the thing is DR is not even a month old and i am half way to lv60 already, and i havent even been trying that hard.
besides i dont care if it takes a while, im not doing very much differant to how i played before DR launched, other then doing the missions every now and then.
thats a lot of some players biggest problem thay want to blaze through everything in no time flat so they can get back to complaining theres nothing to play for.
There are a couple of things here though: first is that not every player wants more levels or more stuff, some want stories/eps, some want more team play, etc. We seem to be getting treated as an undifferentiated blob called "STO players" who want "more levels" and "insane amounts of grind", and this needs to be rethought. Some other player posted a video on this issue: basically, Cryptic needs to develop a better understanding of the various 'STO player archetypes/profiles' they're dealing with, to cater more widely than this.
Level 60 is the start of specialization, so it isn't the end but the beginning of grind. There are a couple of problems with this: firstly the most obvious is that it will take a very long time to max out the Specialization tree which itself isn't an issue if it wasn't for Cryptic having set up expectations in everything else they've done that maxing in a season is the default expectation. However more seriously, purple Intel Officers are Bind On Pickup, and can only be trained in T3 Intel Skills by a player with a maxed out Specialization tree. These two things are contradictory: either we're expected to not max it, or we must max it to take advantage of it. Either which way, this should be addressed (most easily by just letting skill trainers train T3 Intel skills). In other words, one of the most expensive gadgets in STO's arsenal (Intel ships) can't be decked out properly thanks to a grindfest that almost guarantees you'll be bored to death with grind before you manage to complete it.
I was on Kabali last night and it was not to bad, if you are into ground, just go to Kabali, and find some of the missions and you should be alright, I tend to push 60 there myself, remember to set to ground talents if needed, it is funner then it looks lol
While I think the specializations are a great addition to the game, the rate at which specialization points are gained is horrendously slow. Nerfing TD patrols into the ground while things like Argala seem to be singleplayer missions... I really don't see anything good coming of it.
I can't say whether the powergrind truly was an exploit or not, both views have some merit. I do know it was a fun and even social "event" in STO. Did my fair share of Japori, Beta Thori and so on, though not only those to reach 60 and beyond. Teaming up to melt wave after wave of enemies made progress both fast and pleasant. Point being, I was enjoying the game and so were many others.
Borticus said the devs would be tweaking stuff one thing at a time. It won't be an overnight fix to get everything -just- right, but I do have hope that progress will be made in untangling the mess the game turned into after DR. Meanwhile, I'm staying out of all queues save for a few (mostly ground stuff). Half the reward for double the effort? No thanks.
If I wanted to spend an hour or more grinding out one measly spec point, I'd be playing a Korean grinder, not STO.
There are a couple of things here though: first is that not every player wants more levels or more stuff, some want stories/eps, some want more team play, etc. We seem to be getting treated as an undifferentiated blob called "STO players" who want "more levels" and "insane amounts of grind", and this needs to be rethought. Some other player posted a video on this issue: basically, Cryptic needs to develop a better understanding of the various 'STO player archetypes/profiles' they're dealing with, to cater more widely than this.
Level 60 is the start of specialization, so it isn't the end but the beginning of grind. There are a couple of problems with this: firstly the most obvious is that it will take a very long time to max out the Specialization tree which itself isn't an issue if it wasn't for Cryptic having set up expectations in everything else they've done that maxing in a season is the default expectation. However more seriously, purple Intel Officers are Bind On Pickup, and can only be trained in T3 Intel Skills by a player with a maxed out Specialization tree. These two things are contradictory: either we're expected to not max it, or we must max it to take advantage of it. Either which way, this should be addressed (most easily by just letting skill trainers train T3 Intel skills). In other words, one of the most expensive gadgets in STO's arsenal (Intel ships) can't be decked out properly thanks to a grindfest that almost guarantees you'll be bored to death with grind before you manage to complete it.
That's not clever game design at all.
the problem is its very hard to make enough stories to keep players busy for very long, take legacy of romulus as a prime example, that had lots more stories and i had completed all of them within the first day of play and by the second day was just playing the basic same story missions that were part of the previous fed/kdf story missions and even all of them didnt take me much more then a couple of days.
so i was basically 0>50 within 3 days and on to just doffing and doing reputation and what not, at least with this leveling it sould last a good while.
having said that its not anything thats in you face, its just sitting there quietly in the background greadually leveling its self up as we do all the stuff we used to do before the expansion.
within a couple of weeks we will all be up to level 60 we will have finished all of the story missions and the rest can slowly tick away in the background as we do all of our normal routine things, and we will be almost oblivious to it until we think every now and then to take a peek and see where we are at, a bit like how you every now and then check to see if there are any doff marks that you can turn in for fleetmarks with Commendation Report missions.
it wont really matter to me if it take a year, two years or even never finished but just keeps growing and growing, i shall be playing all the same things i always play like pve ques, the odd foundery mission and some times aiding the defari and the big dig, or some days if i havent got much time just doing the academy daily mission and setting up doff missions, then one day i will take a peek at go "ooh its finished, wonder when that happened." then carry on regardless.
