Not much here for any player anymore, this whole update was Cryptic catering to the endgame min/max monkeys and the only thing here for anyone other than hardcore players is the new mission storyline. I will probably run thru that and then hang it up for a few months and play something else because the new STF system is moronic.
Want proof?
How stupid is it that a lvl 50 in a fleet ship with all purple gear and a mix of Mk XII and Mk XIII cannot get thru an advanced level Borg STF? I'm not talking about Hive here, that mission is a joke and has been a joke since it came out and the increase in general difficulty of everything only makes it MORE of a joke. Since the new Advanced difficulty level is impossible for people to do at the equipment level they are going to have when they want to upgrade to the rep set pieces it's almost a mute point in any case.
So what i've heard from people saying this is all just whining about the new difficulty and you need to get to Captain level 60 now to do this stuff, really? So I need to get me and my ship to the max T5-U level, to be able to possibly make it thru an ADVANCED BASE level STF, to save up Neural Processors so I can buy BASE LEVEL SET EQUIPMENT AT MK XII LEVEL FOR MY NEW MAX LEVEL SHIP AND CAPTAIN???
Sorry the word "stupid" can be applied to this change to the STF system in only a limited number of ways before the stupid level reaches critical mass. <sigh>
Sorry Cryptic but your going to hemorrhage players like a cow in a slaughterhouse until this foolishness has been corrected.
The fix, the simple way? Change it back, Change the Borg rep and STF's back only perhaps, that's only of minor help, more help, change ALL the Rep and Rep STF's back except for the new ones going forward, either that or release MK XII sets as needing marks ONLY, and put in a Mx XIV set that needs the special item drops. Because as it is, it's just plain stupid to need to get you and your ship to lvl 60 just to be able to survive STF's to save up for MK XII gear sets.
If you had the time to grind the event ships out... or were even playing during the events happened.
Or if you even like the event ships or they match your preferred builds. Which I think a lot of people won't fit into those slots.
true enough. I have been playing for two years so I was able to get a few. Especially with the change where you get second event ships for one day's effort after one character earns one. And I'm patient enough to get stuff over multiple events. Like I had one guy start the mirror hakeev doff one crystal event, and finish him this time instead of getting the new conn officer. Took me a year instead of two weeks. And for this Christmas I already have one guy with half the pictures needed for a ship saved up from last year when I didn't get a plesh brek.
A lot of people don't have millions of EC, or the means to get millions of EC.
Something running for 10 million EC is far out of what I can pay, so I don't find that to be a good solution/alt. Unless there is some magic easy way to get millions of EC with little time spent that doesn't involve playing the exchange and hoping...
Everyone has the means, not everyone has the knowledge. The real trick is finding a method that is related to what YOU find fun. Just because a technique works for one person, doesn't mean it's good for me or for you.
I enjoy the duty officer system, but not crafting or queues. I have gotten good at finding the missions around deep space 9 that give free duty officers. I reliably make a couple million ec a week from this. But I tried to help my fleet leader and he hated it.
On the other hand, he was OK doing the academy lore quest on 6 alts per day. I got him to add the recruiting missions and start selling all the results. Plus converting his dil into zen and selling keys.mtook him two months to afford a tal shiar ship doing something he liked.
I know some people like crafting and there's many items that are valuable there. The rank 10 upgrade items sell for 1\4 the price of the good ones (rank 15) and they don't need the rare materials from queues. Or low level consoles and try to get lucky with science mods on engineering consoles. Only need rank 2 crafting because the mark 2 consoles are the most valuable. Way more than mark 12.
Other people like the queues. You can sell the crafting boxes from one queue for between 200k and 700k depending on which one. And that's not counting dilithium.
Still, if you want to totally cut out the ah, then you only have vendor trash. That means either foundry farming or mission farming. There's a cardassian story with infinite spawns. You can blast away until your inventory is full, leave, drop, get it back, and do it again as long as you can stand it.
So, what kind of actions do you enjoy and let's figure out how you can earn more? There is always a way. And there is absolutely a way that involves what you are already doing for fun. (Unless all you do for fun is erp on drozana, then you're s.o.l.)
Not much here for any player anymore, this whole update was Cryptic catering to the endgame min/max monkeys and the only thing here for anyone other than hardcore players is the new mission storyline. I will probably run thru that and then hang it up for a few months and play something else because the new STF system is moronic.
Want proof?
How stupid is it that a lvl 50 in a fleet ship with all purple gear and a mix of Mk XII and Mk XIII cannot get thru an advanced level Borg STF? I'm not talking about Hive here, that mission is a joke and has been a joke since it came out and the increase in general difficulty of everything only makes it MORE of a joke. I'm talking about the 2 Borg missions out of 3 that are left now where you can earn Neural Processors. For some ungodly moronic programing reason someone decided to take away the 3rd Borg mission that was actually doable, but since the new Advanced difficulty level is impossible for people to do at the equipment level they are going to have when they want to upgrade to the rep set pieces it's almost a mute point in any case.
