But they'll deny it to their dying day. And they'll just whine about they liked the content.
Also, it's really easy to farm Dilithium if you don't do the combat missions.
I'm burned out on dilithium grinding right now and am on vacation. However, I go by the standard of 1500 for 10-15 minutes. Unless I have some diplomatic missions there's no way I finish 3 exploration cluster missions in under 15 minutes - from 2 minute load times at least.
Someone else mentioned that it is a good source of dilithium for low level new characters. This is very true. There are few options for dilithium at level 20. But, otherwise, it's hardly a huge source of dilithium.
For me, the missions felt the most like real Trek. Saddened by their loss.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
2) When people are getting upset over things in MMOs being removed...especially bad content...there is pretty much always an ulterior motive as to why they are upset. I think we can see what this with daan.
I think the "ulterior motive" thing is played out. I try to live the internet portion of my life without assuming ulterior motives. In general, it's different values (or different motives) more than ulterior motives.
With online games in particular, I think it's healthy to consider the Bartle Quotient:
Some people don't care about achieving or killing. Some don't care about exploring or socializing.
In general, a very rough and fuzzy recollection I have of the data in other games is that the breakdown for online games is something like (allowing for overlap):
5-10% rank high as Kill-motivated, 30-40% rank high as Achiever-morivated, 30-40% rank high as Exploration motivated, 20% or so rank high in Social motivation. (Though more are social the more passive socialization is. You can get into things like vanity motivation. The 20% thing is, like, actively socially motivated to coordinate and cooperate and have positive relationships.)
It adds up to more than 100% because you can rank high in more than one. I'm just tossing out a general fuzzy memory of different studies, not facts. (So I'm not eager to go on a research binge to back anything up right now.)
Exploration as a motivator is a funny thing in that it covers not just physical exploration but also exploiting, builds and design, any kind of discovery. But it hinges on unpredictable results or unpredictable combinations of outcomes and it interacts with Achievement in interesting ways.
Explorers often like being blindfolded. They may like being rewarded for original or logical thinking but they also often don't care for how the sausage gets made. Achievers need hard and intelligible stats to optimize their builds whereas I tend to think at least some Explorers in the Bartle sense would like stats stripped off gear and a bit more uncertainty in design, provided that there are situational or rock paper scissors mechanics in play that reward playing unpredictably or strangely.
Explorers march to their own drummer.
I have some strong Explorer qualities but I think a lot of Explorers have looked at STO "Exploration" with rose colored glasses. The missions are not procedurally generated or truly random. They're pregenerated madlibs missions. They're not unpredictable. They aren't created at random on the spot. It's actually just several thousand missions that went through a randomizer 5-6 years ago.
The Foundry offers everything the cluster missions offer and better, aside from a few accolades.
Well, I've said it before, and I will go on saying it - it's not the loss of the exploration clusters themselves that bothers me, it's the fact that they're not being replaced....
However, having said that... OK, they're buggy and repetitive, assembling random missions from a strictly limited set of elements. OK, it's a case of scan five objects in space/scan five objects on ground/fight four or six space mobs/fight five ground mobs and scan five objects...
How is that less varied than, say, the Undine space battlezone?
I was mentioning this to a fleetmate just the other day - the lag in that darn place is so bad, the only strategy I can use is "hold down alt and A, mash spacebar, hope not to die". How in the name of Great Cthugha the Firelord is this an improvement on the exploration missions? At least, with those, there is some semblance of variety. The battlezone? "Here is an enemy. Kill them all, and as a reward, there will be more enemies that you can kill."
(Yes, thanks, I've turned my graphics all the way down to "fingerpainted by a child of five" levels. Still lagged. I just have to deal with it... which, come to think of it, I largely do by not bothering with the battlezone.)
If the exploration clusters are repetitive... they're not any more so than other content which isn't going away. And they're something more like "Star Trek" than "kill wave after wave of alien scum".
No variations beyond that. So I don't buy it, So what was it, an easy dilithium farm running alts and doing the non-combat missions?
How is any of what you posted any different from the rest of the game? Go blow up x ships...protect ship x for x minutes, etc. Sounds like exploration clusters fit right in.
Whatever else they were, Dil exploits or doff wellsprings or whatever, exploration missions were something to go between the 'episodes'. Simple but relatively enjoyable MMO style content to fill in the blanks. And although it's true that they were not amazing, they were in a way the most 'Trek' of any STO quest because they were the only content where your little captain guy actually explored new places. You knew you weren't going to be totally bowled over by what you found, but still, you didn't know to the last detail what it would be. Once an episode is played it's done, do it again and you know exactly what awaits you.
I don't do exploration missions anymore and haven't for awhile but new players may still find them enjoyable and it would be a shame if there was no 'traditional' MMO style quest content to replace them.
