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Priority One Episode 196 | Delta Defiance
elijahmre
Member Posts: 195 Arc User
Greetings, Captains! You’re listening to*EPISODE 196 OF PRIORITY ONE PODCAST, the premier Star Trek Online podcast! This episode was recorded on Thursday, October 30th 2014 and made available for download on*Monday, November 3rd 2014*at PriorityOnePodcast.com!
Admirals, this week we have a mini “Trek It Out” segment where we take a short trip to an intriguing vacation spot halfway across our solar system.* In Star Trek Online News, the Mirror Invasion Event is back and we discuss our initial review of Delta Rising. Later, we’ll open hailing frequencies and review your incoming messages!
Topics Discussed
This week’s Community Question:
In case you missed it, we’ve already published several video interviews on our YouTube Channel from Priority One Podcast’s on-site visit to Cryptic Studios in October 2014.*BE SURE TO VISIT OUR CHANNEL AND SUBSCRIBE TO THE PREMIER STAR TREK ONLINE PODCAST!
Captains, if you haven’t already filled out our “Game Ideas” form on our website, check it out at http://priorityonepodcast.com/gameideas and let us know your thoughts!
The Priority One Productions is always looking for new team members that have a passion for Star Trek. *Please know that all of our positions are volunteer, but we do offer a well known outlet for your work.* If you have a skill that you believe could enhance our content, then*send your contact information and experience along with a few writing samples to*incoming@priorityonepodcast.com
Did you miss any of our great Blogs last week? Stop by*this link*and see for yourself! How about our latest Video Release? You can also follow us on the social media sites!*We’re on*Facebook! Head over to*www.facebook.com/PriorityOnePodcast*and say, "Hi!" Or, Check us out on*Twitter*via*@stopriorityone*for show times and other cool stuff.
Liked this episode? Totally hated it? Leave a comment below, Contact Us using our handy web form! Enjoy the show!
STREAM WHILE YOU PLAY & DOWNLOAD FOR LATER (iTUNES AND MP3):
Web: http://priorityonepodcast.com/po196
iTunes: Priority One Podcast
SUBSCRIBE:
OUR RSS FEED
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER:
STOPriorityONE
Admirals, this week we have a mini “Trek It Out” segment where we take a short trip to an intriguing vacation spot halfway across our solar system.* In Star Trek Online News, the Mirror Invasion Event is back and we discuss our initial review of Delta Rising. Later, we’ll open hailing frequencies and review your incoming messages!
Topics Discussed
This week’s Community Question:
Let us know YOUR thoughts by commenting below!What are your thoughts on Delta Rising?
In case you missed it, we’ve already published several video interviews on our YouTube Channel from Priority One Podcast’s on-site visit to Cryptic Studios in October 2014.*BE SURE TO VISIT OUR CHANNEL AND SUBSCRIBE TO THE PREMIER STAR TREK ONLINE PODCAST!
Captains, if you haven’t already filled out our “Game Ideas” form on our website, check it out at http://priorityonepodcast.com/gameideas and let us know your thoughts!
The Priority One Productions is always looking for new team members that have a passion for Star Trek. *Please know that all of our positions are volunteer, but we do offer a well known outlet for your work.* If you have a skill that you believe could enhance our content, then*send your contact information and experience along with a few writing samples to*incoming@priorityonepodcast.com
Did you miss any of our great Blogs last week? Stop by*this link*and see for yourself! How about our latest Video Release? You can also follow us on the social media sites!*We’re on*Facebook! Head over to*www.facebook.com/PriorityOnePodcast*and say, "Hi!" Or, Check us out on*Twitter*via*@stopriorityone*for show times and other cool stuff.
Liked this episode? Totally hated it? Leave a comment below, Contact Us using our handy web form! Enjoy the show!
STREAM WHILE YOU PLAY & DOWNLOAD FOR LATER (iTUNES AND MP3):
Web: http://priorityonepodcast.com/po196
iTunes: Priority One Podcast
SUBSCRIBE:
OUR RSS FEED
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER:
STOPriorityONE
There are no plans to transcribe this episode at this time.
