment... not that I think its better. I am rambling, I do like the character customization for STO and that you can hide the armor, reminds me of SWG, I used to spend more time changing my character than anything else.
It does apply to just myself, which means in my opinion things are more or less fine. I've never insinuated I speak for anyone else.
You're looking at this as a singular buyer/seller relationship in a very traditional way. MMOs are not a traditional business model. They are made up of demographics, marketing decisions, and trying to please whatever demographic pays the most.
If I want pink polka dots on my starships with glowy particles, and another player does not want that, then you can not possibly satisfy both. There's no 100% satisfaction when it comes to MMOs. They are a series of compromises. They always have been, they always will be.
As previously stated, the playerbase of STO can never be united on any issue, so I do believe you are the one who is wrong on this point.
I'm amused that you think 'ppl' are united on this subject. 'ppl' are never unanimous in any decision in terms of STO, as previously pointed out.
However, you did answer your own criticism. It's about money. The game is f2p. Lockboxes are optional and a way to make additional income. Arc is... well, it's not the end of the world and while I may not be 100% happy with it, it's going to happen. What's really funny is this isn't going to bother most people. If it was, I think they'd have noticed that.
The fact they're willing to be open to feedback regarding Arc is a type of compromise. Yes, they're shoving Arc onto us. This is a negative.
The compromise is they're shoving it onto us with the auspice that they are reading and responding to feedback. They know many people are not happy with it, but this is what compromise is.
While I agree with the forum utilities being removed or being made more convoluted, this is ultimately not pertinent to the game itself.
You make good points, but in the end you don't prove anything other than 'ppl' are in disagreement over various things -- and you show a very sincere ignorance regarding revenue intake in regards to the MMO industry. You don't speak for a majority of people anymore than I do.
I'm going with DeLorean. Am I right? What do I win?
Delorean was FAR from successful ultimately. It was probably Henry Ford.
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..."
#1 - Paid name changes via automated systems = ridiculous in any game.
#2 & #3 - the "dress up" system you hyped across two points came from Champions Online, in spite of your claim, and other games do it all as well or better, for free.
#4 - STO has limited duration items too and no amount of passed time rewards players with anything for free.
#5 - Is nonsense, this is just another MMO wasteland.
#6 - The last time I read this much vacuous nonsense it was coming from the Pro-Cryptic propaganda team during the "Thread War over the Galaxy Announcement Backlash" where they steadfastly posted wave after wave of fanboigurl comments, forum rules be damned!
Next time you want to "demo-reel" for Cryptic to show them you have "the right stuff", post a video on YouTube.
EDIT: Oh and before I forget - STO only exists because of the Star Trek IP; if you want a good game from Cryptic Champion's Online (which was used for much of this game's base development) is superior by factors of "huge numbers."
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I will readily admit that the likelihood of my having even tried this game if it were not a Star Trek game would have been slim to none. But that alone would not have made me stay here, nor start spending more time here than in other games. I'm not going to name names, but there are some truly clueless game developers and publishers out there; Cryptic and PWE are doing considerably well, and I expect that to continue to be the case (I also expect them to improve). If the game should become terrible, the Star Trek name on it wouldn't keep me here.
While this game does still have room for improvement, some gamers would complain no matter how excellent it became; I've seen it in other games from other developers and other publishers, and it is usually at least somewhat ridiculous (even in those cases where the games are in serious need of improvement), but here, the negativity expressed by some is simply outrageously irrational.
system Lord Baal is dead
All the positives you mention here are mostly either cosmetic or unquantifiable. And i'm not trying to be funny, but the PW gaming community that i know of, from both STO and Neverwinter, is terrible. One of the worst communities i ever came across in an MMO in the last 10 years of playing MMO's. Maybe its just how people are these days, but its certainly not great.
Lets cut to the chase here. The reason so many people rave about this game is for one of two reason:
1) They either love star trek or they have not been playing for long and still have that 'new car smell' on everything. This quickly evaporates once the L50 rep grind begins and you are running the same 5-6 STF's over and over and over.....
2) It DOES have a great F2P model. There is no denying that, and this is the real crux of it. This is why people like STO so much. All the leechers and farmers, that for reasons only known to themselves, think it is great never to pay a dime towards a game they invest a large portion of their time playing. I don't get how anyone thinks this is reasonable. Especially when the same leechers will go on to slander parts of the game where they feel they have not been gifted enough reward. It borders on craziness.
Where the F2P model fails is that for people who do wish to spend money on the game, to buy some of the cooler stuff, it is substantially more expensive than some other MMO's.