As for whatever exploits are involved I'm sure there must be a way to solve those problems without excising whole big chunks of the game. People would still complain ('why even bother doing these missions anymore etc') but the STO community is always, always complaining and lack of complaints should never be the goal in itself because it will never happen. An overhaul of the 'exploration' facet of the game should be considered sometime in the future because, in one form or another, 'exploration' is really what Star Trek has always been about. Yes?
Lest we forget as we drift from one big war to another.
At first glance, this would be a solid troll thread. But looking at who the OP is - I know he's serious, which is just sad.
I salute all the brave souls that tried reasoning with him here, many have tried and fallen in his other threads.
There weren't any exploits involved. Just really terrible missions that drag down the quality of the game.
I hope they are developing a new exploration system that isn't awful. I'm not going to demand that they keep the TRIBBLE around until its replacement is ready, though.
There weren't any exploits involved. Just really terrible missions that drag down the quality of the game.
I hope they are developing a new exploration system that isn't awful. I'm not going to demand that they keep the TRIBBLE around until its replacement is ready, though.
imo rep grind mission are TRIBBLE and no better than the exploration system mission
The tech doesn't really exist to make it more interesting. You throw in more randomized stuff...if you look at any game that has randomized stuff you'll see how boring and "the same" all the randomized stuff is.
Diablo II would like a word with you, O Master of Generalization. :rolleyes:
Why, it's not like the exploration clusters are elitism-inducing challenging content. Of course with that in mind...why do you care?
that has been my thought since i saw this thread by him think he wanted his own lil witch hunt thread maybe he thought it would make him look cool and thought others would jump on his bandwagon witch hunt :cool:
=> there is no difference for new players ... are you telling me everyone of these guys who got lost, already knew the 500MB Content sucked, and got lost despite of knowing it ....
It can't be both ... it's either
- "Oh boy the game client is too big & btw 500MB of bad Exploration ... nah I'll pass on that"
or
- "What's Exploration ... I'm lost ..."
_____
No, the game takes very long to download. The exploration content is a big part in this download. People don't finsih the download or don't bother to start the game after it's finished, because they already got bored and disinterested (maybe they used the time to read the forums and realized the game was doomed anyway?), or they ran out of time and need to try next day, but by then, the excitement is all gone and they don't even bother.
Then, there are people that play the game, and they get some mission regarding the exploration clusters, and choose to check them out. Then they end up in some missions where the BOFFs fall through the ground, or the enemies are unreachable, or some mission is not completing. Or the enemies spawn outside their sensor range and they don't know that all enemies are either in a straight line to an object in background, or around the planet, and fly around, not finding anything, and thinking "what a ****ty game" or "I am too dumb for this game" and leave. Heck, some might get a "scan 5 anomalies" mission and thing "wow, most boring and mind-numbing thing ever, that's what passes for exploration in this game."
Or they get stuck on even something more trivial (but I know how digitally incompetent some people can be), like not realizing that there is only one border in the cluster where you can leave, and the alternative to use is the warp-out button (exploration clusters work like sector blocks in controls mostly, except the warp-out is an option. But if people already "learned" - "No Warp Out in Sector Blocks", they may not even try.)
Besides : Patrol Missions are still in the game ... exact same design (Scan 5 Things etc, Shoot 5 Enemy Groups) ... no problems there, though ... they just removed it from the regular Mission Log ... but you can't do this with Exp. Clusters because !?! ....
But these missions are a lot fewer and smaller and don't get their own extra exploration cluster. I am also not sure if any of them are actually broken (or how many). Since they are not random, it's relatively likely they get error reports often, and thus have a got chance of getting fixed.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
sorry wow is way bigger install then sto so the excuse ppl not playing the game because i had to download 15 GB imo is a joke of one
maybe ppl need to get off that 56K modem or trying to play a mmo on a cell phone data plan just me i download over hundreds of gigabytes every month just trying and playing game not just mmos
sorry wow is way bigger install then sto so the excuse ppl not playing the game because i had to download 15 GB imo is a joke of one
maybe ppl need to get off that 56K modem or trying to play a mmo on a cell phone data plan
You're again focusing only on one part of the issue.
It's not install size.
IT's not bad quality.
It's not player retention.
It's extra install size for bad quality content that causes players to get stuck and decide to abandon the game.
That's 3 things, not one.
Imagine WoW hat a zone that has only one somewhat difficult to find exist, where pets often fall through the floor, and enemies are often hidden behind walls you can't scale, but need to kill to finish a quest. And that zone was really big. Possibly one of the largest zones in the game.
Do you think Blizzard would keep it around?
Now imagine being in the scenario, but you're not the 800 lbs gorilla, you're a much smaller team with less resources. And not everyone is giving you subscription money, you live from people that actually play the game long enough to think spending some money is worth it.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
You're again focusing only on one part of the issue.
It's not install size.
IT's not bad quality.
