As I read I notice that no one (that I saw) mentioned the stealth nerf to EC earnings.
The value on all deflector/drive/shields and the like got cut by 75%. Since this was a major way of earning EC, and will be once the exchange is flooded by the R&D system, earning EC is going to become a monstrous chore.
The Doff system looks nice, but it's implementation is horrible. No sorting - you get what it selects or you spend an hour finding the *proper* crew with the proper traits for the mission.
More lock boxes... that should be flat out illegal. It's gambling, pure and simple.
Fleet gear still trumps R&D stuff hands down. Especially since the best stuff the R&D system can create is 'can only use one of this item' - rendering such items useful only for Shuttles which are never used.
OH yes. Also, doff assignments were nerfed. Any doff recruitment assignment has had it's length and cooldown doubled as far as I can see. Veteran dil refining has also been affected.
That bug is as old as the hills. Well, almost. I have a very similar issue with my duty officers as well.
Also, I would like to point out that despite all the TRIBBLE that has been with this latest patch, there is one good point;
KIT PARTS HAVE THEIR OWN CATEGORY IN THE EXCHANGE!!!!!!! AT LAST!!!!!
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE etc.
I honestly don't see the problem with the DoFF UI ... yes it's different, and will take a bit of getting used to, but it's not that bad IMO.
It definitely needs a "sort" functionality for the DoFF's = Rarity and Traits, and it most definitely needs to show you the old ** out of *** resource numbers, so you can choose whether to spend all your contraband on one mission or another. But Now that they are automatically choosing "Crit" traits and "Quality" over just "Success" traits, it's simplified things a lot.
DoFF UI is a D, Not a total fail, but needs work.
The Uniforms are quite nice, and a welcome addition, they still aren't perfect, and I'm still dissapointed that there isn't a Romulan version, but all up not bad (especially the Bort Skirt!)
Uniforms are a B, overall pretty good, but still needs a little work.
Xindi and Xindi LB ... Well, there are numerous good and bad things ... The Ships? Pretty good. The Traits? Some WAY OP and some ... meh ... The kits? Total and utter TRIBBLE, not even worth their EC value as Vendor Trash on the exchange, and for a LB Kit, that's just pathetic, and poor design by Cryptic. The Consoles? ... FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!
Xindi stuff is all up a C, with the good and the bad, it's ... average.
New R&D system, is well .. .different ... We needed an update, and as I've played Cryptic's Neverwinter, it's VERY familiar to me, so I'm quite happy with it. I'm not sure where people are getting the "grind fest" idea from, as after completling only a few STF's and about a dozen or so DoFF missions, I've got half my R&D tab loaded with materials and there is a 20hr XP project to level up each school. Plus you can manufacture many pof the components you need, so "grinding" for them or buying them isn't necessary.
R&D system would be a C, once again, not bad, just needs a few tweaks here and there.
General UI is easier to read and Doff Assignment generally does far better than it used to do.
Crafting system though is a steaming pile of "male bovine excrement"... 20 hour projects to do some simple little thing? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! Someone needs to hunt down the persons responsible for this system and kick them really hard between the TRIBBLE and the sphincter. :mad:
Seriously the randomness of the Doff system makes a very poor basis for crafting. Then when you compound that by adding ridiculous process times. And the result is just STUPID.
Oh! And converting my old mats is a joke as well... I needed a Beta Tachyon Particle for an assignment. So I decided to try and "convert" a Beta-Tachyon Particle Trace. But the system doesn't fricking care about the quality, or rarity, of the item I'm converting. It just gives you any old TRIBBLE. Really makes me angry!
The only plus side of the situation is that I now have reason to gather stuff again. But I think its truly unfair that they've nullified all of our crafting skill and then cheat us in the conversion process.
I think its good so far. The lockbox is really nice compared to the others. I already bought all 3 mirror ships. And 1 weapon per character I want to use it on. I hadn't been too many places yet that shows the new uniforms since I was at New Romulas. The crafting I had to convert all my old stuff. And got a ton of new stuff ready to go. I hit the 20 hour one since it takes the least and gives the most exp. Plus at my level I have no need for low level gear. And it wouldn't allow me to make some of the stuff anyways since some mats I didn't have. So far I'm trying it out to see what happens. The new Doff interface is ok, I miss seeing my crew pictures pop up to set the missions.
Its good with a couple bad. But the new Doff and crafting is all new, so there is room for future improvements.
Xindi lockbox - A lots of goodies this go around. Made me spent some EC.
Doff interface - B needs our crew pictures back.
Crafting - ?? I hadn't done enough to give it a grade yet.
New uniforms - A much needed feature.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I think its good so far. The lockbox is really nice compared to the others. I already bought all 3 mirror ships. And 1 weapon per character I want to use it on. I hadn't been too many places yet that shows the new uniforms since I was at New Romulas. The crafting I had to convert all my old stuff. And got a ton of new stuff ready to go. I hit the 20 hour one since it takes the least and gives the most exp. Plus at my level I have no need for low level gear. And it wouldn't allow me to make some of the stuff anyways since some mats I didn't have. So far I'm trying it out to see what happens. The new Doff interface is ok, I miss seeing my crew pictures pop up to set the missions.
Its good with a couple bad. But the new Doff and crafting is all new, so there is room for future improvements.
Xindi lockbox - A lots of goodies this go around. Made me spent some EC.
Doff interface - B needs our crew pictures back.
Crafting - ?? I hadn't done enough to give it a grade yet.
New uniforms - A much needed feature.