So what i've heard from people saying this is all just whining about the new difficulty and you need to get to Captain level 60 now to do this stuff, really? So I need to get me and my ship to the max T5-U level, to be able to possibly make it thru an ADVANCED BASE level STF, to save up Neural Processors so I can buy BASE LEVEL SET EQUIPMENT AT MK XII LEVEL FOR MY NEW MAX LEVEL SHIP AND CAPTAIN???
Sorry the word "stupid" can be applied to this change to the STF system in only a limited number of ways before the stupid level reaches critical mass. <sigh>
Sorry Cryptic but your going to hemorrhage players like a cow in a slaughterhouse until this foolishness has been corrected.
The fix, the simple way? Change it back, Change the Borg rep and STF's back only perhaps, that's only of minor help, more help, change ALL the Rep and Rep STF's back except for the new ones going forward, either that or release MK XII sets as needing marks ONLY, and put in a Mx XIV set that needs the special item drops. Because as it is, it's just plain stupid to need to get you and your ship to lvl 60 just to be able to survive STF's to save up for MK XII gear sets.
they should have spilt the STFs into 3 sets. Standard (new level 50 player) Advance (The old elite) then Elite (level 60)
I share your perspective. That said, I think Cryptic has crossed the Rubicon on this expansion. I don't see them changing anything. This is STO according to Geko and D'Angelo. More grind, more crash grabs and less content!
Not much here for any player anymore, this whole update was Cryptic catering to the endgame min/max monkeys and the only thing here for anyone other than hardcore players is the new mission storyline. I will probably run thru that and then hang it up for a few months and play something else because the new STF system is moronic.
Want proof?
How stupid is it that a lvl 50 in a fleet ship with all purple gear and a mix of Mk XII and Mk XIII cannot get thru an advanced level Borg STF? I'm not talking about Hive here, that mission is a joke and has been a joke since it came out and the increase in general difficulty of everything only makes it MORE of a joke. I'm talking about the 2 Borg missions out of 3 that are left now where you can earn Neural Processors. For some ungodly moronic programing reason someone decided to take away the 3rd Borg mission that was actually doable, but since the new Advanced difficulty level is impossible for people to do at the equipment level they are going to have when they want to upgrade to the rep set pieces it's almost a mute point in any case.
So what i've heard from people saying this is all just whining about the new difficulty and you need to get to Captain level 60 now to do this stuff, really? So I need to get me and my ship to the max T5-U level, to be able to possibly make it thru an ADVANCED BASE level STF, to save up Neural Processors so I can buy BASE LEVEL SET EQUIPMENT AT MK XII LEVEL FOR MY NEW MAX LEVEL SHIP AND CAPTAIN???
Sorry the word "stupid" can be applied to this change to the STF system in only a limited number of ways before the stupid level reaches critical mass. <sigh>
Sorry Cryptic but your going to hemorrhage players like a cow in a slaughterhouse until this foolishness has been corrected.
The fix, the simple way? Change it back, Change the Borg rep and STF's back only perhaps, that's only of minor help, more help, change ALL the Rep and Rep STF's back except for the new ones going forward, either that or release MK XII sets as needing marks ONLY, and put in a Mx XIV set that needs the special item drops. Because as it is, it's just plain stupid to need to get you and your ship to lvl 60 just to be able to survive STF's to save up for MK XII gear sets.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I share your perspective. That said, I think Cryptic has crossed the Rubicon on this expansion. I don't see them changing anything. This is STO according to Geko and D'Angelo. More grind, more crash grabs and less content!
more like Jumping the shark, or Nuking the Fridge. many in my fleet are seriously considering other games. Jeck you this games top rival is a Star Trek mod of Sins of the Solar Empire. you know they are in trouble.
Have a little patience please. As soon as you hit 60 and upgrade a few tiers in your specialization tree. You will be able to breeze through the STFs on advanced (not elite) but advanced and it will be easy. I'm sure you have played other rpgs. This one is no diffrent, Level up, get some decent gear and go kick some TRIBBLE. Besides if on day one you was able to beat the advanced STFs you would already be bored and ready to quit. At least this way we have some replay value.
So everybody who said it was all going to be doable with T5 mkXII were talking out their TRIBBLE
After 2 1/2 years and 4000 hrs - I went from hardcore player this summer to super casual.
I wondered what it was that has me just wanting to log off - it's that the game has gone so hard core - by that I mean so hard to grind just to update things. More than resource cost it the time and effort of upgrading.
I have more than enough resources to get the best of the best in the game - 6 million refined dilithium - 3 billion EC - 10,000's of Rep marks and BNP's. All this Plus a Fully leveled T4 fleet.
But I don't feel like wasting the colossal time to upgrade everything!! I just feel like walking away from all that stuff rather then going through the pain of upgrading.