It's not player retention.
It's extra install size for bad quality content that causes players to get stuck and decide to abandon the game.
That's 3 things, not one.
Imagine WoW hat a zone that has only one somewhat difficult to find exist, where pets often fall through the floor, and enemies are often hidden behind walls you can't scale, but need to kill to finish a quest. And that zone was really big. Possibly one of the largest zones in the game.
Do you think Blizzard would keep it around?
Now imagine being in the scenario, but you're not the 800 lbs gorilla, you're a much smaller team with less resources. And not everyone is giving you subscription money, you live from people that actually play the game long enough to think spending some money is worth it.
are you really going to say these mission are any worse or better than rep grind mission ?!?!?!?!? because that how i see this when you say exploration missions are TRIBBLE but................ rep grind shot till you drop!!! best quality of mission the game has to offer!!!!
The ONLY way I would be happy about this is if they took and added new sectors to the map where the Clusters and Nebulas are (for the time being of course). I've heard rumors they are moving them because the extra content that Expansion 2 will bring will connect to some of these spots. I just don't see removing all of them, unless of course we are gonning to get enought new sectors to take the spots of all of them. But you know what they say, TRIBBLE in one hand and wish in the other and see witch one gets filled faster.
The loss of the missions though can help alleviate disbelief in some newer players as some of the missions went like thus:
1. Sir we are receiving a distress signal from a BORG SPHERE
2. Oh we must go and help them at once
3. Sir it was a trap and we are getting attacked by the Borg. I mean who'd have thought otherwise?
My favorite was "We're receiving a distress call from the planet, the Borg have invaded, they are looking for RELICS FROM THEIR 3RD DYNASTY!"
:eek:
VADM William "Darkshadow" Shadow | Join Date: Apr 2009 | USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser) VADM RogueshadowIRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit) LT General MorboIKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser) LT General PosuIKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
You're again focusing only on one part of the issue.
It's not install size.
IT's not bad quality.
It's not player retention.
It's extra install size for bad quality content that causes players to get stuck and decide to abandon the game.
That's 3 things, not one.
Imagine WoW hat a zone that has only one somewhat difficult to find exist, where pets often fall through the floor, and enemies are often hidden behind walls you can't scale, but need to kill to finish a quest. And that zone was really big. Possibly one of the largest zones in the game.
Do you think Blizzard would keep it around?
Now imagine being in the scenario, but you're not the 800 lbs gorilla, you're a much smaller team with less resources. And not everyone is giving you subscription money, you live from people that actually play the game long enough to think spending some money is worth it.
Literally lmao.
No, they would fix it. But nice try.
But I see your point - PW should remove content rather than fix it. Roger. Gotcha.
Whole lot of trying to explain away a developer's failure when you could have just said that.
SF:Command had vastly better exploration than STO, and that is a single player game made nearly 15 years ago... people actually enjoyed the STO "destroy 5 ships, scan 5 objects, deliver aid to random planet at random star system?"exploration ... that is quite sad, IMO nothing of value was lost, anything they add in its place is unlikely to be worse.
also i wouldn't be surprised if dil was indeed the reason people are whining about its removal.
SF:Command had vastly better exploration than STO, and that is a single player game made nearly 15 years ago... people actually enjoyed the STO "destroy 5 ships, scan 5 objects, deliver aid to random planet at random star system?"exploration ... that is quite sad, IMO nothing of value was lost, anything they add in its place is unlikely to be worse.
also i wouldn't be surprised if dil was indeed the reason people are whining about its removal.
if...... if they add anything in its place sorry lost my optimistic glasses back in year one so i dont get my hopes up for anything any more
where O where is that old DS9 fleet action O where O where can it be
are you really going to say these mission are any worse or better than rep grind mission ?!?!?!?!? because that how i see this when you say exploration missions are TRIBBLE but................ rep grind shot till you drop!!! best quality of mission the game has to offer!!!!
Yes. I absolutely prefer an excursion to the battle zone. I dislike ground combat, but the Voth Ground Combat Zone was actually fun for me (I wouldn't mind less dinosaurs, but whatever). The Space Battle Zone is even better (even though I wouldn't mind less resource-hogging SFX).
The big advantage is that they feel very... free-form. You choose a location to fight, no loading screens, no nonsense, and you get to have fun shooting stuff but a bit of extra objectives where you need to achieve stuff in time and be at the right spot. I like that combination.
There is no story, but that's okay, the story of the exploration mission was boring quickly, too, and I still have to go through all kinds of loading screens to get to the fun parts. (You really lose when it's a ground mission - extra loading screen for beaming down, and probably some mindless ground combat, not even some time pressure like in some of the Voth Zone battles).
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I hate agreeing with the OP. I mean, I seriously hate agreeing with the OP. I can't explain the depths of how much I hate agreeing the OP without getting the mods involved. But I agree with the OP.
