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Thoughts from an STO noob...
ravenmorpheus2k
Member Posts: 103 Arc User
Hello
Just want to air my thoughts on my experience of STO so far, apologies for the long wall of text post.
I came across STO whilst looking for good Star Trek games to play, I tried both Bridge Commander and Klingon Academy but neither really appealed to me and I lost interest in them.
I've played STO so far for 118 hours (according to Steam).
I have a Federation Human at level 41ish and a KDF Klingon at level 54ish.
I still have the majority of the scripted campaign missions to do on both sides, and I could probably start a Romulan character and do their campaign.
I admittedly am a noob when it comes to MMO's. I've until playing STO never played one and I've actively stayed away from them due to absorbing info about a lot of them and how they require a monthly sub and/or cost a ton of money to do well in.
My views of MMO's are they are in most if not all cases a Pay To Win genre of game.
I am a solo, and I guess casual, player because I don't A) like playing against other people who have either been playing longer than me, and thus know all the exploits, i.e. know the optimal builds, or have paid real hard cash to get the best equipment (the Pay To Win crowd),
because I don't know anyone else who plays the game, thus I don't have any "friends" I can play with and I don't wish to wait around in queues waiting for others to join, and I don't keep regular hours and thus I'm unlikely to be playing when others in a fleet might be playing.
So far however, until the last few days I've mostly enjoyed STO. I love Star Trek (although not enough to call myself a Trekkie, I don't do comic cons and dress up!) I took up STO with the view to playing as a solo player and so far I've been reasonably happy with my experience as a solo player.
However some things are starting to bother me.
1. Tier 5 onwards -
To obtain a tier 5 ship I need Zen. To obtain Zen I either stump up the real hard cash (which I don't really have as I have other hobbies and bills to consider) or I grind for Dilithium.
That seems fair enough to me, I understand that principle. Cryptic/PWE are a business after all.
However 2000 Zen is £17 and I can't buy exactly that amount via my Steam wallet - I have to put in either £4, £10, £25, £50 or £100!.
Or 2000 Zen is 316000 Dilithium at current rate (158 last time I looked).
Now, I don't have £17 to put into my Steam wallet, no matter what it's for. To grind to get the Dil would take approx. 40 days if I grind every day.
Thing is it seems at least a tier 5 ship is required. I've started to struggle a little in some cases with my tier 4 Bird of Prey (at level 54) and my Constitution class ship was getting difficult to use the last time I played as my Federation character...
2. Lack of anything to do -
My Federation character is currently lvl 41, as already mentioned. Besides the scripted campaigns the only quests I have in my "Available" list are PVP (Neutral Zone Diplomacy), Fleet Actions (such as Starbase 24), Asteroid Mining, Tour the Galaxy, and Investigate Officer Reports.
As a solo player I'm not interested in PVP and I can't do Fleet Actions either. That leaves me with "fan fiction" Foundry missions which from my experience so far are quite often very difficult or buggy/poorly put together.
It's a little better with my KDF Klingon, but even so the majority of the missions (such as the repeatable Pi Canis missions) I've got available are for grinding Dil.
I know the game is an MMO, so I understand the content is essentially designed for people who play with others, but I don't see why solo players can't be catered for also - after all we are still a potential source of income one way or another.
3. The cost of things I want, which kind of leads on from my first point -
I totalled up the things I'd like to buy from the C-Store and the Tier 5 ship I'd like to buy on each character and the sum of all things (which include but are not limited to the ToS pack, Constitution Refit, ToS Uniforms, and WoK Uniforms) came to something like 14k Zen or 2.2 million Dil.
If I grind for that amount of Dil it'd take me something like 246 days to achieve that amount of Dil (refined of course, I could have more in reserve, although to me so far that seems unlikely).
14k Zen equates to about £117 hard cash!!
Granted most of it is just appearance stuff and I don't need it to play the game. However, given there is a potential for millions of people worldwide to be playing this game (I don't know if there are actual active user base figures or what they are?) I find £117 to be rather a steep amount for what is in fact a handful of items (imagine the cost if I bought everything in the C-Store!!!!!).
4. The exchange is a rip off.
I've been looking at obtaining some items that are above the Mk X NPC vendor items for both my KDF and Federation characters, mostly weapons and stuff for my ship(s) and it strikes me that the people selling such items on the exchange are akin to Ferengi - little effort, massive profit!
There are the occasional seller that sells stuff for a reasonable amount (I've tried to with stuff I've sold on the exchange) but they seem to be rather scarce when it comes to higher level items.
However, to succeed in the game it seems to me that you require some higher level items. I've tried having a go at some missions at lvl 41 with my Constitution class ship with mk VI weapons/consoles etc. and it's no fun and to me very difficult, and with my Sovereign class ship it's still not easy. As already stated my lvl 54 Tier 4 Bird of Prey is also beginning to be a struggle on some missions and that's equipped with Mk XII gear!
5. More of an issue with aesthetics/narrative/canon etc. but some things don't quite seem to fit for me -
I'm not necessarily a stickler for canon, so long as things aren't too wide of the mark and are at least plausible, and until recently I had no idea of things such as Roddenberry and some other guy involved in Star Trek to begin with had laid down some rules on what should be considered canon where ship design is concerned.
However, in STO I find some things to be out of place, such as the amount of ships parked/queued around ESD/Qo'nos, the amount of ships in sector space, the amount of ships parked around planets.
It all seems too heavily congested and rather disorganised to me.
There are some other things that I often find myself commenting on in the game, but I can't put a finger on them at the time of typing this.