I love STO - part of me will always love it - but times are a changing. Let's not pull out the story content play through line. It's 1 story mission - then 1 sector grind mission - then finding some other XP generating method to advance to the next level. Then one story mission - then one sector mission - over and over and over.
Yeah that's a blast!
Cryptic needs to get working on simplifying the upgrade process fast. But on the whole - the game has given me 4000 hours of play for about $400 cash - that's only about 10 cents an hour of entertainment - pretty decent return!
So I'm a casual. I log in every few months, play for a couple weeks, and take another break. I enjoy the game while I'm here. Even with this minimal time investment, I was able to get the best gear in the game and compete at the highest levels of play. To me, that was always the greatest appeal of this game, that is is so casual friendly.
However I gotta say, DR does not look casual friendly. It looks like the gear upgrade system is a massive time and resource sink beyond almost anything we've seen before, and the game has become significantly more grindy. I would like to see the story, but I am honestly reluctant to even log in.
Gold gear is stupidly hard to get, true. But mk14 is reasonable. The trick is not to use the crappy upgrades. Use either the improved or the superior upgrades. If you already have full mk12 gear, then it's a simple matter of using a few of those to level the gear.
As for the story.... it might be a bit more challenging than the old story, but it's by no means impossible to handle with mk12 gear.
Oh and STFs... yeah... the new normal is almost as hard as the old Elite. Unless you play Undine Infiltration, where the only observable change to difficulty is a new objective. It's ROFL-stompingly easy even on the new advanced.
so far im able to play the story missions with a non-T5U galaxy lol(im not gonna play them in a recluse lol, breaks immersion for me). But yeah, im sure cryptic will turn down how hard the new advanced are. Some people report not being able to complete fleet alert which tells me its way to hard. The grinding has wore me out too, just does not feel worth it anymore. But there is foundry missions and the new FE's. Not everyone likes the foundry, but I always suggest to people to give it a go if their tired of grinding. I have not tried the foundry after DR released so idk if the NPC's there became harder, last time i checked you can do them with basic gear.
good advice, people seem to have this obsession with the pve ques but there is so much more to the game, i play for 2-3 hours a night and havent even got around to playing any of the new story missions yet let alone the pve ques.
if everyone shuns the pve ques till this is sorted cryptic will get the message, they can see the numbers it wont take them long to realise nobody will entertain the ques till this is sorted.
i havent played the pve ques myself so cant comment on the difficulty really but from what i am reading i am beginning to realise that players may have good reason to complain.
so next time you log in do other stuff, there is plenty to do to keep you busy till they sort this out.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Normal mode is fine where it is at (aka quite easy a 5k dps per person group will finish a normal in 5 minutes or so and get the optional)
Advanced is really not a whole lot more imcoming damage from npcs but instead some npcs now have 10 times the hull hp and more shield hp/resist as well then normals enemies have. So you better have a group pulling 15-20k dps if you want to finish and even then its gonna take 30 minutes or so. (the borg bird of prey in advanced cure is a great example they have over 600k hull and pretty good shields as well but still do nearly no damage to a player until you get half a dozen or so on top of you)
The problem here is that youre not going to find yourself hauling in the resources needed for the Rep system with just normal.
I get that people felt that Elite was entirely too easy before. But that 'easiness' was more or less people getting used to how it operated. And the slow and inevitable power creep. This allowed anyone regardless of skill access to a part of the game. That they would otherwise be unable to access.
Now thanks to all of the crying that went on. Advanced and Elite are out of reach for casuals and gamers who in general arent UBERLEET. The Rep system will see a drop off of activity thanks to this change. Its a no brainer. Cryptic has overstepped in hopes of driving Zen purchases.
Play through the story episodes and then take a break to enjoy other games for a few months. They will nerf these changes hard if they lose enough players, after which you can give it a shot again.
As A casual that was kinda my plan, then I realised something. To get maximum bang for my time I'd need to play through the Story arc with a T5U ship unlocked. 90% of my captains are flying Zen upgradeable T5's. And suddenly you see where this is going.
So I need massive amounts of Dil for Upgrading my MKXI purple weapons, and massive amounts to buy ship upgrade tokens...
Its a bit like Neverwinter. I played that got up to Lvl 60 realised I'd need to throw huge amounts of money at it , tried a different class to see if it was a different play-style (which it wasn't) then banged out.
Getting new Lvl50's reputation tracks finished now is a terrible grind with the new difficulty curve you can't PUG Advanced STF's to get a decent reward either so its basic STF's only and the rewards in marks on that are paltry.
Don't get me wrong I'll keep playing, but DR has slapped me from a middle of the road quality casual to a white geared scrub.
Yeah, I always find it kinda annoying when people talk and they keep mentioning using this trait or this gear from higher end rep stuff.
I don't have rep stuff maxed on every character. Hell, given how it takes at least a month to complete, I don't see myself working on it much besides when I specifically want a ground costume piece linked to it.
Play through the story episodes and then take a break to enjoy other games for a few months. They will nerf these changes hard if they lose enough players, after which you can give it a shot again.