If somebody were actually looking for some kind of Star Trek experience, they'd be playing the story content or they would be hitting up the Foundry. Doing those missions in the Exploration Clusters...they make the Patrol missions look awesome by comparison.
One can also speculate, put stuff together that maybe they shouldn't - think about what's been said about the size of X2 - think about what Taco said he's working on in the most cryptic manner - think about little tidbits here and there...to put them together. Is it delusional to think that X2 might bring something better and something that will require a larger install? Can one see the Genesis missions being tossed to make room for that? Sure...why not?
So it gets into what other reasons did folks hit up the Clusters, eh? Relatively quick Dil? Let's look at that first, eh? I'm kind of surprised that Cryptic hasn't done a wrapper sort of thing for Patrols in various sectors akin to the Empire Defense wrappers that the KDF has. 3x Patrols in 4x Sectors and bam...there you go, eh?
Okay then, what about mats? They're getting added more to missions, they're being added as rewards to queued missions, and they're basically all over the place DOFFing. You can fly through a quick circle of sectors and hit 20 missions for mats.
The chains? They're still there at points in sector space representing where the various clusters/etc were located.
Diplomacy? Can hit T4 from doing the Dip missions flying around the various sectors, no? Cause uh, well - that's how I always T4'd Dip when I still had Feds (and it's how I T4 Marauding on my KDF).
That leaves what...er...the Bridge invites? No clue on that. I can't remember the last time I DOFF'd from "inside". I remember when they were looking at getting rid of the Department Heads and forcing folks to go inside...and that ticked me off, lol. There's probably a vast game experience that I'm missing there, but I don't care. It never made sense to me that as Captain of the ship that I had to walk all over the place to speak to people instead of them coming to me. I DOFF with Current Map, Personal, and Department Heads...so yep, maybe I'm missing out on all sorts of things...and if that's the remaining complaint that players have, even though it's not something I personally care about in the least - it's something that Cryptic should address in some fashion if it's something they're removing. Now, it got mentioned that folks were "exploiting" this in some fashion - and well...if there is an actual exploit, it should obviously be dealt with - but you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...etc, etc, etc.
But yeah, it's not really the sheer number of complaints on it - cause the number is not that large - it's the sheer volume of the complaints coming from the group that is complaining, which leads me to agree with the OP that something perhaps shady is going on...and I really hate finding myself in agreement with the OP on anything. Could be a clear blue sky, the OP could point that out, and I'd have a hard time agreeing...but based on everything that's popped up in complaints on this matter, meh - it's pretty easy to agree with the OP - loathe as am I to do so.
Yes. I absolutely prefer an excursion to the battle zone. I dislike ground combat, but the Voth Ground Combat Zone was actually fun for me (I wouldn't mind less dinosaurs, but whatever). The Space Battle Zone is even better (even though I wouldn't mind less resource-hogging SFX).
The big advantage is that they feel very... free-form. You choose a location to fight, no loading screens, no nonsense, and you get to have fun shooting stuff but a bit of extra objectives where you need to achieve stuff in time and be at the right spot. I like that combination.
There is no story, but that's okay, the story of the exploration mission was boring quickly, too, and I still have to go through all kinds of loading screens to get to the fun parts. (You really lose when it's a ground mission - extra loading screen for beaming down, and probably some mindless ground combat, not even some time pressure like in some of the Voth Zone battles).
i dislike ground so... what does that got to do with it called warp out get a new mission if you wanted only space ones i know i did the daily for 2 years when the game first came out!!! same goes for non combat mission so on
People are mad that they can't get purple technicians without grinding. Guys, look at it this way: Cryptic is nerfing Aux2Batt by destroying the main source of purple technicians!
When content is that repetative and objectively bad, there's always more to the story.
It's subjectively bad not objectively bad.
I like the missions. I like the system. It's the only place in STO where I can fight against the Starlians and Vito'D and other villains that Cryptic created. I had an entire back story revolving around that. And now with access to the B'Tran gone, two of my characters lose pretty much the whole point of their existence in the game.
Some of us don't really like spending every waking moment clearing ISE or doing Voth ground battlezones (both of which pump out far more Dil much faster and easier than exploration clusters ever could).
this me when it come to rep grind mission zombie like voice grind........grind..........grind!........grind..........grind
with exploration i could change from that zombie grind that every one so loves!!!!!! not the best yes not the best story but imo far better then the storys we get with grind.........grind..........grind
staring to see something if you not Qed up helping me get grind mark you no help to this game and all content that lets you be anything other than a zombie......... your days are number!!!!!!!
I hate agreeing with the OP. I mean, I seriously hate agreeing with the OP. I can't explain the depths of how much I hate agreeing the OP without getting the mods involved. But I agree with the OP.