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Comments
If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord
I think it's extreme monetization of all facets of the game, disguised as a "Free Expansion." Some content, more "changes." Most of the changes are universally despised, ignored, or misunderstood.
It's fairly obvious to pretty much everyone, even those whom are trying to pretend they don't notice. Whether it's good or bad is opinion, at this point (mine is that they laid an egg, and may never recover from it).
1. Addressing disparity between Fed/KDF/Rom? Fail.
This would have been so easy. Make cross-faction Delta ships for everyone. Who wins? Everyone. Who buys the Delta pack if they don't want a bunch of ships they will never use? Who buys it if they can use half(?) of those ships with any character? Cross faction fleets! Ability to team cross faction is new zones or the Delta Quadrant! At this point, it's obvious they don't care to fix this, and never will.
2. Challenging the ridiculously high DPS crowd, while not punishing the norm? Fail.
They made Elite no big deal for the high DPS people, and got rid of Elite entirely (what happened to old Elite and new Advanced being similar? 5x harder isn't similar), slashed rewards, and watched people (duh) rage about it. Way to lock 90% of the players out of content to try and "Challenge" the other 10%. Even with the power creep that comes with specializations and all, a lot of people just won't get to the level you think, devs.
3. Creating content most people want to repeat? Fail.
The episodes are laggy (for me), buggy, not very interesting, long, and the rewards are garbage. Yeah, and the patrols are worse. Why on Earth would I repeat them? And I hate the Kobali, btw. Awful story. I felt like I was fighting for the wrong side.
Monetization isn't a bad thing, but flagrant cash grabbing turns a lot of people off. And people aren't as dumb as is seemingly assumed.
If I were to grade the expansion (and its aftermath), I'd give it a D. At best.
I fly a T5-U Science Odyssey. All my engineering, science, and tactical consoles are Mk XIV Gold (yes gold), all my other gear; weapons, deflector, shields, etc. is Mk XIV Ultra Rare (nothing less). I have all the T6 Ship Traits unlocked and a lot of the Captain Specializations (above 60).
My Odyssey can put out a respectable 9,000-10,000 DPS with an Engineer captain specializing nearly all on tanking and healing. I've always played the game on Elite, but ever since Delta Rising I've had to bring it down, not because I couldn't complete the episodes on elite, because I can; in fact the NPC ships don't even break my shields. The problem I found was that ONE Vadwaar ship had about 1.2-1.9 million hull points (sorry increasing hull points isn't really increasing difficulty...it's just increasing annoyance more). It was just taking me waaaaay too long to complete the missions.
It was just too time consuming with minimal increased rewards. The elite queues are now the same thing. Tactical DPS captains are now king, everything else is nearly useless. They've made it so that Science ships and Cruisers are nearly useless, all that matters now is how much damage you can put out in the given time in order to finish the elite queue. Because there is no real penalty on dying why would anyone want to play anything other than a DPS tactical captain?
You blow up? SO WHAT...in 10 seconds you'll be back and causing massive DPS! The casual gamer is going to suffer because they won't be able to complete these harder queues nerfing their rewards, dilithium, R&D progression, etc. and instead of opening their wallets they're just going to walk away from the game.
Fleet Leader of:
Liberty Task Force/Liberty Honor Guard
Pride of the Federation/Pride of the Empire
Liberty Guardians
U.S.S. Liberty, NX-42813-L, T-6 Legendary Odyssey Class
Game Handle: Grayfox@GrayfoxJames
Website: https://www.libertytaskforce.com
Armada (STOFA Member Fleet): https://www.libertytaskforce.com/stofa
Discord: https://discord.gg/bGp9N7z
Twitter: STOFA@LTFGrayfox
Email: CSDynamix@Hotmail.com
Pretty much answers the question.
I'll bullet point the issues with DR:
Now looks at this chart, http://steamcharts.com/app/9900#All
There is no way that DR was 'their most successful expansion ever' because the evidence is right there to say it wasn't. Notice how LoR had a much higher peak and goes down slowly over time. That's a healthy expansion.