They all add up to mean that some things with the game do jar with what Star Trek to my knowledge and experience of all the series and moves seemed to be.
6. Ground missions -
The Away Team is virtually useless outside of combat, and even during combat they tend to get in the way. I find ground combat to be at best something I want to avoid.
So, to sum up -
As a solo player with an eye to keeping the game as "Free to Play" as possible I've been looking at how my characters are going to progress and it's seeming to me that it's either going to be -
1. A struggle playing missions because my ship(s)/ground weapons/equipment are not good enough, or
2. It will more likely be an eternal grind fest for EC and Dil with most of my time ignoring the scripted content so that I can build up enough EC/Dil to obtain the items I want.
Either way I seem to be losing interest.
I was genuinely hoping that STO was not going to be a farming game like other MMO's always seem (from the outside) to be. Grinding for EC and Dil does not really adhere to the ethos Star Trek put forward in my opinion...
Just want to air my thoughts on my experience of STO so far, apologies for the long wall of text post.
I came across STO whilst looking for good Star Trek games to play, I tried both Bridge Commander and Klingon Academy but neither really appealed to me and I lost interest in them.
I've played STO so far for 118 hours (according to Steam).
I have a Federation Human at level 41ish and a KDF Klingon at level 54ish.
I still have the majority of the scripted campaign missions to do on both sides, and I could probably start a Romulan character and do their campaign.
I admittedly am a noob when it comes to MMO's. I've until playing STO never played one and I've actively stayed away from them due to absorbing info about a lot of them and how they require a monthly sub and/or cost a ton of money to do well in.
My views of MMO's are they are in most if not all cases a Pay To Win genre of game.
I am a solo, and I guess casual, player because I don't A) like playing against other people who have either been playing longer than me, and thus know all the exploits, i.e. know the optimal builds, or have paid real hard cash to get the best equipment (the Pay To Win crowd),
because I don't know anyone else who plays the game, thus I don't have any "friends" I can play with and I don't wish to wait around in queues waiting for others to join, and I don't keep regular hours and thus I'm unlikely to be playing when others in a fleet might be playing.So far however, until the last few days I've mostly enjoyed STO. I love Star Trek (although not enough to call myself a Trekkie, I don't do comic cons and dress up!) I took up STO with the view to playing as a solo player and so far I've been reasonably happy with my experience as a solo player.
However some things are starting to bother me.
1. Tier 5 onwards -
To obtain a tier 5 ship I need Zen. To obtain Zen I either stump up the real hard cash (which I don't really have as I have other hobbies and bills to consider) or I grind for Dilithium.
That seems fair enough to me, I understand that principle. Cryptic/PWE are a business after all.
However 2000 Zen is £17 and I can't buy exactly that amount via my Steam wallet - I have to put in either £4, £10, £25, £50 or £100!.
Or 2000 Zen is 316000 Dilithium at current rate (158 last time I looked).
Now, I don't have £17 to put into my Steam wallet, no matter what it's for. To grind to get the Dil would take approx. 40 days if I grind every day.
Thing is it seems at least a tier 5 ship is required. I've started to struggle a little in some cases with my tier 4 Bird of Prey (at level 54) and my Constitution class ship was getting difficult to use the last time I played as my Federation character...
2. Lack of anything to do -
My Federation character is currently lvl 41, as already mentioned. Besides the scripted campaigns the only quests I have in my "Available" list are PVP (Neutral Zone Diplomacy), Fleet Actions (such as Starbase 24), Asteroid Mining, Tour the Galaxy, and Investigate Officer Reports.
As a solo player I'm not interested in PVP and I can't do Fleet Actions either. That leaves me with "fan fiction" Foundry missions which from my experience so far are quite often very difficult or buggy/poorly put together.
It's a little better with my KDF Klingon, but even so the majority of the missions (such as the repeatable Pi Canis missions) I've got available are for grinding Dil.
I know the game is an MMO, so I understand the content is essentially designed for people who play with others, but I don't see why solo players can't be catered for also - after all we are still a potential source of income one way or another.
3. The cost of things I want, which kind of leads on from my first point -
I totalled up the things I'd like to buy from the C-Store and the Tier 5 ship I'd like to buy on each character and the sum of all things (which include but are not limited to the ToS pack, Constitution Refit, ToS Uniforms, and WoK Uniforms) came to something like 14k Zen or 2.2 million Dil.
If I grind for that amount of Dil it'd take me something like 246 days to achieve that amount of Dil (refined of course, I could have more in reserve, although to me so far that seems unlikely).
14k Zen equates to about £117 hard cash!!
Granted most of it is just appearance stuff and I don't need it to play the game. However, given there is a potential for millions of people worldwide to be playing this game (I don't know if there are actual active user base figures or what they are?) I find £117 to be rather a steep amount for what is in fact a handful of items (imagine the cost if I bought everything in the C-Store!!!!!).
4. The exchange is a rip off.
I've been looking at obtaining some items that are above the Mk X NPC vendor items for both my KDF and Federation characters, mostly weapons and stuff for my ship(s) and it strikes me that the people selling such items on the exchange are akin to Ferengi - little effort, massive profit!
There are the occasional seller that sells stuff for a reasonable amount (I've tried to with stuff I've sold on the exchange) but they seem to be rather scarce when it comes to higher level items.
However, to succeed in the game it seems to me that you require some higher level items. I've tried having a go at some missions at lvl 41 with my Constitution class ship with mk VI weapons/consoles etc. and it's no fun and to me very difficult, and with my Sovereign class ship it's still not easy. As already stated my lvl 54 Tier 4 Bird of Prey is also beginning to be a struggle on some missions and that's equipped with Mk XII gear!