That's what I'm doing. Queues are dead to me until the reward / time ratio gets fixed to what it was.
So I'm a casual. I log in every few months, play for a couple weeks, and take another break. I enjoy the game while I'm here. Even with this minimal time investment, I was able to get the best gear in the game and compete at the highest levels of play. To me, that was always the greatest appeal of this game, that is is so casual friendly.
However I gotta say, DR does not look casual friendly. It looks like the gear upgrade system is a massive time and resource sink beyond almost anything we've seen before, and the game has become significantly more grindy. I would like to see the story, but I am honestly reluctant to even log in.
Its not meant for casuals its there so non casuals have stuff to do.
Most likely they're going to tweak things and this is just birthing pains due to lack of proper lead-up time and ignoring the betatesters. How long it takes to fix stuff like this depends though, could take months.
I am with you on this, Arilouskiff.
I too am 100 percent casual in my playstyle. I love having the best gear, but also not worried about the most difficult content levels. Also, no pvp.
There are ppl in fear the difficulty levels are going to get nerfed back to pre DR. I have a feeling there is nothing to fear from any side of this issue.
Even back when this all started, in a galaxy far far away, many ppls on the forums did much aggro and huff and puff till they finally saw they could pick their difficulty level with ease. This was a time of much rage quitting and doom.
The same type of thing is going on now and I would not be surprised if the Cryptics did not make a more even spread of difficulty levels something like this:
Level / Desc.
1 ---> Normal (the original "easy")
2 ---> Not so Normal
3 ---> Advanced (the current Adv.)
4 ---> Bring a First Aid Kit
5 ---> Have EMT's on the Scene
6 ---> Nightmare (the current Elite)
And remember do not feed the tribbles after midnight
appears things is not going that well. i actually wanna get on sto soon, still need to sort a few things out in rl, so not sure yet when i can get to gaming again. still got 56 days of swtor sub time left, wanna make use of that 12x exp booster they are offering for a limited time. stuff on sto i can play at any point as long as they keep the servers going.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
No it is not accessible to casual players in its current form.
Cryptics BETA testing is a bit of a running joke. (As in, none existent - and/or pointless, as they ignore any and all feedback)
Still, the game will go on, it will get tweaked - as always- eventually.
To be fair, a lot of MMO's have significant lead-up time: IE: It might take months to change stuff even if thy do get the feedback. So just becuase the beta suggestions aren't in the live build doesen't neccessarily mean they don't liste.
So I'm a casual. I log in every few months, play for a couple weeks, and take another break. I enjoy the game while I'm here. Even with this minimal time investment, I was able to get the best gear in the game and compete at the highest levels of play. To me, that was always the greatest appeal of this game, that is is so casual friendly.
However I gotta say, DR does not look casual friendly. It looks like the gear upgrade system is a massive time and resource sink beyond almost anything we've seen before, and the game has become significantly more grindy. I would like to see the story, but I am honestly reluctant to even log in.
You are me. I do the same thing.
I've only been logging in to doff and do daily r&d since the day I heard they were nerfing STFs. I knew then and there what was in store. Between the new r&d system, nerfed STF rewards and now greatly increased difficulty it's not casual friendly at all.
I don't think they care to be honest. Everything they've done the past few months has only discourage casuals. They are encouraging whales, not casuals. It's becoming one of those asian free to play MMOs.
... I am a pretty casual player too, maybe an hour a night. Last night I looked into what I would need to upgrade, and all of the beams and cannons on my few toons, I have no idea how I am going to get all the Dilithium I am going to need to upgrade everything. Day before yesterday I was doing elite STF's, now I get a really hard smackdown on the new difficulty levels. ...
I'm in the same boat. I'm a casual player and I like STO for the story.
DR, IMHO, was too much change at once. And although I could write a wall of text about it, no one will read this anyhow.
So, I'll just leave it as feedback the Dev's would want to know. Your 'cheeks in seats' just failed when you had DR = STO 2.0. More expensive ships, which outdate all previous purchases along with having to level ships now, as well as all the gear being outdated, etc etc etc. I'll just go play PS4 or other MMOs. Putting 3+ years into this game casually, to log in one day and realize the HUGE TIME SINK I'd have to do just to get a decent set-up now... no thanks.
Hi. Apparently I'm new here and joined in Jun 2012. Guess I'm in good company though... seems everyone else joined then too!
As A casual that was kinda my plan, then I realised something. To get maximum bang for my time I'd need to play through the Story arc with a T5U ship unlocked. 90% of my captains are flying Zen upgradeable T5's. And suddenly you see where this is going.
So I need massive amounts of Dil for Upgrading my MKXI purple weapons, and massive amounts to buy ship upgrade tokens...
Its a bit like Neverwinter. I played that got up to Lvl 60 realised I'd need to throw huge amounts of money at it , tried a different class to see if it was a different play-style (which it wasn't) then banged out.