If somebody were actually looking for some kind of Star Trek experience, they'd be playing the story content or they would be hitting up the Foundry. Doing those missions in the Exploration Clusters...they make the Patrol missions look awesome by comparison.
One can also speculate, put stuff together that maybe they shouldn't - think about what's been said about the size of X2 - think about what Taco said he's working on in the most cryptic manner - think about little tidbits here and there...to put them together. Is it delusional to think that X2 might bring something better and something that will require a larger install? Can one see the Genesis missions being tossed to make room for that? Sure...why not?
So it gets into what other reasons did folks hit up the Clusters, eh? Relatively quick Dil? Let's look at that first, eh? I'm kind of surprised that Cryptic hasn't done a wrapper sort of thing for Patrols in various sectors akin to the Empire Defense wrappers that the KDF has. 3x Patrols in 4x Sectors and bam...there you go, eh?
Okay then, what about mats? They're getting added more to missions, they're being added as rewards to queued missions, and they're basically all over the place DOFFing. You can fly through a quick circle of sectors and hit 20 missions for mats.
The chains? They're still there at points in sector space representing where the various clusters/etc were located.
Diplomacy? Can hit T4 from doing the Dip missions flying around the various sectors, no? Cause uh, well - that's how I always T4'd Dip when I still had Feds (and it's how I T4 Marauding on my KDF).
That leaves what...er...the Bridge invites? No clue on that. I can't remember the last time I DOFF'd from "inside". I remember when they were looking at getting rid of the Department Heads and forcing folks to go inside...and that ticked me off, lol. There's probably a vast game experience that I'm missing there, but I don't care. It never made sense to me that as Captain of the ship that I had to walk all over the place to speak to people instead of them coming to me. I DOFF with Current Map, Personal, and Department Heads...so yep, maybe I'm missing out on all sorts of things...and if that's the remaining complaint that players have, even though it's not something I personally care about in the least - it's something that Cryptic should address in some fashion if it's something they're removing. Now, it got mentioned that folks were "exploiting" this in some fashion - and well...if there is an actual exploit, it should obviously be dealt with - but you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...etc, etc, etc.
But yeah, it's not really the sheer number of complaints on it - cause the number is not that large - it's the sheer volume of the complaints coming from the group that is complaining, which leads me to agree with the OP that something perhaps shady is going on...and I really hate finding myself in agreement with the OP on anything. Could be a clear blue sky, the OP could point that out, and I'd have a hard time agreeing...but based on everything that's popped up in complaints on this matter, meh - it's pretty easy to agree with the OP - loathe as am I to do so.
There's nothing shady about this. Many of the people complaining are veterans who remember the CONTENT DROUGHT (duh, duhn, DUHNNNNNN) and so have absolutely zero faith in the company's ability to create content.
Seeing them REMOVE content, even basic shallow content like this, raises all sorts of red flags.
It's not like they've been able to put out quality content in the past year with any regularity. The Voth and Undine "battlezones" are shared. The Undine GROUND content is just repurposed Bajor ground zone. So they're cutting corners there.
They took out the Q-jr. mission which a lot of people liked. As well as half of the Undine story from the very first level cap raise missions.
This game spent over a year without adding anything other than junk like the Section 31 uniforms (Gozer actually tried to say that was content being added to the game at a time when he was supposed to be churning out the Children of Khan STF) ... and now we have another dev telling us that they're removing content that's been in the game since launch because it's not up to their standards of quality?
That's going to cause a lot of us old timers to choke and sputter with sarcasm.
There's no super secret exploit nonsense going on in this old content.
It's just complete and utter BS to see cryptic remove content from a game when they are infamous for not putting out content. And then to read the reason they gave for it to be quality standards they've never adhered to, and some nonsense about server load and file sizes and players getting lost.
But they'll deny it to their dying day. And they'll just whine about they liked the content.
Also, it's really easy to farm Dilithium if you don't do the combat missions.
You know what I hate? I hate when people ask a question to which they already think they know the answer, then point at a reasonable response as confirmation of some crazy conspiracy theory.
These missions were reasonable, somewhat efficient ways for some people to earn rewards in the game. Getting Dilithium in the Dyson BZ is MUCH easier than this.
If you think you already know the answer to the question you're asking, stop this garbage .
Please reconsider ARC. Please make it optional, at the least. PLEASE.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
These missions were reasonable, somewhat efficient ways for some people to earn rewards in the game. Getting Dilithium in the Dyson BZ is MUCH easier than this.
Exactly. No one was using these to efficiently or effectively grind dilithium. The Borg STFs, PvP queues and The Voth Ground Battlezone pump out so much more dilithium. And if all you wanted to do was to get the reward from the wrapper, just do the Deferi Dailies. They're just as easy and never popped a bugged out map. And net the same Dil reward.