It's nice to see I'm not the only one who keeps positive..... XD
I'd give the Crafting a B+ IMO
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
UNIFORMS
Big whoop. I'll stick with my JVGs, thank you. At least all the NPCs look the same.
It would've been a nice touch with the Odyssey uniforms if, considering their similarity to the rather well-coordinated Starfleet Academy and Jupiter options (everything matches), you included skirts for females. I'm old-school trek and I like the option of having the female BOffs and captains wearing a skirt instead of this unisex everyone-wears-pants TRIBBLE.
The color palette went all weird so there's relearning those color-texture combinations all over again.
And, on a side note, your "Odyssey" bridge is no comparison to the awesome "Aquarius" bridge that originally debuted with the class. Why did you even bother making a new bridge for the Odyssey when you have such problems as:
The Romulan bridges. 'nuff said there.
You still have generic BOffs appearing instead of active BOffs when there's more than enough active BOffs to fill the available slots in the bridge layout.
You still have upside-down and backward displays in a large number of bridge designs.
I won't remark on the Klingon side of the house, as I haven't played there for ages.
CRAFTING
You took a system that was "broken"...and made it worse? Bravo.
Yes, it was ridiculously easy to max crafting. Yes, there weren't a whole lot of options once you did max out. But at least you had a tutorial to teach you how to craft and you could at least understand it.
This "tutorial" that popped up on only one of my toons was not any help at all. It was more of a highlight of "look at how we screwed up your DOff interface" considering it really didn't do anything with crafting, instead being some token seconds-long DOff mission for 5 dil.
You gave me 2 items I have no idea what to do with.
You gave me a horde of DOffs without warning or accounting for players that have max-capacity DOff rosters (with DOffs that matter, mind you).
You took my max skill away and handed me a title for my trouble with some token misspelled explanation (and you guys really need to spell-check your work...typos are a pet peeve of mine even when I do it). BTW, I will be wearing, no, FLAUNTING that title, so thanks I guess.
It is reminiscent of the crafting/gem refining (upgrade) used in Neverwinter Nights. Coincidence? Because that sucked too. That (the gems) became a scam to make more money (buying items to upgrade gems that previously didn't require anything) and this "catalyst" smells of the same stench. I'm having flashbacks, bad ones (hint: I don't play NWN anymore).
I tried to go through and craft something, anything, to maybe make use of those 2 mystery items in my bag, but after scratching my head and squinting at the confusing UI, I gave up. You lost me. Nope, no crafting here. Back to the moth balls with it.
DOffs WTF WERE YOU THINKING?!
It wasn't broken! I've heard someone mention some BS about an exploit doing multiple missions or some TRIBBLE but, for me and anyone else that matters to me that I've spoken with, the previous DOff system ROCKED. I enjoyed it. I understood it. I felt like I was actually managing my CREW as CAPTAIN of my ship. I could sort and organize, pick and choose, MAKE A COMMAND DECISION!
Now I can't even read the damned thing!
The UI is mismatched and clunky. Big font then tiny font, icons that aren't the same as we're used to, harder to find what you're looking for. No organization capability for your crew. You redesigned a perfectly good system to adapt for a crafting redesign that was a stupid idea from concept. You take away nearly all options and decision-making capability and make us feel stupid, like we can't manage our DOff missions and rosters ourselves.
The ONLY flaw I saw with the DOffs had to do with Romulan BOffs not benefiting from active DOff ground abilities (so I don't think it was a DOff problem, rather a Romulan problem).
I used to love the DOffs. Shame on you.
EXPLORATION CLUSTERS
And, again, shame on you. How can you run a game about Star Trek and get this one wrong? Let me spell it out to you from THE CAPTAIN'S OATH! "... to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man/one has gone before."
THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE GAME. Not blindly endlessly playing the same storyline arcs over and over on different toons or on the same toons to grind rewards or doing the same STF grinds for pathetic quantities of marks (now mats too, great). Even the patrols get boring. Pick a planet, nothing changes.
But in the exploration clusters...oh, now that was fun. You never knew what you were going to be doing. Sure, skip the explores and just scan anomalies to farm. Yah, so what? If your ship captain wants to use his vessel to mine for minerals and gases and strange alien artifacts, SO WHAT?! Oh, mining the dil on an asteroid is ok but farming anomalies is a no-no!? But if you did the explorations, even without the daily explore quota missions, it was so randomly fun. Be it assisting someone in need, delivering supplies to a civilization, performing some diplomatic duty, helping someone who is being attacked, a rescue from pirates, or scanning ancient structures, finding new deposits of precious ore to report back to Starfleet, exploring an alien planet with X inhabitants or indigenous species, stopping a known enemy from gaining a strategic foothold, etc. I was honestly impressed with that part of the game. That's why it boggles my mind WHY you got rid of it. I don't care if it wasn't "up to your standards", as apparently (a) your standards of late seem to be sucking and (b) you haven't shown us what your "standards" for the exploration clusters were. No replacement.
Just an excuse (crafting) to get rid of a perfectly fun and reasonable and INTEGRAL part of the Star Trek universe.
XINDI LOCKBOX
I don't care. It's just another lockbox. It's another excuse to spend money I don't have to buy a key for a random grab-bag-o'-TRIBBLE. We have enough already. And I've given you enough money with C-Store unlocks and a Lifer membership plus paying for a second one. Put your hand down.
Here's a hint. Try going without releasing another lockbox for a while. Do like you did with the featured projects for the fleets: have them all available for a while and let the chips fall where they may.