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 is its very hard to make enough stories to keep players busy for very long, take legacy of romulus as a prime example, that had lots more stories and i had completed all of them within the first day of play and by the second day was just playing the basic same story missions that were part of the previous fed/kdf story missions and even all of them didnt take me much more then a couple of days.
so i was basically 0>50 within 3 days and on to just doffing and doing reputation and what not, at least with this leveling it sould last a good while.
having said that its not anything thats in you face, its just sitting there quietly in the background greadually leveling its self up as we do all the stuff we used to do before the expansion.
within a couple of weeks we will all be up to level 60 we will have finished all of the story missions and the rest can slowly tick away in the background as we do all of our normal routine things, and we will be almost oblivious to it until we think every now and then to take a peek and see where we are at, a bit like how you every now and then check to see if there are any doff marks that you can turn in for fleetmarks with Commendation Report missions.
This is where it comes down to "different types of player" though. I'm happy to hang out on Drozana and chat, or do the dance thing on Risa, or zoom about a patrol, do a foundry mission, maybe help out a new player with a mission they've never done but I'm familiar with. At some point as players, we've got to know that as much as we might like more content, that there are limits to what can really be achieved here. At some point, if we want to be in the game environment, we've got to "come to the party" and make our own fun rather than just demanding more and more from Cryptic.
It takes a long time to write a proper story, and no time at all to make a "Five groups of five" kill-em-all mission, and then add a "reputation" which says "Do that kill-em-all 30 days in a row for a trinket".
I understand they can't simply can't churn out stories at a rate fast enough to satisfy the whole player base... and if you did, then people would complain that they couldn't keep up!
Delta Rising hasn't changed this; indeed, I'd argue that aside from voiceovers, some of the DR missions are decidedly less 'clever' or immersive than some of the earlier missions. Added to this, I'm disappointed that DR has basically resulted in players like myself, who were never DPS-is-king types, from being able to participate in the old-Elite (supposedly New Advanced) queues, we're blocked from DR content until (up to) Level 59 despite it being a totally artificial blockage (there's nothing in those upper levels that are needed), the whole thing is just... cheap tricks to hide the fact that DR is very, very thin.
Set up your FAW/AP-BETA spammer in Argala system and do it repeatedly. It rewards pretty good and deals with Delta reputation on the fly. I suppose you could even set up your teddy bear on your spacebar button but I would advise against it because of the risk of being accused of botting.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
This is where it comes down to "different types of player" though. I'm happy to hang out on Drozana and chat, or do the dance thing on Risa, or zoom about a patrol, do a foundry mission, maybe help out a new player with a mission they've never done but I'm familiar with. At some point as players, we've got to know that as much as we might like more content, that there are limits to what can really be achieved here. At some point, if we want to be in the game environment, we've got to "come to the party" and make our own fun rather than just demanding more and more from Cryptic.
It takes a long time to write a proper story, and no time at all to make a "Five groups of five" kill-em-all mission, and then add a "reputation" which says "Do that kill-em-all 30 days in a row for a trinket".
I understand they can't simply can't churn out stories at a rate fast enough to satisfy the whole player base... and if you did, then people would complain that they couldn't keep up!
Delta Rising hasn't changed this; indeed, I'd argue that aside from voiceovers, some of the DR missions are decidedly less 'clever' or immersive than some of the earlier missions. Added to this, I'm disappointed that DR has basically resulted in players like myself, who were never DPS-is-king types, from being able to participate in the old-Elite (supposedly New Advanced) queues, we're blocked from DR content until (up to) Level 59 despite it being a totally artificial blockage (there's nothing in those upper levels that are needed), the whole thing is just... cheap tricks to hide the fact that DR is very, very thin.
agree totally there is not much story content in DR and even some of that is just patrol missions anyway, but what DR lacks in story it makes up in long term objectives, apart from levelling to lv60 and the specializations and of course the obligatory reputation we also have ship mastery and upgrading weapons, all of these things make up the bulk of the expansion.
see if the story missions are the icing on the cake legacy of Romulus was about 50/50 as far as story and extra stuff where as delta rising is more like the story content is 10/90.
so sure with LOR you could blast through story content in no time flat and say hell that was good whens the next season coming out, but with DR you have so much secondary objectives that could well last you right up till the next season comes out.
in my book that's a good thing, I want objectives that are going to keep me busy for a long time to come because when im busy I don't get bored.