5. More of an issue with aesthetics/narrative/canon etc. but some things don't quite seem to fit for me -
I'm not necessarily a stickler for canon, so long as things aren't too wide of the mark and are at least plausible, and until recently I had no idea of things such as Roddenberry and some other guy involved in Star Trek to begin with had laid down some rules on what should be considered canon where ship design is concerned.
However, in STO I find some things to be out of place, such as the amount of ships parked/queued around ESD/Qo'nos, the amount of ships in sector space, the amount of ships parked around planets.
It all seems too heavily congested and rather disorganised to me.
There are some other things that I often find myself commenting on in the game, but I can't put a finger on them at the time of typing this.
They all add up to mean that some things with the game do jar with what Star Trek to my knowledge and experience of all the series and moves seemed to be.
6. Ground missions -
The Away Team is virtually useless outside of combat, and even during combat they tend to get in the way. I find ground combat to be at best something I want to avoid.
So, to sum up -
As a solo player with an eye to keeping the game as "Free to Play" as possible I've been looking at how my characters are going to progress and it's seeming to me that it's either going to be -
1. A struggle playing missions because my ship(s)/ground weapons/equipment are not good enough, or
2. It will more likely be an eternal grind fest for EC and Dil with most of my time ignoring the scripted content so that I can build up enough EC/Dil to obtain the items I want.
Either way I seem to be losing interest.
I was genuinely hoping that STO was not going to be a farming game like other MMO's always seem (from the outside) to be. Grinding for EC and Dil does not really adhere to the ethos Star Trek put forward in my opinion...
Post edited by ravenmorpheus2k on
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Comments
Hmm let me try to help you!
First, have you done any patrol missions? Most of the systems in the main area sectors that do not have associated story missions have patrols. They don't show up in the journal. You get them by just flying up to the system. They are a decent source of Xp and loot drops. Second have you been doing the duty officer system.. It's also a good source of dillithium, EC, and experience. Also can occasionally get assignments that produce gear.
As to getting gear and a tier 5 ship let me give you a couple of hints. Try the crafting system! You can craft your own gear and every story mission and the patrols have harvest nodes in them for crafting materials. If your not into crafting harvest the nodes and sell it on the exchange a lot of people craft. Lastly let me give you a cheap way to get a tier 5 ship... Buy one of the mirror universe ones off the exchange they sell for around 200 000 EC. Which is easy to make. You find them in the reward packs section of the exchange. If that fails hit me up in game at @commodore_stipe I'm co leader of a decent fleet you can join.. We're sort of the loner fleet.. Perfect for you.. You can buy some of the fleet versions of the tier 5's with fleet credits which are fairly easy to earn. If all else fails I have some in storage I'm not using.
Hope this helps a little!
Relatively new myself, been playing since April of this year, almost exclusivley solo. Have a FED
TAC as my only character at present. Average around 10-15 hours per week in game. This is my
first exposer to an MMO.
We sound very similar in most aspects regarding fondness for StarTrek (love it, but not a fanatic).
OP above covered one area I frequent, the "Patrols". A good many star systems (not all), give
us space combat, and both space and ground non combat scenarios. I wound'nt dismiss the
"Foundry". There are many splendid missions, and quite good rewards. If you play a "Spot Light" mission in conjuntion with the "Officer's Report" mission, were talking over 3500 Dil/20,000+ EC in
one daily mission of generally 1 hour+ play time. Are the missions "buggy", sometimes. Not
always the fault of the authors. I am a HUGE fan of the "Foundry". I tend to use
the Episode Missions Replays as random scenarios. I ignore the stoyline per say, and role play
them as stand alone missions. I also use a self made "die roll" matrix of which I have included all
the above. When I log in, I literally do not know what I'll be doing that session. Such things keep
the game "fresh" for me.
We may differ in two areas. (1) I really enjoy ground missions. (2) I'm not sure how you,
yourself define "succeeding". If I get off the server after a couple hours and I've had a good time,
I for myself have succeeded. I'm never "chomping at the bit" to have the latest/greatest thingy
that comes along. If one is determined to get the "top" equip/gear, Then the "Grind" comes into
play. I have of course did the "Grind" when an item caught my fancy, but this has never
dominated my game experience.
I play at my own pace, for my own enjoyment. From my perspective, STO offers everything that
a CD game cannot begin compare.
Hope this is useful. Have a grand day, and good hunting!!!
BCW.:)
That said, I'm a paid player, and frequently donate to the game even when I don't want anything specifically to support it and keep it running and new content coming. I strongly disagree with some things Cryptic has done with the game recently, but continue to support it and Neverwinter.
That said I know quite a few hard core FTP players, and here is some information you might not have yet. I'll also say being friendly to FTP players (STO far more so than Neverwinter) is one of the reasons why I donate.
#1. Twice a year Cryptic gives away a top tier starship. During the summer event, and during the winter/Christmas event. Granted it does need to be earned (logging in to do a quest once a day for like 25 days during the month these run) but it costs you nothing. During the summer they do Risian ships, during winter it's Breen ships. The existing ones also upgrade for free to Tier 5-U.
In addition during Christmas and the Anniversary Cryptic gives free unlocks (usually one a day) from the Z-store which has included top tier ships (tier 5) ships.
#2. While EC gains have been reduced to offset inflation, it should be noted that most lockbox ships wind up on the exchange, and can drop as low as 80 million credits. It can take a while through pure cash/salvage grinding, but it's another way to get a ship other than with Zen.