CONCLUSION
:mad:Season 9.5 = EPIC FAIL:mad:
By all appearances, some rabid little dev saw someone complain about crafting in chat or the forums, jotted some stupid idea down on a cocktail napkin, and proposed it at some company barbecue and got approval. They whipped it together without contemplating the repercussions, reception, and consequences to the game and all its facets. It looks clunky, ill thought-out, not even spell-checked, hastily thrown together without so much as a flowchart to track its design, and as a result is contrary to the basic appeal of the game and the general Star Trek mindset as a whole. Remove one of the best parts of the game, poorly redesign another of the best parts of the game, make a substandard system even worse, and render the game itself down to a mindless combat-only grindfest for raw materials, even going so far as to "push" players toward underplayed, unrewarding, and unfulfilling STFs by promising them said materials as additional rewards.
TO-DO LIST
Restore the exploration clusters.
Return the DOff system to what it was.
Put the existing crafting system in mothballs until you can either return it to its previous state or build a system that works and doesn't have detrimental effects on other aspects of the game.
Stop making new lockboxes; just let all prior lockboxes drop randomly.
Leave the color palette for uniforms alone or expand it so the colors make sense.
Give the females skirt options.
Fix the Romulans (bridges and BOff/DOff interactions).
Fix the existing bridges.
Use a spell-checker or dictionary before you type in-game dialogue.
Come up with innovative, exciting, and appealing ideas, then get the players input (i.e. LISTEN TO THE PLAYERS) whether it's worthy or not.
Here's something no devs in any of the MMORPGs I've ever played seem to understand: you may be creating this game and think you know best, but you're creating it for US, the players. WE play it. If WE don't like it, WE won't play it, which means you don't have a reason to create it (which is your job). Get the picture?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I have not had an opportunity to explore all of season 9.5 yet, but the one area that I use every day, the DoFF assignment system, is a complete disaster.
It literally takes me 5 times longer now to find the assignments that I want and assign the DoFFs that I want to perform that assignment.
- What is with the non-filter pop-up window? That is a major hindrance. I realize that the system is trying to put the best DoFFs at the top, but it is not always what I want, nor the actual best option. To add injury to insult, that pop-up window mixes all of the DoFFs together, regardless of tactical, security, engineering, operations, science, medical, or civilian.
This is a step backwards; if Cryptic wants to fix this system, put it back to the way that it was. The previous system was much more user friendly.
DOffs WTF WERE YOU THINKING?!
It wasn't broken! I've heard someone mention some BS about an exploit doing multiple missions or some TRIBBLE but, for me and anyone else that matters to me that I've spoken with, the previous DOff system ROCKED. I enjoyed it. I understood it. I felt like I was actually managing my CREW as CAPTAIN of my ship. I could sort and organize, pick and choose, MAKE A COMMAND DECISION!
Now I can't even read the damned thing!
The UI is mismatched and clunky. Big font then tiny font, icons that aren't the same as we're used to, harder to find what you're looking for. No organization capability for your crew. You redesigned a perfectly good system to adapt for a crafting redesign that was a stupid idea from concept. You take away nearly all options and decision-making capability and make us feel stupid, like we can't manage our DOff missions and rosters ourselves.
The ONLY flaw I saw with the DOffs had to do with Romulan BOffs not benefiting from active DOff ground abilities (so I don't think it was a DOff problem, rather a Romulan problem).
I used to love the DOffs. Shame on you.
Before a start a space mission I look out for those SCI-scans items we need but now, I don't know if I'll keep doing that. Grading this 9.5 - it's still a work in progress. As for the expansion 2, the hope to introduce new missions, we do need more new enemies not the what we have now.
Would be nice to see Undine running around where the Voth battlezone daily ground mission alerts are. They have the Nimbus III worms in the park, some time traveling KDF from lurking around. Something is adding more content, but they need to keep it up.
Sphere area for Fleet is empty along with the allied the city, park and outskirts fairly a few players running around in circles daily.
I will reserve my judgement until a month from now. Almost every Season has started off with a rocky start and having people ask for everything to change it back to the way it was. All the Doff UI needs is a way to filter type and traits for assignments and the Doff system would be better than the previous version IMO. Instantly having information on the requirements and rewards for each assignment without clicking anything is better than having to click on each assignment to get that information.
The interface is a problem when you have to click tabs and buttons left and right to produce materials. I wish they would let someone produce a batch of materials instead of having to go one by one which is pure torture. For those who had the dil and EC to breeze through a bunch of levels, it has been torture.
The second problem, and this may be because this game is so DPS focused, is that I have yet to see any new mods for anything but weapons in the Exchange. I did craft one purple deflector, but it just got the regular old mods. I hope the developers didn't create all this crafting system just so only weapons got all the bonus mods.
New doff interface gets an D.
Horrible in so many levels, I can't even write them all. I like that it picks the best doffs, but they didn't fix the chances doffs give (old old problem), like picking the right type of doff gets less crit chance than some random old one. The inteface, specially the space it takes, is just plain bad. Somehow also, the completed assignments sometimes don't get sorted in order of completion which sucks. I actually have to read what the hack I'm clicking now. Give me back my old interface, it worked fine.
I've just finish some of the new 9.5 DOF but I've notice that dilithium not giving you as much as it did under 9.0. Actually less like 5 instead of double or triple digits. Now you get ore for crafting push though. EC rates should be at equal value now your cut my gear from 200K where I would get 100K selling back to one the vendors on ESD or Sphere. Now it's worth 67K and all I get back is 37K. Worst for items that had EC value. Antiproton gear still higher on EC even goes up to 3M. Wasn't this suppose to be fixed in 9.5.?
CRAFTING.......C
This is not necessary, it is more like something to do rather than something that is fun. It is like going to work.