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.
As an experiment they could always remove all missions between level 1 and 10 except for the tutorial and save the azura, and then tell new players that in order to level up and be able to get the next part of the story they have to play that one mission 30 times. I bet they wouldn't keep many new players at all.
As for me i am still taking the xp grind in my stride as I have already finished a few games from my Steam library.
As an experiment they could always remove all missions between level 1 and 10 except for the tutorial and save the azura, and then tell new players that in order to level up and be able to get the next part of the story they have to play that one mission 30 times. I bet they wouldn't keep many new players at all.
As for me i am still taking the xp grind in my stride as I have already finished a few games from my Steam library.
It's funny as I was imagining this very sort of thing earlier today. Imagine if the levels were e.g. 1-9 Lieutenant, 10-19 Lt Cmdr, 20-39 Commander, and 40 being Captain ("endgame" basically meaning "End of Formal learning curve"). And if you start as a Lieutenant in a shuttle a la Deep Space Nine, doing basic adventure, patrol missions etc... getting your first "command" in an old rustbucket, and only getting your first "real" ship as Commander... with your Captaincy being a big deal.
You don't have to grind.
All you need to do is play. Plus their will be experience bonus weekends.
Don't burn yourself out.
If you are looking for something to do just come to the messageboards and complain that their is nothing to do.
i dont play it if i know i can avoid it with a legitimate reason. for me i got to stack shelves in about an hour from now on a work trial, so that saves me from one type of grind in exchange for another unfortunately, dont see the difference.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
While I think the specializations are a great addition to the game, the rate at which specialization points are gained is horrendously slow. Nerfing TD patrols into the ground while things like Argala seem to be singleplayer missions... I really don't see anything good coming of it.
I can't say whether the powergrind truly was an exploit or not, both views have some merit. I do know it was a fun and even social "event" in STO. Did my fair share of Japori, Beta Thori and so on, though not only those to reach 60 and beyond. Teaming up to melt wave after wave of enemies made progress both fast and pleasant. Point being, I was enjoying the game and so were many others.
Borticus said the devs would be tweaking stuff one thing at a time. It won't be an overnight fix to get everything -just- right, but I do have hope that progress will be made in untangling the mess the game turned into after DR. Meanwhile, I'm staying out of all queues save for a few (mostly ground stuff). Half the reward for double the effort? No thanks.
If I wanted to spend an hour or more grinding out one measly spec point, I'd be playing a Korean grinder, not STO.
Probably would be better to specialize similar to what they do with the R&D schools if they dont want people to go faster. Why ruin the XP leveling when specialization is obviously the root cause of the problem.
Probably would be better to specialize similar to what they do with the R&D schools if they dont want people to go faster. Why ruin the XP leveling when specialization is obviously the root cause of the problem.
Comments
There are a couple of things here though: first is that not every player wants more levels or more stuff, some want stories/eps, some want more team play, etc. We seem to be getting treated as an undifferentiated blob called "STO players" who want "more levels" and "insane amounts of grind", and this needs to be rethought. Some other player posted a video on this issue: basically, Cryptic needs to develop a better understanding of the various 'STO player archetypes/profiles' they're dealing with, to cater more widely than this.
Level 60 is the start of specialization, so it isn't the end but the beginning of grind. There are a couple of problems with this: firstly the most obvious is that it will take a very long time to max out the Specialization tree which itself isn't an issue if it wasn't for Cryptic having set up expectations in everything else they've done that maxing in a season is the default expectation. However more seriously, purple Intel Officers are Bind On Pickup, and can only be trained in T3 Intel Skills by a player with a maxed out Specialization tree. These two things are contradictory: either we're expected to not max it, or we must max it to take advantage of it. Either which way, this should be addressed (most easily by just letting skill trainers train T3 Intel skills). In other words, one of the most expensive gadgets in STO's arsenal (Intel ships) can't be decked out properly thanks to a grindfest that almost guarantees you'll be bored to death with grind before you manage to complete it.
That's not clever game design at all.
While I think the specializations are a great addition to the game, the rate at which specialization points are gained is horrendously slow. Nerfing TD patrols into the ground while things like Argala seem to be singleplayer missions... I really don't see anything good coming of it.
I can't say whether the powergrind truly was an exploit or not, both views have some merit. I do know it was a fun and even social "event" in STO. Did my fair share of Japori, Beta Thori and so on, though not only those to reach 60 and beyond. Teaming up to melt wave after wave of enemies made progress both fast and pleasant. Point being, I was enjoying the game and so were many others.