#3. It should be noted that it's supposed to take work to get good stuff and jump into the endgame. I suppose it can be intimidating to be in a game as old as this one with so many, established, powerful players, especially since Cryptic doesn't set things up so newbies can jump right into the current endgame. But then again this game is quite playable solo and with the stuff you get from missions (even if you re-do some of them) it started as a subscription game and all of the initial content and most of the first few expansions was tested against default stuff.
#4. A lot of the endgame content is all PVE, basjcally teams of players agains the computer. PVP plays little role in STO being entirely optional, and unlike a lot of other games there are no real rewards in terms of PVP gear sets or unlocks or whatever... it's entirely for bragging rights.
#5. If you really like STO and are putting hundreds of hours into it, you should donate to the game. Personally I've never really understood why so many people are resistant to this while still spending a ton of money on video games in general. The way you should look at it is this (aside from supporting the game) will some swanky new ship give you 20 or so hours of enjoyment in piloting it around STO? If so the $25 to buy it is probably a worthwhile investment in terms of entertainment. I mean fair is fair, if you are playing that much to get to the point of worrying about things like this... That said, stick around and you'll be handed a top tier ship, or at least won't have to pay for it. Just remember you still have to earn it by putting in some effort though.
#6. 2.2 mil Dilithium is quite doable for a FTP player, albeit it takes time to set up. Some of the scary-dedicated but militantly FTP types I know here and in Neverwinter basically make it a part time job to farm Dil or Astral Diamonds. They do this by having a lot of characters, their first purchuses being more and more character slots so they can run dozens of characters through their 8k dil or 24k astral diamonds every day, sometimes spending like 4-5 hours just logging everyone in. To me this is not fun, and I figure if your going to put THAT much effort into it you might as well just spend some $$$, however some people seem to enjoy it since it makes them feel like they are getting away with something. That said I've run into a few people who have claimed to have literally bought everything in the Z-store without spending a dime. Unlike some other MMOs the point is that if you want to gradually make a part time job of this you can build and infrastructure like that, and use the dil exchange (set prices to a ridiculous level, withdraw everything with the character you want to have them).
At any rate, I'd just remain patient and work on my guys/reps if I was you. Save your Dil for rep gear and fly away in whatever this year's Christmas ship is. If they do things like the summer event last year if you do it with multiple characters you can have each one do the big unlock for a different ship so characters on the same account can unlock them cheaply while the event runs. This summer you could get the Corvette and Yacht together with a bit of effort (about 20 minutes a day for 20+ days, event is long enough to miss some days too). Breen Raider and Cruiser were for Christmas last couple of years, not sure what the new ship will be, but if you have 3 toons you can probably get all 3 ships with a bit of effort for all of them.
While I can understand that people want to play fun games for free, publishers need to draw in revenue sense they are not charities and also have expenses to pay. That being said the grind is there to allow players to play the game for free because refined dilithium is a pretty valuable commodity. Free players can farm it and put it up on the dil exchange for Zen. People who do not have the time nor the desire to farm and want to complete various projects (either 10's of thousands to millions of refined dil) will simply purchase the dil using Zen.
The large amount of refined dilithium for a starship and the refinement cap limit is there to entice you to spend money to purchase Zen. If you are totally patient you can earn the dil required to make your purchases. If you are in a rush, then you simply make your purchase with real money and be done with. But if you are in the middle like myself, then you can farm for dil to offset the amount of real money you need to spend to make your purchases. I generally go with 40% Zen purchased with real money and 60% Zen from dil. During the 20% ship sale that happened 2 week ago I decided to go for the T5 B'rel Retrofit BoP. If I could grind enough dil during the 4 days to cover 75% the cost of the B'rel, then I would purchase the rest with real money. By the time I stopped playing Sunday night I was able to farm enough dilithium ore to cover 86% of the B'rel's cost across 5 active toon (meaning none are strictly farmers) assuming I was able to refine it all to dilithium crystals.
If you are not interested in doing the grind to farm for dilithium or using real money to eventually buy "shinnies', then perhaps it is time to move. It should be note that back in January 2014 when I was doing research for an MMO to play, STO basically had the most friendly F2P models out there especially if you restrict the selection to only Sci-Fi MMOs. With the release of Delta Rising, farming dilithium is slightly harder because of the reduced dilithium reward from STF / queued PvE missions in general. However, there are many ways to farm for dilithium, it just happens that playing these missions (especially the Borg and Crystalline Entity) is one of the more popular ways to farm dil.
I'm sorry but I'm sick of seeing people telling me that "it's doable" to obtain 2.2 million dilithium or an amount equivalent to 14k zen just by grinding.
Sure it's doable, but with an 8k per day refining cap it will take 265 days to obtain enough refined dil to get 14k zen.
That's about 8 or 9 months!!
I'll say it again in case it's not obvious - 8 or 9 months! And that's only if I play and farm dilithium every single day!
And for what? A few outfit packs and a couple of endgame ships!?!
There is not enough in the game to keep me interested for 8 or 9 months of daily gameplay comprised of mostly grind, even if I wasn't a solo player!!
£120 or so for the content I'd like to get is also a ridiculous amount. I can understand those with tons of disposable income think nothing of throwing £120 on some character skins and a couple of ships but I don't.
I understand the need for PWE to make money, I understand that as far as MMO's go STO is considered a relatively cheap one to play, but I seriously think that the cost involved, especially if you want to play the endgame is out of proportion to what you're actually getting.
Especially when you consider just how many people are actually playing the game and coughing up real cash.
PWE/Cryptic are raking it in big time and Cost vs Time vs Reward for the player just doesn't add up in this game, unless you actually enjoy mindless grinding for 2-3 hours each day that you play the game!!