DOFFs.....D-
This is too big and chunky. It's not to user friendly and can be confusing. It takes a lot longer to use them and you have to relearn some symbols. Challenging to manage duty officers that do missions.
EXPLORATION CLUSTERS.....F-
This is perhaps one of the worst changes of the game's history. They took out a fun component of exploration and replaced it with a place to simply do DOFF missions only geared towards colonization. This was such a shame. Many DOFF missions are also not doable anymore making it difficult to do good trading missions.
ECONOMY....F-
Farming for EC is now worthless and those who don't have things like a plasmonic leach which cost 35mill should just say good bye to it for a long time. The change in the economy is unfair to newer players who don't have much and will have to take 3 times the amount of time to gain EC unless they want to spend real money. There still has not been a "delete all" button for the inbox so you can easily delete all those messages from the exchange.
STAR SHIP BRIDGES AND INTERIOR....D-
They still couldn't do the simple job of adding some picture, moving picture or something on the bridge other than blank windows 95 space. I find this preposterous. I can't tell you how disappointed i was when i acquired the destiny bridges just to see that the view screen they display on the bridge to get you to buy it was not even there and nothing like it. If they are going to take away the old exploration clusters, that was the least they could have done with this season.
Conclusion:
Trek Online is becoming more like work than like play making for a boring and tedious game that makes you feel as though you are getting nowhere and this will surely hurt their business in the future unless dealt with. This game is seeming less and less like star trek and that just doesn't make sense. The feel of the game as in the series is needed and can be done by adding simple things, the GRAPHICS NEED TO BE BETTER, there needs to be exploration, and lastly the game needs more story and story lines. If you are going to release 9.5 aand make more work for everyone, how could you do that, without adding more fun things like the story and expect your fans to be impressed or happy? There needs to be some pride put into the game that is being run here. Pride in your craft!
Despite the several patches since release, the DOff system is now worse than before. Many missions limit even the search for alternate officer assignments, which is to say that we are not allowed to fail a mission on our own terms by wagering on the natural probabilities of our own choices. In addition, many missions that were formerly accomplished by one or two DOff now need 3-5 DOffs to start. This obviously drives up demand for DOffs of all types, but also for roster space for the number now needed. Pay to win by buying DOff packs nad roster expansions!
Crafting Update - D
It's going to be months before we have enough players maxed out on crafting to really assess what Cryptic has done here. The entire material consumption algorithm is illogical, and it has become apparent the the 7 schools are amplified versions of the faction rep system. Hidden requirements for crafting DOffs have created peak demands for R&D Doffs, driving up their prices accordingly on the exchange. Even worse, players have no say in which DOff can be assigned to an R&D project, and thereby change the outcome probabilities. The materials needed are in nearly inverse proportion to how they would be logically used, so 9k R&D points are somehow derived out of a single unit of "common" material. And of course, pay to win by buying Z-store material packs!
Economy - C
The economy has now put many items out of reach for the newer player, making their grind longer and steeper to reach veteran levels. this is mostly as a by-product of geometric cost increases for DOffs, long search times for rare materials. The dil sink for crafted items now rivals faction rep gear, and even DOffs from the Dilithium store do not have the correct value for the cost (not one store DOff has resolve trait, for example, even at 10k+ dill cost). And for whatever reason, the dil/Zen exchange rate is still abnormally high, forcing F2P players into longer grinds for store items.
Exploration/Missions - F
Not only is exploration gone, but many remaining DOff missions have fatal bugs which either waste the players' time, or freeze DOffs out of the game altogether (read "Subordinate's Challenge" here). And Cryptic has no apparent interest in fixing missions even for paying subscribers...
Greed - A+
Had I tried to think of more ways for Cryptic to squeeze their player base for more cash, I could not have come close to the comprehensive package represented by S9.5! Way to go Cryptic!! But here's the thing, if the dev's can't see fit to fix known issues before the next expansion, I'm done paying for mediocrity. My subscription will be canceled, finito...
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
New Doff UI: A good try but really needs to do better.
The layout is not that intuitive, but it has to be said it does the simple things well.
If you don't want to pay attention to doffing, it just got a lot easier.
Sadly, it got a bit more difficult to do anything interesting.
Overall, it remains to be seen what, if any, benefit we get from these changes.
Their reason for existence has been badly explained and the lack of response to feedback from tribble is deeply saddening.
Crafting: Better than what we had before, but not by a whole lot.
It's...alright.
Placements of tabs and buttons appears to have been done haphazardly, but it does work.
New Uniforms: er......ok.
Nice to see NPCs look a bit more modern, and the giveaway of thebasic uniform is welcome.
A good, if largely irrelevant, move.
Xindi Lockbox: At least its not the Undine lockbox.
Some nice stuff, but its a shame the idea of non-faction consoles has been dropped.
Feds getting aceton assimilators just feels wrong.
A bit of a step backwards in some respect, but solid progress from a low.
Presentation and Attendence: Woefully bad.
The PR and CR side of 9.5 should be a huge wake up call to the staff involved.
You need to do better, a lot better, because this was amateur hour.
Overall: D-
My take on 9.5:
DOFFing - Oooh. Really bad implementation. The UI takes a huge hit for being done poorly. But also the overall effect of what actually got changed (especially with cluster removal) in DOFFing itself has left DOFFing twisting in the wind. It's less engaging than before and the players had missions either end up so rare that it'll be months before they pop again, or they're gone entirely. Either way, DOFFing is worse than before.