Comments
you do realize every mission in this game is a farming location ???????? rep farming fleet farming stf farming romulan farming need i keep going on?
serious question here are we playing the same game?
system Lord Baal is dead
I'm burned out on dilithium grinding right now and am on vacation. However, I go by the standard of 1500 for 10-15 minutes. Unless I have some diplomatic missions there's no way I finish 3 exploration cluster missions in under 15 minutes - from 2 minute load times at least.
Someone else mentioned that it is a good source of dilithium for low level new characters. This is very true. There are few options for dilithium at level 20. But, otherwise, it's hardly a huge source of dilithium.
For me, the missions felt the most like real Trek. Saddened by their loss.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I think the "ulterior motive" thing is played out. I try to live the internet portion of my life without assuming ulterior motives. In general, it's different values (or different motives) more than ulterior motives.
With online games in particular, I think it's healthy to consider the Bartle Quotient:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test
Some people don't care about achieving or killing. Some don't care about exploring or socializing.
In general, a very rough and fuzzy recollection I have of the data in other games is that the breakdown for online games is something like (allowing for overlap):
5-10% rank high as Kill-motivated, 30-40% rank high as Achiever-morivated, 30-40% rank high as Exploration motivated, 20% or so rank high in Social motivation. (Though more are social the more passive socialization is. You can get into things like vanity motivation. The 20% thing is, like, actively socially motivated to coordinate and cooperate and have positive relationships.)
It adds up to more than 100% because you can rank high in more than one. I'm just tossing out a general fuzzy memory of different studies, not facts. (So I'm not eager to go on a research binge to back anything up right now.)
Exploration as a motivator is a funny thing in that it covers not just physical exploration but also exploiting, builds and design, any kind of discovery. But it hinges on unpredictable results or unpredictable combinations of outcomes and it interacts with Achievement in interesting ways.
Explorers often like being blindfolded. They may like being rewarded for original or logical thinking but they also often don't care for how the sausage gets made. Achievers need hard and intelligible stats to optimize their builds whereas I tend to think at least some Explorers in the Bartle sense would like stats stripped off gear and a bit more uncertainty in design, provided that there are situational or rock paper scissors mechanics in play that reward playing unpredictably or strangely.
Explorers march to their own drummer.
I have some strong Explorer qualities but I think a lot of Explorers have looked at STO "Exploration" with rose colored glasses. The missions are not procedurally generated or truly random. They're pregenerated madlibs missions. They're not unpredictable. They aren't created at random on the spot. It's actually just several thousand missions that went through a randomizer 5-6 years ago.
The Foundry offers everything the cluster missions offer and better, aside from a few accolades.
However, having said that... OK, they're buggy and repetitive, assembling random missions from a strictly limited set of elements. OK, it's a case of scan five objects in space/scan five objects on ground/fight four or six space mobs/fight five ground mobs and scan five objects...
How is that less varied than, say, the Undine space battlezone?
I was mentioning this to a fleetmate just the other day - the lag in that darn place is so bad, the only strategy I can use is "hold down alt and A, mash spacebar, hope not to die". How in the name of Great Cthugha the Firelord is this an improvement on the exploration missions? At least, with those, there is some semblance of variety. The battlezone? "Here is an enemy. Kill them all, and as a reward, there will be more enemies that you can kill."
(Yes, thanks, I've turned my graphics all the way down to "fingerpainted by a child of five" levels. Still lagged. I just have to deal with it... which, come to think of it, I largely do by not bothering with the battlezone.)
If the exploration clusters are repetitive... they're not any more so than other content which isn't going away. And they're something more like "Star Trek" than "kill wave after wave of alien scum".
How is any of what you posted any different from the rest of the game? Go blow up x ships...protect ship x for x minutes, etc. Sounds like exploration clusters fit right in.
I don't do exploration missions anymore and haven't for awhile but new players may still find them enjoyable and it would be a shame if there was no 'traditional' MMO style quest content to replace them.
As for whatever exploits are involved I'm sure there must be a way to solve those problems without excising whole big chunks of the game. People would still complain ('why even bother doing these missions anymore etc') but the STO community is always, always complaining and lack of complaints should never be the goal in itself because it will never happen. An overhaul of the 'exploration' facet of the game should be considered sometime in the future because, in one form or another, 'exploration' is really what Star Trek has always been about. Yes?
Lest we forget as we drift from one big war to another.
I salute all the brave souls that tried reasoning with him here, many have tried and fallen in his other threads.
I hope they are developing a new exploration system that isn't awful. I'm not going to demand that they keep the TRIBBLE around until its replacement is ready, though.
imo rep grind mission are TRIBBLE and no better than the exploration system mission
system Lord Baal is dead
Why, it's not like the exploration clusters are elitism-inducing challenging content. Of course with that in mind...why do you care?