From what I can tell you still have to grind almost as much even if you take out a subscription!!!
I started playing STO thinking it'd be fun, and to begin with it was, but just lately (since the DR update and since hitting lvl 40 with both my characters) all I've done is grind, and it seems to me that I need to farm/grind even just to rack up the EC, because my ship seems to quickly becomes ineffective against larger AI ships/fleets as I level up, causing me to die more or take longer to destroy ships, therefore I need to go buy stuff from the sharks on the exchange to make my ship more effective, and/or grind for dil to get a new ship (past tier 4).
Foundry missions that state they are completable in 15 to 20 minutes aren't, they take more like an hour to complete, and those that are completable in 20 minutes are dead boring. The raids that give you 1440 dil each time, such as the Pi Canis raids take upwards of 2-3hrs to complete.
And to cap it all off my duty officers are no longer crapping contraband like they've got diarrhoea each time I send them out to maraud!!
The way I've been playing recently I might as well be a South East Asian person sitting in some big computer warehouse 24/7 playing the game as a proper job - like the WoW gold farmers you read about in the press!!
And that is not what I expect from a game, even if it is an MMO, and that is not what I expect a Star Trek game to end up being about.
Unfortunately I can't find a Star Trek video game that is any good, it seems Star Trek suffers from the same disease other similar franchises suffer from when it comes to video games - they either have no current good games that really stand out, or those that were good are now ancient and really not worth playing any more.
So if I want to play a Star Trek game I'm kind of stuck with STO.
Why do you want 14k? The average ship only costs 2-3k.
There are tricks you can use to make it more bearable - to an extent. The short answer though - you pretty much will have to spend money to play. No game is truly F2P, and generally what F2P really means is that it costs more 2 play than your typical subscription game, unless you're willing to put up with huge headaches and ridiculous time gates. That's just how they're designed.
Some of the tricks
First, you can actually get more than 8k a day if you use several characters. It's possible to transfer dilithium from one character to another using the exchange. Buy zen for 25 dilithium on one char, then go to the other char and cancel the offer - and withdraw the dilithium.
Second, learning to play effectively and efficiently helps a lot. A constitution class cruiser is a Tier 1 ship, meaning it's just about the lowest level ship you can fly. It should be replaced by level 30, if not 20. Can't remember which. The free level 40 sovereign is one of the best ships you can get, and setting it up correctly can go a long way. It won't be as good as the Tier 5 zen version, and it certainly won't be as good as the T5 or T5-U Fleet version (which was one of the best cruisers in game prior to DR, and is still up there) - but it'll perform well enough for awhile. Look up beam cruiser setups and Aux2batt setups. These are essential to cruiser performance. I'd list it all here, but the last ship building class I gave took almost three hours to get through and there's plenty of other resources out there. Suffice to say that ship choice, boff races, boff powers, active doffs, consoles, weapon type, energy type, subsystem power levels, captain skill points, and set bonuses all need to be well thought out and working together perfectly to make the game work right. Get a couple things wrong and it just all falls apart and leaves you unable to hardly kill anything.
Last - A T5-U or T6 ship is pretty much required post 50. Cryptic will tell you otherwise, but the fact is they're lying. Sure you can play, yeah - I could probably do alright with my old Fleet Cruiser (assuming I hadn't upgraded it), but the truth is I'd have a console less and half the health. That matters just a wee bit, especially when you start looking at anything over normal - something the vast, vast majority of the players are not ready for and most have no idea they're not ready for.
8000 dilithium refined a day
63 days if you have 4 characters refining dilithium for you. You're doing it wrong.
You choose to play as a loner then complain when you don't know the ins and outs of the game. There's plenty here on the forums you just posted on to be able to figure out what you're doing wrong in terms of fit, tactics, playstyle, bridge officer space/ground configuration.
I dislike ground. Having said that, my away team is a buzzsaw cutting through enemies.
I'll show you how I do it all. @Lazlar.Lyricon in-game.
Yes! I do agree with you it is tedious to grind dilithium, which is why my first T5 ships were obtained outside the use of dilithium (in fact, many T5 ships are obtainable outside using Zen). There are some T5 ships which lasted me for quite awhile, and they are not the expensive C-store or lockbox ships.
1) Go to the exchange, under the "rewards pack" tab, search for "mirror universe". These mirror universe ships are actually slightly tweaked versions of the C-store ships. They just do not come with the fancy consoles (these consoles are more of gimmicks actually). These ships costs pretty cheap, ranging from 100k Energy credits to 2 million EC. To earn EC, I run patrols or do missions, then sell the loots at the NPCs in "Requisitions", which easily nets me 100k EC in an hour. If you want a ship that can be upgraded to a T5U version, try out the Kazon Heavy Raider. It costs less than 1million EC and can be upgraded with one Upgrade Requisition (costs around 10m EC)
2) Events - My favorite ships to date are the ships I got from the Summer and Winter Event. Seeing that the Winter event is coming soon (5 December), we can easily obtain 2 different types of T5 ships (Plesh Brek Raider or the Chel Grett Destroyer) without spending any Zen or Dilithium. These ships are top-of-the-line, even better than some of the C-store ships, and also gets a FREE upgrade to T5U!
The only thing we need to do is to complete a short winter race with an NPC per day, for 15 days. But as long as you purchase one ship for a character, you can purchase the same ship on another character at an extremely discounted rate. But well it's so much better than grinding for zen right?
3) Obtaining Zen - Sometimes zen is really needed, such as purchasing Account Bank (so I can share account-bound items with other characters) or increasing my EC limit. I obtain the dilithium required by waiting for special events such as the Mirror invasion event or Crystalline Cataclysm event. They net me a lot of dilithium, and I bought several C-store ships via these events alone.