Now look at DR, otherwise known as that small point at the end of the graph. Not only does it not go up very high in comparison to LoR but it plummets downwards immediately. Not taking some subjective evidence with the objective that I just gave, I'm seen more people leave the game in one go than I have before now (I've been around along time), the queues are basically empty and the only reviews I've seen for DR are pretty negative.
Next, the publicly available financial report on the last quarter: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2434355-perfect-worlds-pwrd-ceo-robert-xiao-on-q2-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=1
At no point does it mention STO as being part of the good profits for that quarter. Now the bit you'll have to take my word for is that the password locked version of this document tells how after DR was announced, zen sales fell 25%. That says a lot by itself.
Now unfortunately we'll have to wait until the next financial report in the next quarter to know the exact numbers of what this expansion has done for the game, but I can't imagine it's good if the steam graph is representative of the trend of the whole player base, of which I have no reason to doubt it.
So now I have my question to you guys at Priority 1: Are you guys going to take these matters to the devs or are you not up to the task of representing the player base properly?
I appreciate that you took the time to share all your points on this thread. Thank you for that. However, before you present us with a call to action, please visit our website and consume our content.
I think episode 196 did a good job hitting some key features of DR. I understand that not all the features were reviewed; but, that just gives you incentive to tune in to the show weekly! There's a lot to cover and there's no reason we need to push it out in one episode.
Pros:
It was great to have so many voice actors reprise their roles and the story is really good. I liked that there were a few plot twists they held back from us on tribble so no one got fully spoilered. The new mechanics, like the grapple, are great and I really am looking forward to the missions that haven't been released yet. Speaking of, I think staggering the content is good, in general, but see the exp issues raised by others in this thread and around the forums.
Where the NPCs have new powers and tactics, they are good and fun. Fighting the heirarchy is very different from the undine or the borg. And the vaadwaar really have unique abilities, which is cool.
The art is phenomenal, absolutely the best work since the ESD revamp. Several forumites have been so vocal in praise of the art, I think it is a good thing we're not in a DND game or tacofangs might have ascended to godhood by now. ^.^
The new perks for lifetime subscriptions were a welcome surprise. I've been enjoying my upgraded ships and have started a talaxian, so big thanks for that.
Con's:
Really wish the devs had listened to any of the suggestions on tribble about better ways to increase difficulty. Our primary thread about it had a surprising majority agreement that more HP is not fun. Not surprising because of the opinion itself, rather it is rare for there to be a consensus on anything in this forum, heck even free give always start arguments. The level of agreement that more HP is not harder just longer should really have been met with more acknowledgement from the Dev staff.
The level of support for casual players seems to really wobble back and forth. In the past year cryptic added the 40-token event ships for second characters, reputation sponsorships for alts, made lobi account bound etc. With delta rising they gave casuals account-wide ship upgrades, but added many new time sinks (ship mastery, captain specialization, gear upgrades, the slower exp gains, and even crafting though it came out early) without any way to reduce the burden on secondary characters. This really hit casuals hard and feels like a major step back from the direction they had been going all year to this point.
The actual coders (borticus, frost, cold snap, joejink) were (and continue to be) wonderful about communication and participating in threads on trible and from their level it felt like our voices were often heard. The leadership (gecko, Gorgonzola, etc, the decision and strategy guys) were and have been very quiet and the blogs really left more questions than they answered. That it took a day of silence and hauling Stephen out to the forums for his second post in two years speaks volumes about how far the divide between the players and cryptic has gotten. Splitting communicationonto so many different platforms (twitter, Facebook, forum, blog, etc) without having a single reliable place to go to get everything is a major failing. Adding a Facebook and twitter blogroll to the website is easy and would help so much. But more importantly, listen to player feedback and be willing to push back a deadline to ensure quality. There are a lot of people expressing hard feelings toward cryptic and a lot of that feels like it is being met with hard feelings toward the players. As one who enjoys the expansion, I feel like positivity is missing on both sides, and I feel like the gap is getting bigger over time, not smaller.