Getting new Lvl50's reputation tracks finished now is a terrible grind with the new difficulty curve you can't PUG Advanced STF's to get a decent reward either so its basic STF's only and the rewards in marks on that are paltry.
Don't get me wrong I'll keep playing, but DR has slapped me from a middle of the road quality casual to a white geared scrub.
Do one Borg disconnected, get 80 marks. By the time you hit tier 5 you'll have over 700 stored if you only do the daily. If you added the hourly you're screwedd because you shaved off five days at a cost of 450 marks leaving only 250. Anyway, you also earn over 15k dil from the daily, not counting the dil from doing the stf itself. On completion of tier 5 you get another 500 marks and 50,000 dil. You should get about four of the mats for set items from opening the daily boxes. I'm unlucky and usually only get two. By this time advanced will be getting farmed as easily as old elite even if its not nerfed. But I think it will be.
Have patience and all things will come.
For romulan and nukara sets you only need marks.
Dyson sets, you can get voth implants in the batttlezone. If you hate/can't do ground try this: just stand near a trex spawn and read a book. When he shows up shoot him once and wait. Cooled dil, marks, and implants ts. Swap zone, repeat.
Undine items you can get in the space batttlezone. Shoot planet killers once to profit. Participation not necessary unless you enjoy it.
In all cases earning ONE box of marks per day is better than trying to grind a bunch in a short time.. Take advantage of the daily 55 mark bonus.
For dil, get a kdf and run marauding and sell prisoners in the explore zones. Don't use the 10-prisoner mission on qonos. Turn in extra marks for dil.
I'm one of those hybrid casual players that plays 3 or so hours a day and then all the way through the weekends. Play time, I'm probably not all that casual, but playstyle, I'm very much in that demographic, as I've been playing for years and still haven't really considered myself one of the elite players. Yeah, I've done elite missions, but usually when a guildie invites me along and really needs another high dps to complement a group.
As I've stated in a previous thread, I like to do fleet actions, and in the last five I've done, my team only won one. For me, the difficulty wasn't in how hard it was, but in how much time we had to complete it. We were doing well in most fights, but we generally just ran out of time because the enemies had too many enemies, or their hps were just way too high to cut down in time.
Killing the foundry missions really hurt me, too. Not because I've lost the rewards, but because I find them to be the highest fun I've had in the game.
One actual criticism I have about the whole expansion is the T6 ships, in that the only way I perceive ever getting one is to pay money for one in some way. The old structure of the game was that as you achieved level 50, you got a level 50 ship, and you felt good about it. You might then buy a replacement ship based on specific needs, but that was fine. Now, if you hit 60, you are still stuck in your old ship, unless you have one of the veteran ships and get it upgraded to T-5U, not T-6, which means that again you're only going to get T6 is if you paid real cash for it or got it through the exchange process of developing real currency, which should be considered to be the same thing.
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
Normal is fine, it's what happens in Advanced and Elite that got out of hand thanks to lazy "nightmare mode" programming. Only way to get dil now easy is with Geko's dinosaurs with freaking lazers on their heads.
So now we have "Normal" mode, "Advanced" but Insane mode. I haven't taken time to experience whatever might be going on in "Elite mode", I can imagine though.
If they just set Advanced to be the same as what was Elite mode, it would be ok, but Advanced mode now is probably what would qualify as the new Elite mode.
I mean really... Advanced Cure Space starts off with about 15 to 20 enemy ships swarming the Kang and with one of my best ships and a team of other players in a PUG, we could barely make a dent in the shields. Luckly the Kang is much tougher but the whole thing ends up being a 'fail', not because the Kang blew-up - because it didn't - but for a timer that ended because we didn't swat all the flies around the Kang in time.
Yes, Cryptic says, we can still use our T5 ships in all the content, you just won't have enough power to do anything because the enemy is 10 times tougher, even just in Advanced mode.
I like a challenge, but if this keeps up, the Borg will assimilate us all by the next Patch Thursday!
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
So now we have "Normal" mode, "Advanced" but Insane mode. I haven't taken time to experience whatever might be going on in "Elite mode", I can imagine though.
If they just set Advanced to be the same as what was Elite mode, it would be ok, but Advanced mode now is probably what would qualify as the new Elite mode.
I mean really... Advanced Cure Space starts off with about 15 to 20 enemy ships swarming the Kang and with one of my best ships and a team of other players in a PUG, we could barely make a dent in the shields. Luckly the Kang is much tougher but the whole thing ends up being a 'fail', not because the Kang blew-up - because it didn't - but for a timer that ended because we didn't swat all the flies around the Kang in time.
Yes, Cryptic says, we can still use our T5 ships in all the content, you just won't have enough power to do anything because the enemy is 10 times tougher, even just in Advanced mode.
I like a challenge, but if this keeps up, the Borg will assimilate us all by the next Patch Thursday!