When you hit Lvl 50, you are open to do reputation missions and advance in various reputations. So far there are 6 different reputations for you to complete, and each gives you perks for advancement. Sure it takes 40 days to fully complete 1 reputation tree, but all you need to do, is to play a queued mission of that category a day, and the rewards (base marks+ daily bonus marks) are more than enough to advance. They give a bit of dilithium every day, and when you hit T5 they also give out massive dilithum payout.
There are several ground battlezones available when you are Level 50. My favorite is the Dyson Ground battlezone. These require 2 bridge officers as your away team, and you will be thankful that you kit them out well because they will give you quite a lot of support during these missions.
Just some humble opinions hope I help
Except that when I hover over the create a character button on the character select screen it tells me that I only have "1 unrestricted slot left", seeing as I already have 2 on the go.
To buy 2 new slots is 625 zen, I've only just obtained via grinding just under 600 zen, despite reading tons of advice here and elsewhere, most of which seems redundant because things mentioned have been removed (like Explore New Worlds for example).
To obtain 625 zen at current price (158) takes nearly 100k dil. Or I could cough up about £9 (more like £10 because of the way Steam Wallet works) for the privilege of creating 2 new characters so that I can farm dil on more characters to improve 1 or two other characters equipment!!!
I also don't have time to be playing for 2-3 hours per character to farm dil.
Lets say on average it takes me 2 hours to obtain 8k dil, that's 8 hours over 4 characters! It would actually take me longer than that because of how long the missions which give the most rewards are taking. The other night when I did the Pi Canis raids last it took me about 6hrs to make 8k dil on 1 character!!!
And this is despite having read a ton of information and trying to put it into practice.
I appreciate that perhaps I might not be doing things the best way - but then, it's a video game, I shouldn't have to come to forums, read tons of threads, most of which have redundant or erroneous information, just to obtain knowledge on ways to maximise obtaining in-game funds to buy stuff to improve 1 or 2 characters so they are capable within the game so that they don't die too often leaving me repeating certain missions ad nauseum.
And like I said when you consider the amount of money PWE/Cryptic are making out of this it's ridiculous the amount of real money they expect us to cough up or the amount of time they expect us to spend just grinding.
Mirror ships do alright though, it may or may not be superior to your sovereign. Depends on which you choose, and how you set it up. Another helpful hint though - the number of consoles is a good indication of the tier a ship is on. A ship with 9 consoles is "higher level" than an 8 console boat. End game ships have 10 consoles, except for Fleet/Lockbox T5-U and Fleet/Lockbox T6 - these have 11, though the latter also has an additional Boff power.
The thing abt Raiders is that it presents a very different gameplay than other ships, I just felt that given the price it's worth a try:)
I agree with the part where you look at the number of consoles to judge a ship. Having said that a large number of c store T5 ships only have 9 console slots. Additional upgrade to fleet and t5u status is required to bring it up to 11 consoles, so the price may be a bit too steep for the OP.
The aforementioned also makes event ships all the more precious, since they are already top tier 10 console ships to start off with, and gets a free upgrade to 11 console ships. The winter event may even introduce a full-fledged T6 ship (fingers crossed). All of which are dilithium/zen-free.
I may be a little late but ehh i'll answer anyways...
For #1 I think i already helped you out in a different thread about ships. I had suggested a few mirror ships that you can try and get. Mirror ships work fine for a lot of the content. At level 40 i bought a Mirror Patrol Escort (the one that looks like the USS Prometheus) and it has similar stats and features to the Defiant zen ship. Take a look at the links below to compare the two ships. The mirror patrol ship right now can be bought for 100k-120k E.C. and the Defiant costs 2500 zen which is equivalent to ~390k dilithium, or 50million E.C. (though that much EC cannot be easily converted into dil zen). The Defiant gets a cool console but thats about it. Take a look at the boff layout...they are virtually identical. The Defiant trades in its ensign tac seat for an engineer tac seat with the mirror escort. The console layout is the same on both ships with 3/2/4 -- eng/sci/tac. Same exact weapons layout and the rest of the ship stats are pretty much the same.
Defiant Zen Ship
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Tactical_Escort_Retrofit
Mirror Patrol Escort
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mirror_Universe_Patrol_Escort
As far as the exchange goes, its normal to see a lot of overpriced stuff. But you can still find some good gear on there that is pretty affordable. My latest alt that i'm leveling up that got the mirror patrol escort at level 40? i geared her up in full mark X rare gear from the exchange right as i hit level 40. Almost every single piece of gear cost me 10-15k E.C. which really isnt that much. The only thing that ended up being expensive were the rare tac consoles. So i went with uncommon tac consoles instead which were 5k each. If you have no in game credits to spend then all you have to do is convert zen to EC. I think the lowest amount of zen you can buy with cash is the 500 zen bundle? 500 zen can buy you 4 master keys. Sell those 4 master keys for 2.3 million energy credits each and you now have 9.2 million energy credits. You can build a really really good mirror ship with that much EC! rare XI tac consoles, rare and very rare XI/XII eng and sci consoles, rare and very rare XI/XII deflectors, shields, engines, weapons, and so on. That quality gear is comparable to rep gear and even some fleet gear if you get the right gear with the right stats. The only thing you would be missing are set bonuses. Hell, if you dont go nuts with your spending you can gear up both of your characters with really good ships and gear.
But also know that gear is only part of the issue. You want to make sure that your boff abilities are set up correctly. You can go for abilities that sound "cool" but they may not always be good. You can check out the Fed and KDF shipyard subforums for more help with ship builds.