Crafting - Prior to the Vegas con, I thought Crafting was a tiny upgrade, but too resource intensive to be worth the effort. POST Vegas con, it's a complete step backwards. Why waste any time or effort getting Mk XII items when Mk XIII and XIV are coming out?
New Uniforms: On the one hand, the new uniform dev blog is possibly the most heralded dev blog I've seen all year. Kudos to the goodwill built up there. On the other hand, the change broke the interior for the TOS interiors. So I've got to once again give negative points to the dev team for not thoroughly testing their work. That's just sloppy.
Xindi Lockbox: Pre-Vegas, it seemed ok. I didn't know much about it because of that stupid Redacted nonsense. But then Vegas happened, and really all lockboxes are a waste of time and resources until we find out more information.
Presentation and Attendance: Yeah, announcing a lockbox on here AFTER it's already debuted? That's bad. But doing so on the lockbox where someone clearly dropped the ball and then had a fit and started the overzealous use of the word REDACTED? That's possibly the biggest egg-on-face moment I've seen since Gozer tried to convince people Section 31 uniforms were "content" instead of just all black uniforms being rushed out to the store for sale.
Overall I'm giving 9.5 an INCOMPLETE.
Really, this entire half season is pointless in lieu of the second expansion announcement.
Crafting: I'll let you know in a year when I have the skill to make anything worth using
(incomplete)
Doff UI: Horrible design, not human friendly, has some benefits that are appealing (a bit easier if you don't care about doffing) but for those that use the mechanic it is frustrating
(F)
Undine Battle Zone: while i like that dyson battle zones the Undine and their uber bio plasmatic rift opening memdic gel inducing super farts slows my game experience to a crawl while every other part of the game flows smoothly. It's just too much TRIBBLE going on at the same time, I can't see anything on my screen except for big yellow bubbles. Thus, I don't play it.
(D)
Lockboxes: I don't use them, but how do you mess up a lockbox?
Foundry additions: some great additions overshadowed by the fact the foundry was down for almost 2 weeks prior to launch and severely laggy for 2 weeks after launch.
(B-)
Exploration Removal: i didn't mind the removal but I understand that others opposed it greatly. Possibly could have been a better transition if Foundry authors weren't locked out of the system for nearly a month spanning before and after the release of 9.5. This 'glitch' basically guaranteed that no new content would be available for launch. That's bad.
(D)
Overall I give 9.5 a D- for the following reasons:
content removal, decreased game performance, outages to the Foundry and poor design changes.
Please Cryptic, spend more time in testing/QA. RE: the Doff UI you threw on Tribble saying "this is in the early phases, it's not complete". We told you the problems. Then you made a statement about it being in Alpha state and not even Beta. We continued to tell you the problems. Then you released it to Holodeck looking the same as the Alpha version on Tribble without addressing our concerns. Then the entire community got side swiped by what some of us already knew, and then you slowly started to make changes and addressing the issues. That is completely unacceptable and I hold poor management (not the devs) responsible for this.
Comments
Yeah it's a little underwhelming sadly, keep high hopes for Exphansion 2.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
OH yes. Also, doff assignments were nerfed. Any doff recruitment assignment has had it's length and cooldown doubled as far as I can see. Veteran dil refining has also been affected.
It's always blinking, whether I have mail or not.
FAIL
One positive mark:
R&D TRIBBLE now has its own inventory space.
We just got our overall inventory expanded considerably by that move.
That bug is as old as the hills. Well, almost. I have a very similar issue with my duty officers as well.
Also, I would like to point out that despite all the TRIBBLE that has been with this latest patch, there is one good point;
KIT PARTS HAVE THEIR OWN CATEGORY IN THE EXCHANGE!!!!!!! AT LAST!!!!!
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE etc.
I honestly don't see the problem with the DoFF UI ... yes it's different, and will take a bit of getting used to, but it's not that bad IMO.
It definitely needs a "sort" functionality for the DoFF's = Rarity and Traits, and it most definitely needs to show you the old ** out of *** resource numbers, so you can choose whether to spend all your contraband on one mission or another. But Now that they are automatically choosing "Crit" traits and "Quality" over just "Success" traits, it's simplified things a lot.
DoFF UI is a D, Not a total fail, but needs work.
The Uniforms are quite nice, and a welcome addition, they still aren't perfect, and I'm still dissapointed that there isn't a Romulan version, but all up not bad (especially the Bort Skirt!)
Uniforms are a B, overall pretty good, but still needs a little work.
Xindi and Xindi LB ... Well, there are numerous good and bad things ... The Ships? Pretty good. The Traits? Some WAY OP and some ... meh ... The kits? Total and utter TRIBBLE, not even worth their EC value as Vendor Trash on the exchange, and for a LB Kit, that's just pathetic, and poor design by Cryptic. The Consoles? ... FAIL, FAIL, FAIL!
Xindi stuff is all up a C, with the good and the bad, it's ... average.
New R&D system, is well .. .different ... We needed an update, and as I've played Cryptic's Neverwinter, it's VERY familiar to me, so I'm quite happy with it. I'm not sure where people are getting the "grind fest" idea from, as after completling only a few STF's and about a dozen or so DoFF missions, I've got half my R&D tab loaded with materials and there is a 20hr XP project to level up each school. Plus you can manufacture many pof the components you need, so "grinding" for them or buying them isn't necessary.
R&D system would be a C, once again, not bad, just needs a few tweaks here and there.
General UI is easier to read and Doff Assignment generally does far better than it used to do.
Crafting system though is a steaming pile of "male bovine excrement"... 20 hour projects to do some simple little thing? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! Someone needs to hunt down the persons responsible for this system and kick them really hard between the TRIBBLE and the sphincter. :mad:
Seriously the randomness of the Doff system makes a very poor basis for crafting. Then when you compound that by adding ridiculous process times. And the result is just STUPID.