SWTOR for example, i can sub to that for £9 a month. And i get everything. Then i can choose to spend more real life cash to buy certain cosmetic items and some extra cool gear. Even then, the cool stuff still costs considerably less in RL cash than it does in STO. Not to mention, SWTOR has a great deal of end game content, and a hell of a lot of content in general.
£9 a month in STO gets me some dil or some keys. Not enough to buy anything of any game value. For a ship, you are looking at 40 keys which is around 4500 Zen and thats if its a relatively cheap lockbox ship say the 70-80 million EC range. More expensive ships cost substantially more. Same goes for BOFF's, consoles, traits. Some are in the range of 20-30 million EC. Thats 10-20 keys or 1000-2000 Zen. Expensive if you want anything without grinding for months refining dil.
So yeah if i am a F2P leech, STO is great, better than other MMO's. If i have money, then STO can be very expensive compared to some other MMO's.
Anyway, here are my brief bad points of this game over other MMO's:
Content - Very little. Look at the 'big' much hyped LoR expansion. What new content did it bring to the game for long time players? It wasn't an expansion like for other MMO's, dropping lots of new content, end game stuff. It was an expansion to generate more revenue through attracting more new players and to encourage old players to make more characters. Since then we have had 2 new space STF's from season 8.5. So in almost a year, we have had 2 new space STF's to add to the already ancient content of Borg STF's etc. And they weren't even particularly good. Lets be generous and say 3 because of Crytsalline entity. Or go wild and say 4 if you add Elachi alert, even though it was the easiest STF known to STO players ever.
Challenge - Very little. power creep is so insane now that Borg STF's can be completed with over 10 minutes left on the optional timers. 10 MINUTES. Think about that. That timer used to be a countdown to when you would have 'made' the optional. Now its a timer for how fast you can DPS the whole thing down. The laughable part is, these Borg STF's are still generally the most challenging PVE part of the game except for No Win Scenario.
PVP - Enough said. Just browse the PVP gameplay section of the forums.
These are 3 crucial factors in any MMO for holding onto a fanbase. Compared to Captain's names, outfit changes and other chaff, these things i mention are far more key to keeping the game alive. And no one wants to play a dead game, especially after investing a lot of hours or real money.
To summarise, all the money that gets pumped into this game, seems to be fed back into generating more revenue through new players by revamping tutorials, making alts more appealing, etc, than it does into pleasing old players and giving them exciting new content. If you think about that, it is a terrible business model for consumer loyalty. Basically means they will happily take a hit on losing older players that may have already paid into the game, as long as they can keep attracting new players that will restart the whole cycle of writing OP threads like this one and the possibility of dropping some cash for Zen.
I know this is extremely cynical, but don't get me wrong, i LOVE this game. This just makes it even more important to me that it succeeds and they start thinking about long term rather than making the quick cash and harvesting as many new players as they can.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
THIS. But people seem to not be aware of how important are the "little" fails of the game. 10 are not a problem. 20 are not a problem. 50 its a bit concerning. 100, well thats a problem. 300 its a HUGE problem and STO is positioned in this last spot, unfortunately. But not only about pvp, but about all the game content itself. As you said, if someone is dissapointed with something in the game, well he can always forgot about it and spend time doing other things, but if he starts seeing again, thousands of glithchs and fails everywhere, then, that player definitely will stop playing and moving to another game really sooner rather than later. And honestly, i am really surprised that no more players are doing this, since STO right now is the heaven of bugs and fails everywhere. I started being a monthly gold member. After 2 months, i was dissapointed to the way cryptic was doing things, i cancelled my sub. Instead of being a monthly gold member, i just bought some zen every month, and that was my way to contribute to the game. But after a few months after that, now i dont even bother to charge zen anymore, since im so dissapointed with the game, that i see stupid to pay for anything. The company behind the game doesnt deserve my money anymore. And i keep playing because it is Star Trek, im sure 200% that by this time i was playing another mmorpg if the main theme was not star trek. So, no its not by far the best f2p out there, because if the main theme was not star trek.. well... almost nobody will be playing, for sure.
But this doesnt change cuz the ammount of lfs players and the ones who spent thousands of zen every month is still growing, or not decreasing. For cryptic those are the only important players, and if they have a really base of those ones, they are happy and they dont even need to worry about fixing anything, cuz their lfs will be still there buying their stupidily high priced life time subscriptions. Something that it really makes me wondering if people wants this game killed asap or what the hell they want lol. Cryptic will try to gain even more money to save it, until it will be too late because too many bugs and fails will make the game just impossible to play. And because people is not so stupid (i think?..). So they will keep creating new content, new ships, new things for sale avoiding any kind of fix or improvement. And one day, suddenly they will announce the dead of STO, but it will not matter cuz they will have their pockets already full. Fortunately for em, nobody is aware of their strategy (too many kids playing, maybe).