You are going toward "endgame" .
In STO , endgame is mostly queued team play based raids (another type of grind) , pvp , a few dailies or Foundry missions .
Some enjoy this , some don't .
Your aversion to team play should clash with most of STO'S endgame activities .... , at which point you can go with the flow and try team play (joining a good fleet with helpful people can ease this journey) , or you will be left with not much to do (which is better then nothing to do , btw) .
So in the end , you should look at two questions :
- Is this the direction I want to take ?
- How much of the shopping list I made will I absolutely need to get there ?
The second question is something that helps me make good choices every day , both in-game and in real life .
Besides, the one that did, the Sovereign class one, was 250k EC the last time I looked. Like dil EC farming doesn't seem to be quite as easy for me as some people make out it should be.
I think for the moment I'll stick to my tier 4 Sovereign and Bird of Prey (they might even be tier 5 from reading the gamepedia wiki, as I got them via free rank tickets at level 40?)
I am still playing the game, and will continue to do so on and off, and once I think I've got a good enough build on my Tier 4 Sovereign and Bird of Prey (my Bird of Prey is already there I think) and away teams I'll pick up the campaign again. I'm just fed up with the economy within the game is all.
You can always play patrols with many ships to kill. Get your inventory filled with loots (which can be done within an hour at most) and then head back to Earth spacedock or the First City. Look for the vendor at "Requisitions". There you can discard your items at 50% of its nominal value (if you simply recycle them through your replicator it returns you only 40%). Gears sells the most.
Just did a round of this and I got 134k EC already.
Playing patrol missions is a solid advice. Especially those with many targets. I can also highly recommend getting acquainted with the doff system as early as possible. It supports massively the active gameplay and grants a considerable amount of skill points over night.
The DR expansion sadly forced me to neglect some of my characters. But even they keep on doffing and have reached the step between lvl 50-54 in less than 2 weeks.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Thing is I just did a patrol of the Donia system, vs 5 groups of 3 Vishap Frigates and got bupkis. All I got was a lockbox out of one of the ships and I don't have a key for it!
Only took me 15 minutes though so I guess over an hour I could do 3 or 4 and see what I get.
You can get 250k EC by selling few rare crafting materials that you can get from duty officer assignments (scan/analyze ones).
Do you mean the stuff that sits in R&D on the inventory panel, like Verteron Particle?
I tried discarding one or two of them once and didn't get anything. Where you sell them, is there a NPC vendor who takes them or do you mean on the exchange?
Sell them in the exchange. I wouldn't bother selling commons since they are practically worthless but some of the rares (Rubidium and Z-Particle) are selling pretty well. 1 Rubidium = ~100k EC.
You complained about a lack of anything to do. Well, there's your long term project. I do this all the time.
It took me a year to grind for the Temporal Destroyer and equip it with the Temporal Warfare set and the Tippler Cylinder from the Temporal Science vessel. And all it took was about 45 minutes per day to grind 8k dilithium as well as some EC on two characters.
With that said, the Mk xiii/ xiv and trying to upgrade quality is a major sink that any sane person would be better to stay away from and spend it on sets or converting into zen for ships, keys, fleet tokens, etc. Mark XII equipment is dropping readily enough after 50 that you can piece a set together fairly easily, even if it's just the 3x Accuracy phaser purples from the DQ mission rewards.
My major concern is that the new expansion story missions have too large of a level requirement to keep the casual player interested. You complete one, then do a bunch of patrols, and then level up elsewhere to get to the next point in the story. That will come as a shocker to people who are used to leveling up, or close enough to do all the missions back to back. It's a new style to keep, imo, people from reaching the end too fast as determined by some suit. Probably the same one that thought announcing the expansion was a good idea when all they really had were a few ship models.
I would have been fine if they pushed the release back a few weeks in order to polish up what they had worked on, and given who I've talked to about the game, more than a few who were around for the earlier releases would have been, too. As it stands now, there are those that will never give Cryptic / PW another dime because of the fiascos surrounding this release.
As for OP, you don't need the new pack. T5-U is good enough, if not better than the majority of the new T6 ships in most cases, with those cases being in the STFs and PVP. Save your money and your dil for something better.
I did most of my STF farming back when the dilithium exchange rate was 300-350:1. Mostly (80%) ground STFs too. Getting enough dilithium for the Delta pack was a lot easier.
I'm not, not any more and I've not used the tier 1 ship I had since I got to tier 2. I also upgraded to the Sovereign class ship not long after posting this thread. I also have a Galaxy class, and a heavy cruiser (Constellation retconn). Neither of which I've ever used or thought I might have to use.
The Constitution I had been using was the tier 2 Constitution, aka the Cruiser.
As soon as I got the tier 2 Constitution I switched to it and used it just fine up to just after I got to level 42, which was just after the DR release and I found the Constitution was no longer a viable ship at my level because I was dying to much and failing missions as a result of having to constantly respawn.
My tier 1 ship was the Miranda class ship, not the TOS Constitution.
But if I could get away with using the tier 2 Constitution, or Constitution Refit, I would, because it's my favourite of all the Star Trek ships, but it seems the game is designed to push you to use newer and newer ships.
Especially running EP2W3, DEM3, etc etc. You can do quite a bit of damage with a Galaxy, contrary to popular belief. Even with the minimal tac Boff and console slots.
The game is what it is. You can't expect a starter sword or w/e in a fantasy MMO to carry you through end-game gear, the same functionality is in this game like everything else.