Speaking of gaps, the divide between the highest damage and the average damage ships/players has gotten ludicrous. Adding new NPCs and new ships and new gear was a chance for cryptic to narrow the gap. Instead it is wider than ever and the low damage people (both new players and people who prefer to support teammates rather than go all out on damage) are severely "punished" (reduced rewards, exp, ability to complete missions, participate in queued events and win, etc) for their decision.
In summary:
Some good, some bad, I'm having fun but I see many decisions having long term negatives that concern me. Thank you guys for your show, and supporting the game!
Edit: still listening to the show, I'll post again in a couple hours when I finish with my thoughts on your coverage.
I'll summarize;
1.) Casual gamers are leaving. They game isn't worthwhile for them. Too hard/boring/expensive.
2.) The aggregate effect of all the changes is to penalize those who don't pay.
3.) I paid, yet I can't use what I've paid for. Things are broken 2 weeks after launch.
4.) Cryptic doesn't tell the truth. Yes you'll get Delta Marks and more xp. Where are they?
5.) The support system is BROKEN. The forums are our only place to vent.
6.) I don't mind the grind. If only my loadout issues would allow to play without impacting others.
That was more aimed at how soft you guys can be on the devs even when they're really messing up. I do listen to the episodes when I have the time, this is one of those I've heard. I just wish you pushed them harder for proper answers because from where I am it's like you give up too easily.
So that's just feedback, maybe not worded the best but it is feedback. Would also be nice of more of the devs to show some backbone and face the music a bit more than they do, they want our feedback they can answer it as part of that as far as I see it.
Edit: What I mean is get them on and make them answer properly.
over all though liked the story story was good. HATE the leveling and gating a way mission behind level grind and the new difficulty and PvE ques BS
^^ Great post! Sums it up pretty well for me!
This expansion had so much potential... voice acting, revisiting old characters, new areas to explorer, the potential at new abilities and uses for them... I could keep going...
But somehow all of that got perverted into a giant money grab/grindfest and more broken code added to the game... and then somehow... they came up with the brilliant plan... "Let's blame the players!"
3 Things
1. Fix what's broke before moving on to anything else...
2. Stop trying to insert "Grind Mechanics" .... Grind does not = Content!
3. Deliver on the tons of things that have been promised over time... PvP, Ships, Content, Bug Fixes, Player Factions/Upgrades etc...
I'm not even gonna start on my feelings about some of Cryptics management...
My new sig till Cryptic fixes it....
Because if they're to hard they won't get interviews anymore
Lion Heart of Hammer Squadron
That's lame, I'm sorry but it is.
The job of ANY podcast covering a game is to let the playerbase know whats going on while its happening. STO is bleeding off casual players left and right...but you are fine with that just as long as people tune in every week to hear more snippets as to how bad DR actually is?
Good grief.
I used to run a podcast called the Argus Array with Mindwipe and Chris Jones, we had Taldren (makers of Star Trek: Starfleet Command), Derek Chester (writer for Legacy) and a whole host of others on the show. If a publisher or developer got it wrong, we told them straight out. We didn't hold back more news for better listening figures "next week", and we still managed about 100,000 downloads of each episode on release.
This is why i don't bother listening to the current crop of star trek gaming podcasts, I get the feeling they sold out to the game dev. Was a TOTALLY different story back more than 10 years ago when Argus Array and the original Hailing Frequencies was running.
http://www.startrek-gamers.com/argusepisodes.htm
You work on the premise that you will play this no matter what, I don't.
The ships are now un-official star trek
They said crafting and upgrading were left unfinished - not least the modifiers
They openly called DR "content light" especially compared to LoR "8 free ships, animations, free ship abilities, playable species etc etc
200% reduction in dil rewards for queues
16,000% reduction in exp to level
What is there to say, good work on the voice acting but take out any one of those out and they all reason enough to stop playing - I don't HAVE to play but they HAVE to give me a reason.