Oh! And converting my old mats is a joke as well... I needed a Beta Tachyon Particle for an assignment. So I decided to try and "convert" a Beta-Tachyon Particle Trace. But the system doesn't fricking care about the quality, or rarity, of the item I'm converting. It just gives you any old TRIBBLE. Really makes me angry!
The only plus side of the situation is that I now have reason to gather stuff again. But I think its truly unfair that they've nullified all of our crafting skill and then cheat us in the conversion process.
Its good with a couple bad. But the new Doff and crafting is all new, so there is room for future improvements.
Xindi lockbox - A lots of goodies this go around. Made me spent some EC.
Doff interface - B needs our crew pictures back.
Crafting - ?? I hadn't done enough to give it a grade yet.
New uniforms - A much needed feature.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
It's nice to see I'm not the only one who keeps positive..... XD
I'd give the Crafting a B+ IMO
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Big whoop. I'll stick with my JVGs, thank you. At least all the NPCs look the same.
It would've been a nice touch with the Odyssey uniforms if, considering their similarity to the rather well-coordinated Starfleet Academy and Jupiter options (everything matches), you included skirts for females. I'm old-school trek and I like the option of having the female BOffs and captains wearing a skirt instead of this unisex everyone-wears-pants TRIBBLE.
The color palette went all weird so there's relearning those color-texture combinations all over again.
And, on a side note, your "Odyssey" bridge is no comparison to the awesome "Aquarius" bridge that originally debuted with the class. Why did you even bother making a new bridge for the Odyssey when you have such problems as:
I won't remark on the Klingon side of the house, as I haven't played there for ages.
CRAFTING
You took a system that was "broken"...and made it worse? Bravo.
Yes, it was ridiculously easy to max crafting. Yes, there weren't a whole lot of options once you did max out. But at least you had a tutorial to teach you how to craft and you could at least understand it.
This "tutorial" that popped up on only one of my toons was not any help at all. It was more of a highlight of "look at how we screwed up your DOff interface" considering it really didn't do anything with crafting, instead being some token seconds-long DOff mission for 5 dil.
You gave me 2 items I have no idea what to do with.
You gave me a horde of DOffs without warning or accounting for players that have max-capacity DOff rosters (with DOffs that matter, mind you).
You took my max skill away and handed me a title for my trouble with some token misspelled explanation (and you guys really need to spell-check your work...typos are a pet peeve of mine even when I do it). BTW, I will be wearing, no, FLAUNTING that title, so thanks I guess.
It is reminiscent of the crafting/gem refining (upgrade) used in Neverwinter Nights. Coincidence? Because that sucked too. That (the gems) became a scam to make more money (buying items to upgrade gems that previously didn't require anything) and this "catalyst" smells of the same stench. I'm having flashbacks, bad ones (hint: I don't play NWN anymore).
I tried to go through and craft something, anything, to maybe make use of those 2 mystery items in my bag, but after scratching my head and squinting at the confusing UI, I gave up. You lost me. Nope, no crafting here. Back to the moth balls with it.
DOffs
WTF WERE YOU THINKING?!
It wasn't broken! I've heard someone mention some BS about an exploit doing multiple missions or some TRIBBLE but, for me and anyone else that matters to me that I've spoken with, the previous DOff system ROCKED. I enjoyed it. I understood it. I felt like I was actually managing my CREW as CAPTAIN of my ship. I could sort and organize, pick and choose, MAKE A COMMAND DECISION!
Now I can't even read the damned thing!
The UI is mismatched and clunky. Big font then tiny font, icons that aren't the same as we're used to, harder to find what you're looking for. No organization capability for your crew. You redesigned a perfectly good system to adapt for a crafting redesign that was a stupid idea from concept. You take away nearly all options and decision-making capability and make us feel stupid, like we can't manage our DOff missions and rosters ourselves.
The ONLY flaw I saw with the DOffs had to do with Romulan BOffs not benefiting from active DOff ground abilities (so I don't think it was a DOff problem, rather a Romulan problem).
I used to love the DOffs.
Shame on you.
EXPLORATION CLUSTERS
And, again, shame on you.
Let me spell it out to you from THE CAPTAIN'S OATH!
"... to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man/one has gone before."
THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE GAME. Not blindly endlessly playing the same storyline arcs over and over on different toons or on the same toons to grind rewards or doing the same STF grinds for pathetic quantities of marks (now mats too, great). Even the patrols get boring. Pick a planet, nothing changes.
But in the exploration clusters...oh, now that was fun. You never knew what you were going to be doing. Sure, skip the explores and just scan anomalies to farm. Yah, so what? If your ship captain wants to use his vessel to mine for minerals and gases and strange alien artifacts, SO WHAT?! Oh, mining the dil on an asteroid is ok but farming anomalies is a no-no!? But if you did the explorations, even without the daily explore quota missions, it was so randomly fun. Be it assisting someone in need, delivering supplies to a civilization, performing some diplomatic duty, helping someone who is being attacked, a rescue from pirates, or scanning ancient structures, finding new deposits of precious ore to report back to Starfleet, exploring an alien planet with X inhabitants or indigenous species, stopping a known enemy from gaining a strategic foothold, etc.
I was honestly impressed with that part of the game. That's why it boggles my mind WHY you got rid of it. I don't care if it wasn't "up to your standards", as apparently (a) your standards of late seem to be sucking and (b) you haven't shown us what your "standards" for the exploration clusters were. No replacement.