HOWEVER, if you mean your level 40 (or Rear Admiral) free ship, that SHOULD be viable at least until level 50; Before Delta Rising, I did elite STFs in a freebie Sovereign and did just fine.
I recommend doing Nukara ground missions for a while for marks; with a decent team you can really get some good grinding in on Nukara Prime, and Nukara rep gear is considered very high-quality, plus it requires no special items like BNPs.
Essentially, get yourself the Nukara space, Nukara weapons, and Crystalline Nanofiber Shell sets, THEN work towards a t6 ship.
Furthermore, the Winter Wonderland event is back in a few weeks, and that will give you, for about 40 days of 10-minutes-per-day grinding, a FREE ship, either t5-free upgrade OR t6 (not sure yet which), that should kick major rear.
Past event ships include the Risan corvette (fastest ship in the game), Risan cruiser (OP with Aux2Batt and antiprotons), Breen cruiser (THE NWS ship for a really long time), and the Breen raider (powerful escort, bit of a glass cannon but hilariously powerful in firepower terms).
Basically, get your event ship, grind Nukara for two months to get your gear, get some cheap tetryon-boosting consoles (everyone says tetryon is weak but with the recent shield buffs to NPCs it's going to be more useful), and you should be capable in basically any mission. On your Fed, run the Foundry mission "The Sword of the Kuvah'Magh". Nice, easy pewpew fun, with some minor humorous dialogue. Basically, laugh while you shoot stuff. I don't think I've ever run into a bug on it, and the fighting is easy enough that any ship that blows up in it is basically fail by default. Eh, wait for sales and promotions. I got like half of the stuff I have for free or on sale.
Also, when you have 3 or more alts each grinding 8k dil a day (it's easy once you have rep gear on all characters), the grind is significantly lessened. OK, three things here.
1. The Exchange is player-run, and generally only impatient people buy from it. Thus, a crafter with high crafting levels can sell tech upgrades for 100 times their materials costs.
2. Cheap and easy ship gear that works well into the Delta Rising content (which is, btw, INTENDED to be difficult): Run Fluid Dynamics about 8 times to get antiproton beam arrays for that Sovvie. Run the Breen/Deferi arc and repeat missions for the Breen space set and the Breen cluster torp. Put the torp in a fore weapons slot, shoot it at something, then turn and use Aux2Batt and FAW with 3 blue technician doffs equipped (get 'em from B'tran cluster colonization missions for free) with your 7 antiproton beams. Also, get the Obelisk core and omni-directional antiproton beam from Sphere of Influence and equip those; they're really useful. Get 2 or 3 antiproton-damage-boosting consoles, either from missions or the Exchange; you want MK 10 or MK 11 blues, which should be super cheap. This build, if you fly it right, will deal at least 8k DPS and can tank a borg cube on elite.
3. Yeah, to succeed you need higher-level gear and a higher-level ship. After Rear Admiral, though...you only NEED better stuff than MK 10 blues and a RA ship if you want to do ESTFs. Limitations of the MMO format, nothing that can be done about that. I just ignore 'em and focus on saving the galaxy. TEHO I guess, I love the ground combat myself; much simpler than space.
Like I said above, you can get a really nice build with just missions and some Nukara rep grinding. Dyson battlezone is also a really great way to get absurdly tanky gear super fast.
And you don't NEED the elitest gear; my Scimitard and character have MK 12 purples, some rep and fleet gear, and they don't have any issues with Elites.
Sovvie refit and fleet are still better, as is basic sovvie, excelsior, ambassador, and oddy.
Galaxy is absurdly tanky but you need to be REALLY good and specialized to HOLD the aggro.
Plus the gal-dread is better than the gal-r. It has that extra weapon (phaser lance) and a shuttlebay.
if you wait till Christmas they will likely give a T5 ship as a reward for completing a daily task in the winter event that is fairly easy over a period of days usually 25 days over a 31 day period so you can miss a few days (like christmas day and boxing day) and still do it.
last year they also let you pick up ships from previous years so you may get a choice, also if you are at lv50 you will be able to get the ships upgraded for free to T5U.
they will also give a T5 ship away in the summer event in a similar fashion.
theres still lots to do when you reach the end of the story missions, there are adventure zones scattered around where you can play repeatable content and earn lots of dil like nimbus3, new rom, deferi and the dyson sphere.
also if you go on you missions tab (mini map 2nd icon up on left) there is a tab with 'available' click this tab for daily repeatable content like 'aiding the deferi' and 'the big dig' that rewards a good amount of dil and is fun.
don't expect to buy all you want at once but if you do things that reward dil it is surprising how quick you can earn enough to buy things, I am I would say an average player and have been playing for 3 years and have spent of a fair bit on the c-store but have not paid a penny for any of it, all got from playing the game and earning dil.
that's why I rarely ever use it.
it all depends on what you want from a star trek game, if you want to meet all the same characters from the shows and see all the ships that are in the shows you will be better off playing one of the many off line star trek games out there, don't expect them to last for long because once you reach the end of the story they are done.
sto though based on star trek takes place after the tv shows ended so you may see things that were not in the show but having said that if they bought out a new star trek series on tv you would likely see things that were not in the original shows, the way I look at it is that it is the same with sto.
the good thing with sto is unlike the offline offerings you will never find the end of the game, I hope.
6. Ground missions -
The Away Team is virtually useless outside of combat.[/QUOTE]
they serve a purpose sometimes, and you can always use the stay here icon if you don't want them around, click the small circular icon on the away teams icons and 4 circles will appear click anywhere and the away team will stand in the circles till you release them.
be warned though if you get in a fight you might not last long without them by your side.
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.