Borticus said the devs would be tweaking stuff one thing at a time. It won't be an overnight fix to get everything -just- right, but I do have hope that progress will be made in untangling the mess the game turned into after DR. Meanwhile, I'm staying out of all queues save for a few (mostly ground stuff). Half the reward for double the effort? No thanks.
If I wanted to spend an hour or more grinding out one measly spec point, I'd be playing a Korean grinder, not STO.
the problem is its very hard to make enough stories to keep players busy for very long, take legacy of romulus as a prime example, that had lots more stories and i had completed all of them within the first day of play and by the second day was just playing the basic same story missions that were part of the previous fed/kdf story missions and even all of them didnt take me much more then a couple of days.
so i was basically 0>50 within 3 days and on to just doffing and doing reputation and what not, at least with this leveling it sould last a good while.
having said that its not anything thats in you face, its just sitting there quietly in the background greadually leveling its self up as we do all the stuff we used to do before the expansion.
within a couple of weeks we will all be up to level 60 we will have finished all of the story missions and the rest can slowly tick away in the background as we do all of our normal routine things, and we will be almost oblivious to it until we think every now and then to take a peek and see where we are at, a bit like how you every now and then check to see if there are any doff marks that you can turn in for fleetmarks with Commendation Report missions.
it wont really matter to me if it take a year, two years or even never finished but just keeps growing and growing, i shall be playing all the same things i always play like pve ques, the odd foundery mission and some times aiding the defari and the big dig, or some days if i havent got much time just doing the academy daily mission and setting up doff missions, then one day i will take a peek at go "ooh its finished, wonder when that happened." then carry on regardless.
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.
This is where it comes down to "different types of player" though. I'm happy to hang out on Drozana and chat, or do the dance thing on Risa, or zoom about a patrol, do a foundry mission, maybe help out a new player with a mission they've never done but I'm familiar with. At some point as players, we've got to know that as much as we might like more content, that there are limits to what can really be achieved here. At some point, if we want to be in the game environment, we've got to "come to the party" and make our own fun rather than just demanding more and more from Cryptic.
It takes a long time to write a proper story, and no time at all to make a "Five groups of five" kill-em-all mission, and then add a "reputation" which says "Do that kill-em-all 30 days in a row for a trinket".
I understand they can't simply can't churn out stories at a rate fast enough to satisfy the whole player base... and if you did, then people would complain that they couldn't keep up!
Delta Rising hasn't changed this; indeed, I'd argue that aside from voiceovers, some of the DR missions are decidedly less 'clever' or immersive than some of the earlier missions. Added to this, I'm disappointed that DR has basically resulted in players like myself, who were never DPS-is-king types, from being able to participate in the old-Elite (supposedly New Advanced) queues, we're blocked from DR content until (up to) Level 59 despite it being a totally artificial blockage (there's nothing in those upper levels that are needed), the whole thing is just... cheap tricks to hide the fact that DR is very, very thin.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
agree totally there is not much story content in DR and even some of that is just patrol missions anyway, but what DR lacks in story it makes up in long term objectives, apart from levelling to lv60 and the specializations and of course the obligatory reputation we also have ship mastery and upgrading weapons, all of these things make up the bulk of the expansion.
see if the story missions are the icing on the cake legacy of Romulus was about 50/50 as far as story and extra stuff where as delta rising is more like the story content is 10/90.
so sure with LOR you could blast through story content in no time flat and say hell that was good whens the next season coming out, but with DR you have so much secondary objectives that could well last you right up till the next season comes out.
in my book that's a good thing, I want objectives that are going to keep me busy for a long time to come because when im busy I don't get bored.
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.
As for me i am still taking the xp grind in my stride as I have already finished a few games from my Steam library.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
It's funny as I was imagining this very sort of thing earlier today. Imagine if the levels were e.g. 1-9 Lieutenant, 10-19 Lt Cmdr, 20-39 Commander, and 40 being Captain ("endgame" basically meaning "End of Formal learning curve"). And if you start as a Lieutenant in a shuttle a la Deep Space Nine, doing basic adventure, patrol missions etc... getting your first "command" in an old rustbucket, and only getting your first "real" ship as Commander... with your Captaincy being a big deal.
Oh well, "what could have been".
i dont play it if i know i can avoid it with a legitimate reason. for me i got to stack shelves in about an hour from now on a work trial, so that saves me from one type of grind in exchange for another unfortunately, dont see the difference.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Probably would be better to specialize similar to what they do with the R&D schools if they dont want people to go faster. Why ruin the XP leveling when specialization is obviously the root cause of the problem.
Wonder why Devs did not come up with that one?