Diablo II would like a word with you, O Master of Generalization. :rolleyes:
that has been my thought since i saw this thread by him think he wanted his own lil witch hunt thread maybe he thought it would make him look cool and thought others would jump on his bandwagon witch hunt :cool:
system Lord Baal is dead
No, the game takes very long to download. The exploration content is a big part in this download. People don't finsih the download or don't bother to start the game after it's finished, because they already got bored and disinterested (maybe they used the time to read the forums and realized the game was doomed anyway?), or they ran out of time and need to try next day, but by then, the excitement is all gone and they don't even bother.
Then, there are people that play the game, and they get some mission regarding the exploration clusters, and choose to check them out. Then they end up in some missions where the BOFFs fall through the ground, or the enemies are unreachable, or some mission is not completing. Or the enemies spawn outside their sensor range and they don't know that all enemies are either in a straight line to an object in background, or around the planet, and fly around, not finding anything, and thinking "what a ****ty game" or "I am too dumb for this game" and leave. Heck, some might get a "scan 5 anomalies" mission and thing "wow, most boring and mind-numbing thing ever, that's what passes for exploration in this game."
Or they get stuck on even something more trivial (but I know how digitally incompetent some people can be), like not realizing that there is only one border in the cluster where you can leave, and the alternative to use is the warp-out button (exploration clusters work like sector blocks in controls mostly, except the warp-out is an option. But if people already "learned" - "No Warp Out in Sector Blocks", they may not even try.)
But these missions are a lot fewer and smaller and don't get their own extra exploration cluster. I am also not sure if any of them are actually broken (or how many). Since they are not random, it's relatively likely they get error reports often, and thus have a got chance of getting fixed.
maybe ppl need to get off that 56K modem or trying to play a mmo on a cell phone data plan just me i download over hundreds of gigabytes every month just trying and playing game not just mmos
system Lord Baal is dead
It's not install size.
IT's not bad quality.
It's not player retention.
It's extra install size for bad quality content that causes players to get stuck and decide to abandon the game.
That's 3 things, not one.
Imagine WoW hat a zone that has only one somewhat difficult to find exist, where pets often fall through the floor, and enemies are often hidden behind walls you can't scale, but need to kill to finish a quest. And that zone was really big. Possibly one of the largest zones in the game.
Do you think Blizzard would keep it around?
Now imagine being in the scenario, but you're not the 800 lbs gorilla, you're a much smaller team with less resources. And not everyone is giving you subscription money, you live from people that actually play the game long enough to think spending some money is worth it.
are you really going to say these mission are any worse or better than rep grind mission ?!?!?!?!? because that how i see this when you say exploration missions are TRIBBLE but................ rep grind shot till you drop!!! best quality of mission the game has to offer!!!!
system Lord Baal is dead
My favorite was "We're receiving a distress call from the planet, the Borg have invaded, they are looking for RELICS FROM THEIR 3RD DYNASTY!"
:eek:
USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser)
VADM Rogueshadow IRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit)
LT General Morbo IKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser)
LT General Posu IKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
Literally lmao.
No, they would fix it. But nice try.
But I see your point - PW should remove content rather than fix it. Roger. Gotcha.
Whole lot of trying to explain away a developer's failure when you could have just said that.
also i wouldn't be surprised if dil was indeed the reason people are whining about its removal.
if...... if they add anything in its place sorry lost my optimistic glasses back in year one so i dont get my hopes up for anything any more
where O where is that old DS9 fleet action O where O where can it be
system Lord Baal is dead
Yes. I absolutely prefer an excursion to the battle zone. I dislike ground combat, but the Voth Ground Combat Zone was actually fun for me (I wouldn't mind less dinosaurs, but whatever). The Space Battle Zone is even better (even though I wouldn't mind less resource-hogging SFX).
The big advantage is that they feel very... free-form. You choose a location to fight, no loading screens, no nonsense, and you get to have fun shooting stuff but a bit of extra objectives where you need to achieve stuff in time and be at the right spot. I like that combination.
There is no story, but that's okay, the story of the exploration mission was boring quickly, too, and I still have to go through all kinds of loading screens to get to the fun parts. (You really lose when it's a ground mission - extra loading screen for beaming down, and probably some mindless ground combat, not even some time pressure like in some of the Voth Zone battles).
If somebody were actually looking for some kind of Star Trek experience, they'd be playing the story content or they would be hitting up the Foundry. Doing those missions in the Exploration Clusters...they make the Patrol missions look awesome by comparison.
One can also speculate, put stuff together that maybe they shouldn't - think about what's been said about the size of X2 - think about what Taco said he's working on in the most cryptic manner - think about little tidbits here and there...to put them together. Is it delusional to think that X2 might bring something better and something that will require a larger install? Can one see the Genesis missions being tossed to make room for that? Sure...why not?