Just an excuse (crafting) to get rid of a perfectly fun and reasonable and INTEGRAL part of the Star Trek universe.
XINDI LOCKBOX
I don't care. It's just another lockbox. It's another excuse to spend money I don't have to buy a key for a random grab-bag-o'-TRIBBLE. We have enough already. And I've given you enough money with C-Store unlocks and a Lifer membership plus paying for a second one. Put your hand down.
Here's a hint. Try going without releasing another lockbox for a while. Do like you did with the featured projects for the fleets: have them all available for a while and let the chips fall where they may.
CONCLUSION
:mad:Season 9.5 = EPIC FAIL:mad:
By all appearances, some rabid little dev saw someone complain about crafting in chat or the forums, jotted some stupid idea down on a cocktail napkin, and proposed it at some company barbecue and got approval. They whipped it together without contemplating the repercussions, reception, and consequences to the game and all its facets. It looks clunky, ill thought-out, not even spell-checked, hastily thrown together without so much as a flowchart to track its design, and as a result is contrary to the basic appeal of the game and the general Star Trek mindset as a whole. Remove one of the best parts of the game, poorly redesign another of the best parts of the game, make a substandard system even worse, and render the game itself down to a mindless combat-only grindfest for raw materials, even going so far as to "push" players toward underplayed, unrewarding, and unfulfilling STFs by promising them said materials as additional rewards.
TO-DO LIST
Here's something no devs in any of the MMORPGs I've ever played seem to understand: you may be creating this game and think you know best, but you're creating it for US, the players. WE play it. If WE don't like it, WE won't play it, which means you don't have a reason to create it (which is your job). Get the picture?
It literally takes me 5 times longer now to find the assignments that I want and assign the DoFFs that I want to perform that assignment.
- What is with the non-filter pop-up window? That is a major hindrance. I realize that the system is trying to put the best DoFFs at the top, but it is not always what I want, nor the actual best option. To add injury to insult, that pop-up window mixes all of the DoFFs together, regardless of tactical, security, engineering, operations, science, medical, or civilian.
This is a step backwards; if Cryptic wants to fix this system, put it back to the way that it was. The previous system was much more user friendly.
Link: Lotus Fleet
Founder: Lotus Fleet =/\= Creator: Lotus Fleet Academy[/B]
I completely agree with the above.
Solution: Put it back to the way it was!
Link: Lotus Fleet
Founder: Lotus Fleet =/\= Creator: Lotus Fleet Academy[/B]
Would be nice to see Undine running around where the Voth battlezone daily ground mission alerts are. They have the Nimbus III worms in the park, some time traveling KDF from lurking around. Something is adding more content, but they need to keep it up.
Sphere area for Fleet is empty along with the allied the city, park and outskirts fairly a few players running around in circles daily.
Time will only tell!
The interface is a problem when you have to click tabs and buttons left and right to produce materials. I wish they would let someone produce a batch of materials instead of having to go one by one which is pure torture. For those who had the dil and EC to breeze through a bunch of levels, it has been torture.
The second problem, and this may be because this game is so DPS focused, is that I have yet to see any new mods for anything but weapons in the Exchange. I did craft one purple deflector, but it just got the regular old mods. I hope the developers didn't create all this crafting system just so only weapons got all the bonus mods.
New doff interface gets an D.
Horrible in so many levels, I can't even write them all. I like that it picks the best doffs, but they didn't fix the chances doffs give (old old problem), like picking the right type of doff gets less crit chance than some random old one. The inteface, specially the space it takes, is just plain bad. Somehow also, the completed assignments sometimes don't get sorted in order of completion which sucks. I actually have to read what the hack I'm clicking now. Give me back my old interface, it worked fine.
Time will only tell!
Edit: LoR had a similar case involving the NPC interaction windows and steroids.
Nothing that awes you
CRAFTING.......C
This is not necessary, it is more like something to do rather than something that is fun. It is like going to work.
DOFFs.....D-
This is too big and chunky. It's not to user friendly and can be confusing. It takes a lot longer to use them and you have to relearn some symbols. Challenging to manage duty officers that do missions.
EXPLORATION CLUSTERS.....F-
This is perhaps one of the worst changes of the game's history. They took out a fun component of exploration and replaced it with a place to simply do DOFF missions only geared towards colonization. This was such a shame. Many DOFF missions are also not doable anymore making it difficult to do good trading missions.
ECONOMY....F-
Farming for EC is now worthless and those who don't have things like a plasmonic leach which cost 35mill should just say good bye to it for a long time. The change in the economy is unfair to newer players who don't have much and will have to take 3 times the amount of time to gain EC unless they want to spend real money. There still has not been a "delete all" button for the inbox so you can easily delete all those messages from the exchange.
STAR SHIP BRIDGES AND INTERIOR....D-
They still couldn't do the simple job of adding some picture, moving picture or something on the bridge other than blank windows 95 space. I find this preposterous. I can't tell you how disappointed i was when i acquired the destiny bridges just to see that the view screen they display on the bridge to get you to buy it was not even there and nothing like it. If they are going to take away the old exploration clusters, that was the least they could have done with this season.
Conclusion:
Trek Online is becoming more like work than like play making for a boring and tedious game that makes you feel as though you are getting nowhere and this will surely hurt their business in the future unless dealt with. This game is seeming less and less like star trek and that just doesn't make sense. The feel of the game as in the series is needed and can be done by adding simple things, the GRAPHICS NEED TO BE BETTER, there needs to be exploration, and lastly the game needs more story and story lines. If you are going to release 9.5 aand make more work for everyone, how could you do that, without adding more fun things like the story and expect your fans to be impressed or happy? There needs to be some pride put into the game that is being run here. Pride in your craft!