This is why I keep suggesting that they increase the time required to fulfill these missions. I've had a number of missions where we were doing well, but we just didn't have the time to finish off the mission. If it happened once, I'd be dismissive of the thought. But in 5 "normal" fights, we lost four of them because of this one issue.
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
This is why I keep suggesting that they increase the time required to fulfill these missions. I've had a number of missions where we were doing well, but we just didn't have the time to finish off the mission. If it happened once, I'd be dismissive of the thought. But in 5 "normal" fights, we lost four of them because of this one issue.
I have not seen Normal as much of a problem, but I only played a couple. It's the Advanced mode that seems close to impossible.
(Love the banner! LOL)
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
One actual criticism I have about the whole expansion is the T6 ships, in that the only way I perceive ever getting one is to pay money for one in some way. The old structure of the game was that as you achieved level 50, you got a level 50 ship, and you felt good about it. You might then buy a replacement ship based on specific needs, but that was fine. Now, if you hit 60, you are still stuck in your old ship, unless you have one of the veteran ships and get it upgraded to T-5U, not T-6, which means that again you're only going to get T6 is if you paid real cash for it or got it through the exchange process of developing real currency, which should be considered to be the same thing.
Well depending on your ec earning ability the hazari destroyer is not bad. If they do another lobi give a way/feature episode rerun like the last one where they gave out 500 lobi you might be able to buy one that way. And, im hopeful either the winter event or the summer event will have a t6 ship.
Plus they used to give out t5 ships, the next annual giveaway event might have a t6. But I suspect we'll need to wait for the one after next realistically.
Last, if you can earn ~3k dil per day and convert to zen that's enough for two t6 ships per year.
Edit: the free ship at level 50 was always for subscribers only. The last free ship came at 40.
Comments
Want proof?
How stupid is it that a lvl 50 in a fleet ship with all purple gear and a mix of Mk XII and Mk XIII cannot get thru an advanced level Borg STF? I'm not talking about Hive here, that mission is a joke and has been a joke since it came out and the increase in general difficulty of everything only makes it MORE of a joke. Since the new Advanced difficulty level is impossible for people to do at the equipment level they are going to have when they want to upgrade to the rep set pieces it's almost a mute point in any case.
So what i've heard from people saying this is all just whining about the new difficulty and you need to get to Captain level 60 now to do this stuff, really? So I need to get me and my ship to the max T5-U level, to be able to possibly make it thru an ADVANCED BASE level STF, to save up Neural Processors so I can buy BASE LEVEL SET EQUIPMENT AT MK XII LEVEL FOR MY NEW MAX LEVEL SHIP AND CAPTAIN???
Sorry the word "stupid" can be applied to this change to the STF system in only a limited number of ways before the stupid level reaches critical mass. <sigh>
Sorry Cryptic but your going to hemorrhage players like a cow in a slaughterhouse until this foolishness has been corrected.
The fix, the simple way? Change it back, Change the Borg rep and STF's back only perhaps, that's only of minor help, more help, change ALL the Rep and Rep STF's back except for the new ones going forward, either that or release MK XII sets as needing marks ONLY, and put in a Mx XIV set that needs the special item drops. Because as it is, it's just plain stupid to need to get you and your ship to lvl 60 just to be able to survive STF's to save up for MK XII gear sets.
Everyone has the means, not everyone has the knowledge. The real trick is finding a method that is related to what YOU find fun. Just because a technique works for one person, doesn't mean it's good for me or for you.
I enjoy the duty officer system, but not crafting or queues. I have gotten good at finding the missions around deep space 9 that give free duty officers. I reliably make a couple million ec a week from this. But I tried to help my fleet leader and he hated it.
On the other hand, he was OK doing the academy lore quest on 6 alts per day. I got him to add the recruiting missions and start selling all the results. Plus converting his dil into zen and selling keys.mtook him two months to afford a tal shiar ship doing something he liked.
I know some people like crafting and there's many items that are valuable there. The rank 10 upgrade items sell for 1\4 the price of the good ones (rank 15) and they don't need the rare materials from queues. Or low level consoles and try to get lucky with science mods on engineering consoles. Only need rank 2 crafting because the mark 2 consoles are the most valuable. Way more than mark 12.
Other people like the queues. You can sell the crafting boxes from one queue for between 200k and 700k depending on which one. And that's not counting dilithium.
Still, if you want to totally cut out the ah, then you only have vendor trash. That means either foundry farming or mission farming. There's a cardassian story with infinite spawns. You can blast away until your inventory is full, leave, drop, get it back, and do it again as long as you can stand it.
So, what kind of actions do you enjoy and let's figure out how you can earn more? There is always a way. And there is absolutely a way that involves what you are already doing for fun. (Unless all you do for fun is erp on drozana, then you're s.o.l.)
they should have spilt the STFs into 3 sets. Standard (new level 50 player) Advance (The old elite) then Elite (level 60)
- Judge Aaron Satie
more like Jumping the shark, or Nuking the Fridge. many in my fleet are seriously considering other games. Jeck you this games top rival is a Star Trek mod of Sins of the Solar Empire. you know they are in trouble.