So it gets into what other reasons did folks hit up the Clusters, eh? Relatively quick Dil? Let's look at that first, eh? I'm kind of surprised that Cryptic hasn't done a wrapper sort of thing for Patrols in various sectors akin to the Empire Defense wrappers that the KDF has. 3x Patrols in 4x Sectors and bam...there you go, eh?
Okay then, what about mats? They're getting added more to missions, they're being added as rewards to queued missions, and they're basically all over the place DOFFing. You can fly through a quick circle of sectors and hit 20 missions for mats.
The chains? They're still there at points in sector space representing where the various clusters/etc were located.
Diplomacy? Can hit T4 from doing the Dip missions flying around the various sectors, no? Cause uh, well - that's how I always T4'd Dip when I still had Feds (and it's how I T4 Marauding on my KDF).
That leaves what...er...the Bridge invites? No clue on that. I can't remember the last time I DOFF'd from "inside". I remember when they were looking at getting rid of the Department Heads and forcing folks to go inside...and that ticked me off, lol. There's probably a vast game experience that I'm missing there, but I don't care. It never made sense to me that as Captain of the ship that I had to walk all over the place to speak to people instead of them coming to me. I DOFF with Current Map, Personal, and Department Heads...so yep, maybe I'm missing out on all sorts of things...and if that's the remaining complaint that players have, even though it's not something I personally care about in the least - it's something that Cryptic should address in some fashion if it's something they're removing. Now, it got mentioned that folks were "exploiting" this in some fashion - and well...if there is an actual exploit, it should obviously be dealt with - but you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater...etc, etc, etc.
But yeah, it's not really the sheer number of complaints on it - cause the number is not that large - it's the sheer volume of the complaints coming from the group that is complaining, which leads me to agree with the OP that something perhaps shady is going on...and I really hate finding myself in agreement with the OP on anything. Could be a clear blue sky, the OP could point that out, and I'd have a hard time agreeing...but based on everything that's popped up in complaints on this matter, meh - it's pretty easy to agree with the OP - loathe as am I to do so.
i dislike ground so... what does that got to do with it called warp out get a new mission if you wanted only space ones i know i did the daily for 2 years when the game first came out!!! same goes for non combat mission so on
system Lord Baal is dead
It's subjectively bad not objectively bad.
I like the missions. I like the system. It's the only place in STO where I can fight against the Starlians and Vito'D and other villains that Cryptic created. I had an entire back story revolving around that. And now with access to the B'Tran gone, two of my characters lose pretty much the whole point of their existence in the game.
Some of us don't really like spending every waking moment clearing ISE or doing Voth ground battlezones (both of which pump out far more Dil much faster and easier than exploration clusters ever could).
Which is just as repetitive and boring.
with exploration i could change from that zombie grind that every one so loves!!!!!! not the best yes not the best story but imo far better then the storys we get with grind.........grind..........grind
staring to see something if you not Qed up helping me get grind mark you no help to this game and all content that lets you be anything other than a zombie......... your days are number!!!!!!!
system Lord Baal is dead
There's nothing shady about this. Many of the people complaining are veterans who remember the CONTENT DROUGHT (duh, duhn, DUHNNNNNN) and so have absolutely zero faith in the company's ability to create content.
Seeing them REMOVE content, even basic shallow content like this, raises all sorts of red flags.
It's not like they've been able to put out quality content in the past year with any regularity. The Voth and Undine "battlezones" are shared. The Undine GROUND content is just repurposed Bajor ground zone. So they're cutting corners there.
They took out the Q-jr. mission which a lot of people liked. As well as half of the Undine story from the very first level cap raise missions.
This game spent over a year without adding anything other than junk like the Section 31 uniforms (Gozer actually tried to say that was content being added to the game at a time when he was supposed to be churning out the Children of Khan STF) ... and now we have another dev telling us that they're removing content that's been in the game since launch because it's not up to their standards of quality?
That's going to cause a lot of us old timers to choke and sputter with sarcasm.
There's no super secret exploit nonsense going on in this old content.
It's just complete and utter BS to see cryptic remove content from a game when they are infamous for not putting out content. And then to read the reason they gave for it to be quality standards they've never adhered to, and some nonsense about server load and file sizes and players getting lost.
It's ridiculous.
You know what I hate? I hate when people ask a question to which they already think they know the answer, then point at a reasonable response as confirmation of some crazy conspiracy theory.
These missions were reasonable, somewhat efficient ways for some people to earn rewards in the game. Getting Dilithium in the Dyson BZ is MUCH easier than this.
If you think you already know the answer to the question you're asking, stop this garbage .
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
Exactly. No one was using these to efficiently or effectively grind dilithium. The Borg STFs, PvP queues and The Voth Ground Battlezone pump out so much more dilithium. And if all you wanted to do was to get the reward from the wrapper, just do the Deferi Dailies. They're just as easy and never popped a bugged out map. And net the same Dil reward.