Overall Rating...D-
Despite the several patches since release, the DOff system is now worse than before. Many missions limit even the search for alternate officer assignments, which is to say that we are not allowed to fail a mission on our own terms by wagering on the natural probabilities of our own choices. In addition, many missions that were formerly accomplished by one or two DOff now need 3-5 DOffs to start. This obviously drives up demand for DOffs of all types, but also for roster space for the number now needed. Pay to win by buying DOff packs nad roster expansions!
Crafting Update - D
It's going to be months before we have enough players maxed out on crafting to really assess what Cryptic has done here. The entire material consumption algorithm is illogical, and it has become apparent the the 7 schools are amplified versions of the faction rep system. Hidden requirements for crafting DOffs have created peak demands for R&D Doffs, driving up their prices accordingly on the exchange. Even worse, players have no say in which DOff can be assigned to an R&D project, and thereby change the outcome probabilities. The materials needed are in nearly inverse proportion to how they would be logically used, so 9k R&D points are somehow derived out of a single unit of "common" material. And of course, pay to win by buying Z-store material packs!
Economy - C
The economy has now put many items out of reach for the newer player, making their grind longer and steeper to reach veteran levels. this is mostly as a by-product of geometric cost increases for DOffs, long search times for rare materials. The dil sink for crafted items now rivals faction rep gear, and even DOffs from the Dilithium store do not have the correct value for the cost (not one store DOff has resolve trait, for example, even at 10k+ dill cost). And for whatever reason, the dil/Zen exchange rate is still abnormally high, forcing F2P players into longer grinds for store items.
Exploration/Missions - F
Not only is exploration gone, but many remaining DOff missions have fatal bugs which either waste the players' time, or freeze DOffs out of the game altogether (read "Subordinate's Challenge" here). And Cryptic has no apparent interest in fixing missions even for paying subscribers...
Greed - A+
Had I tried to think of more ways for Cryptic to squeeze their player base for more cash, I could not have come close to the comprehensive package represented by S9.5! Way to go Cryptic!! But here's the thing, if the dev's can't see fit to fix known issues before the next expansion, I'm done paying for mediocrity. My subscription will be canceled, finito...
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
My take on 9.5:
DOFFing - Oooh. Really bad implementation. The UI takes a huge hit for being done poorly. But also the overall effect of what actually got changed (especially with cluster removal) in DOFFing itself has left DOFFing twisting in the wind. It's less engaging than before and the players had missions either end up so rare that it'll be months before they pop again, or they're gone entirely. Either way, DOFFing is worse than before.
Crafting - Prior to the Vegas con, I thought Crafting was a tiny upgrade, but too resource intensive to be worth the effort. POST Vegas con, it's a complete step backwards. Why waste any time or effort getting Mk XII items when Mk XIII and XIV are coming out?
New Uniforms: On the one hand, the new uniform dev blog is possibly the most heralded dev blog I've seen all year. Kudos to the goodwill built up there. On the other hand, the change broke the interior for the TOS interiors. So I've got to once again give negative points to the dev team for not thoroughly testing their work. That's just sloppy.
Xindi Lockbox: Pre-Vegas, it seemed ok. I didn't know much about it because of that stupid Redacted nonsense. But then Vegas happened, and really all lockboxes are a waste of time and resources until we find out more information.
Presentation and Attendance: Yeah, announcing a lockbox on here AFTER it's already debuted? That's bad. But doing so on the lockbox where someone clearly dropped the ball and then had a fit and started the overzealous use of the word REDACTED? That's possibly the biggest egg-on-face moment I've seen since Gozer tried to convince people Section 31 uniforms were "content" instead of just all black uniforms being rushed out to the store for sale.
Overall I'm giving 9.5 an INCOMPLETE.
Really, this entire half season is pointless in lieu of the second expansion announcement.
(incomplete)
Doff UI: Horrible design, not human friendly, has some benefits that are appealing (a bit easier if you don't care about doffing) but for those that use the mechanic it is frustrating
(F)
Undine Battle Zone: while i like that dyson battle zones the Undine and their uber bio plasmatic rift opening memdic gel inducing super farts slows my game experience to a crawl while every other part of the game flows smoothly. It's just too much TRIBBLE going on at the same time, I can't see anything on my screen except for big yellow bubbles. Thus, I don't play it.
(D)
Lockboxes: I don't use them, but how do you mess up a lockbox?
Foundry additions: some great additions overshadowed by the fact the foundry was down for almost 2 weeks prior to launch and severely laggy for 2 weeks after launch.
(B-)
Exploration Removal: i didn't mind the removal but I understand that others opposed it greatly. Possibly could have been a better transition if Foundry authors weren't locked out of the system for nearly a month spanning before and after the release of 9.5. This 'glitch' basically guaranteed that no new content would be available for launch. That's bad.
(D)
Overall I give 9.5 a D- for the following reasons:
content removal, decreased game performance, outages to the Foundry and poor design changes.
Please Cryptic, spend more time in testing/QA. RE: the Doff UI you threw on Tribble saying "this is in the early phases, it's not complete". We told you the problems. Then you made a statement about it being in Alpha state and not even Beta. We continued to tell you the problems. Then you released it to Holodeck looking the same as the Alpha version on Tribble without addressing our concerns. Then the entire community got side swiped by what some of us already knew, and then you slowly started to make changes and addressing the issues. That is completely unacceptable and I hold poor management (not the devs) responsible for this.