So everybody who said it was all going to be doable with T5 mkXII were talking out their TRIBBLE
I wondered what it was that has me just wanting to log off - it's that the game has gone so hard core - by that I mean so hard to grind just to update things. More than resource cost it the time and effort of upgrading.
I have more than enough resources to get the best of the best in the game - 6 million refined dilithium - 3 billion EC - 10,000's of Rep marks and BNP's. All this Plus a Fully leveled T4 fleet.
But I don't feel like wasting the colossal time to upgrade everything!! I just feel like walking away from all that stuff rather then going through the pain of upgrading.
I love STO - part of me will always love it - but times are a changing. Let's not pull out the story content play through line. It's 1 story mission - then 1 sector grind mission - then finding some other XP generating method to advance to the next level. Then one story mission - then one sector mission - over and over and over.
Yeah that's a blast!
Cryptic needs to get working on simplifying the upgrade process fast. But on the whole - the game has given me 4000 hours of play for about $400 cash - that's only about 10 cents an hour of entertainment - pretty decent return!
As for the story.... it might be a bit more challenging than the old story, but it's by no means impossible to handle with mk12 gear.
Oh and STFs... yeah... the new normal is almost as hard as the old Elite. Unless you play Undine Infiltration, where the only observable change to difficulty is a new objective. It's ROFL-stompingly easy even on the new advanced.
My character Tsin'xing
good advice, people seem to have this obsession with the pve ques but there is so much more to the game, i play for 2-3 hours a night and havent even got around to playing any of the new story missions yet let alone the pve ques.
if everyone shuns the pve ques till this is sorted cryptic will get the message, they can see the numbers it wont take them long to realise nobody will entertain the ques till this is sorted.
i havent played the pve ques myself so cant comment on the difficulty really but from what i am reading i am beginning to realise that players may have good reason to complain.
so next time you log in do other stuff, there is plenty to do to keep you busy till they sort this out.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
The problem here is that youre not going to find yourself hauling in the resources needed for the Rep system with just normal.
I get that people felt that Elite was entirely too easy before. But that 'easiness' was more or less people getting used to how it operated. And the slow and inevitable power creep. This allowed anyone regardless of skill access to a part of the game. That they would otherwise be unable to access.
Now thanks to all of the crying that went on. Advanced and Elite are out of reach for casuals and gamers who in general arent UBERLEET. The Rep system will see a drop off of activity thanks to this change. Its a no brainer. Cryptic has overstepped in hopes of driving Zen purchases.
As A casual that was kinda my plan, then I realised something. To get maximum bang for my time I'd need to play through the Story arc with a T5U ship unlocked. 90% of my captains are flying Zen upgradeable T5's. And suddenly you see where this is going.
So I need massive amounts of Dil for Upgrading my MKXI purple weapons, and massive amounts to buy ship upgrade tokens...
Its a bit like Neverwinter. I played that got up to Lvl 60 realised I'd need to throw huge amounts of money at it , tried a different class to see if it was a different play-style (which it wasn't) then banged out.
Getting new Lvl50's reputation tracks finished now is a terrible grind with the new difficulty curve you can't PUG Advanced STF's to get a decent reward either so its basic STF's only and the rewards in marks on that are paltry.
Don't get me wrong I'll keep playing, but DR has slapped me from a middle of the road quality casual to a white geared scrub.
I don't have rep stuff maxed on every character. Hell, given how it takes at least a month to complete, I don't see myself working on it much besides when I specifically want a ground costume piece linked to it.
That's what I'm doing. Queues are dead to me until the reward / time ratio gets fixed to what it was.
Space STFs are dead...long live ground STF.
Its not meant for casuals its there so non casuals have stuff to do.
I am with you on this, Arilouskiff.
I too am 100 percent casual in my playstyle. I love having the best gear, but also not worried about the most difficult content levels. Also, no pvp.
There are ppl in fear the difficulty levels are going to get nerfed back to pre DR. I have a feeling there is nothing to fear from any side of this issue.
Even back when this all started, in a galaxy far far away, many ppls on the forums did much aggro and huff and puff till they finally saw they could pick their difficulty level with ease. This was a time of much rage quitting and doom.
The same type of thing is going on now and I would not be surprised if the Cryptics did not make a more even spread of difficulty levels something like this:
Level / Desc.
1 ---> Normal (the original "easy")
2 ---> Not so Normal
3 ---> Advanced (the current Adv.)
4 ---> Bring a First Aid Kit
5 ---> Have EMT's on the Scene
6 ---> Nightmare (the current Elite)
And remember do not feed the tribbles after midnight
Fine, so what are the casuals meant to do for Rep marks?
Which V trait would be the best, no matter which ship you would fly later on?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
To be fair, a lot of MMO's have significant lead-up time: IE: It might take months to change stuff even if thy do get the feedback. So just becuase the beta suggestions aren't in the live build doesen't neccessarily mean they don't liste.
You are me. I do the same thing.
I've only been logging in to doff and do daily r&d since the day I heard they were nerfing STFs. I knew then and there what was in store. Between the new r&d system, nerfed STF rewards and now greatly increased difficulty it's not casual friendly at all.
I don't think they care to be honest. Everything they've done the past few months has only discourage casuals. They are encouraging whales, not casuals. It's becoming one of those asian free to play MMOs.
I'm in the same boat. I'm a casual player and I like STO for the story.
DR, IMHO, was too much change at once. And although I could write a wall of text about it, no one will read this anyhow.
So, I'll just leave it as feedback the Dev's would want to know. Your 'cheeks in seats' just failed when you had DR = STO 2.0. More expensive ships, which outdate all previous purchases along with having to level ships now, as well as all the gear being outdated, etc etc etc. I'll just go play PS4 or other MMOs. Putting 3+ years into this game casually, to log in one day and realize the HUGE TIME SINK I'd have to do just to get a decent set-up now... no thanks.
Do one Borg disconnected, get 80 marks. By the time you hit tier 5 you'll have over 700 stored if you only do the daily. If you added the hourly you're screwedd because you shaved off five days at a cost of 450 marks leaving only 250. Anyway, you also earn over 15k dil from the daily, not counting the dil from doing the stf itself. On completion of tier 5 you get another 500 marks and 50,000 dil. You should get about four of the mats for set items from opening the daily boxes. I'm unlucky and usually only get two. By this time advanced will be getting farmed as easily as old elite even if its not nerfed. But I think it will be.
Have patience and all things will come.
For romulan and nukara sets you only need marks.
Dyson sets, you can get voth implants in the batttlezone. If you hate/can't do ground try this: just stand near a trex spawn and read a book. When he shows up shoot him once and wait. Cooled dil, marks, and implants ts. Swap zone, repeat.
Undine items you can get in the space batttlezone. Shoot planet killers once to profit. Participation not necessary unless you enjoy it.
In all cases earning ONE box of marks per day is better than trying to grind a bunch in a short time.. Take advantage of the daily 55 mark bonus.
For dil, get a kdf and run marauding and sell prisoners in the explore zones. Don't use the 10-prisoner mission on qonos. Turn in extra marks for dil.
As I've stated in a previous thread, I like to do fleet actions, and in the last five I've done, my team only won one. For me, the difficulty wasn't in how hard it was, but in how much time we had to complete it. We were doing well in most fights, but we generally just ran out of time because the enemies had too many enemies, or their hps were just way too high to cut down in time.
Killing the foundry missions really hurt me, too. Not because I've lost the rewards, but because I find them to be the highest fun I've had in the game.
One actual criticism I have about the whole expansion is the T6 ships, in that the only way I perceive ever getting one is to pay money for one in some way. The old structure of the game was that as you achieved level 50, you got a level 50 ship, and you felt good about it. You might then buy a replacement ship based on specific needs, but that was fine. Now, if you hit 60, you are still stuck in your old ship, unless you have one of the veteran ships and get it upgraded to T-5U, not T-6, which means that again you're only going to get T6 is if you paid real cash for it or got it through the exchange process of developing real currency, which should be considered to be the same thing.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
So now we have "Normal" mode, "Advanced" but Insane mode. I haven't taken time to experience whatever might be going on in "Elite mode", I can imagine though.
If they just set Advanced to be the same as what was Elite mode, it would be ok, but Advanced mode now is probably what would qualify as the new Elite mode.
I mean really... Advanced Cure Space starts off with about 15 to 20 enemy ships swarming the Kang and with one of my best ships and a team of other players in a PUG, we could barely make a dent in the shields. Luckly the Kang is much tougher but the whole thing ends up being a 'fail', not because the Kang blew-up - because it didn't - but for a timer that ended because we didn't swat all the flies around the Kang in time.
Yes, Cryptic says, we can still use our T5 ships in all the content, you just won't have enough power to do anything because the enemy is 10 times tougher, even just in Advanced mode.
I like a challenge, but if this keeps up, the Borg will assimilate us all by the next Patch Thursday!
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
This is why I keep suggesting that they increase the time required to fulfill these missions. I've had a number of missions where we were doing well, but we just didn't have the time to finish off the mission. If it happened once, I'd be dismissive of the thought. But in 5 "normal" fights, we lost four of them because of this one issue.
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
I have not seen Normal as much of a problem, but I only played a couple. It's the Advanced mode that seems close to impossible.
(Love the banner! LOL)
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
What your post implies to me is that cryptic released an entire expansion based only for the 'hardcore elite'.
Plus they used to give out t5 ships, the next annual giveaway event might have a t6. But I suspect we'll need to wait for the one after next realistically.
Last, if you can earn ~3k dil per day and convert to zen that's enough for two t6 ships per year.
Edit: the free ship at level 50 was always for subscribers only. The last free ship came at 40.