They added 8-20 reasons on top of reason on top of reason to NOT play.
I don't want to replay 400 story missions - per character - for permission to re-buy gear I already bought JUST to play the same maps with a 200% dil reduction
So you can give the exp back for example but the enemies health is still terrible.
You can remove the enemy health but then the leveling is still terrible, the upgrading cost is still terrible the 3 months time gates on crafting is still terrible etc etc etc
It's just layer on top of layer on top of layer
Weak, copy-paste and drawn out to stall the player for no reason with a drain-your-dil button is how I'd characterize DR.
But yeah okay the voice acting sure
/edit
ps. the specialization passives are more or less pointless or symbolic so there is no incentive to play through the 60 levels - it's not 10 it's 60.
And that would require "400 story missions per character" and so like with 200% dil the incentive to do it is gone.
I stopped playing before the japori nerf and additional second nerf to exp because even with regular, normal exp we had for the last 4 years there was still no incentive to do it because the passives are pointless..
Problem on top of problem on top of problem
They should just let each ant give out ½ exp so the leveling will take 12 years and they can go on a nice long vacation
Smart move keeping the flamebait on a separate blog post. Very smart.
The shotgun commercial was awesome.
The mirror event claims that it will give delta marks in the blog:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9002213-mirror-invasion-event
So, betting that's an oversight, not intended.
On the amount of content, they did say they are releasing more story missions later. So it seems they are trying to do/both, time gate via leveling and trickle out the missions.
Thanks for mentioning the side plots in patrols, so many People have missed those, hope you get a few to pay attention a bit more, and I hope at least a few enjoy it.
On the dialog change in the new missions, I agree on all salient points. I too like the more forceful dialog, and I think the player feels less like a sponge and more like an actor.
As far as pugging, let me just say, f*** team speak straight to grethor. If any content can't be coordinated via chat, then it doesn't belong in sto. Save it for a console game. No one should need a third party tool to play.
A couple of you commented on not being able to get crafting mats and special rep items without advanced queues, but that's not true advanced is just one way. Bnps, voth implants, etc are a rare drop from the daily/hourly boxes you get for ranking up reputation (and you can still run hourly post tier 5). The drop rate sucks, but they are in the boxes. For purple mats, auction house to the rescue. Most of them can be bought for the price of 3-8 blues. And rubidium (a blue mat) is more expensive than half the purple mats. Also, you can get up to 5 purples in the academy rnd doff mission, remember romulans can run it twice (command center and allied academy). So there are non-advanced options for both. Hope that helps at least one of you.
Again, thanks for doing your show and supporting the game!
I think it's unfair for you to judge our content when you just openly admitted to not having taken the time to listen.
Congratulations on the successes of your previous productions. But, as a fellow hobbyist podcaster, I would give you the courtesy and benefit of the doubt before trying to flash numbers and accusations.
We had some great discussion and reviews of the Delta Rising release. As a matter of fact, we had over an hour's worth of discussions. Why do we need to cram the review of an entire expansion into one single episode? You see, it is my opinion, cramming that would be a terrible disservice to the community.
Thanks for breaking down your review of the episode and the points we covered! And thanks for bringing the other method of earning Crafting Mats!! We'll be sure to include that in our next episode!
This is also the reason why nobody reads local newspapers. Why bother, if it's just a bunch of advertisements interspersed with infomercials and topped off with fluffy advertorials?
Also I dont use steam I downloaded the arc client instead. I am sure I am not alone in that one
(making sure those who had paid for the first DR expansion didn't have to pay anything extra and got anything new that would be included with the re-release) and no I didn't buy the expansion just think it would be fair for those who had
And I'm ok with that.
It's not like their are all that many podcasts that focus on STO out there. And honestly I'd rather get no interviews than have something that feels much more like a native advertising arm of Cryptic if that is the price.
But Priority one is a fan podcast. If you don't want to listen to fanboys gush over a subject it's best to avoid such things. They have their audience and do what they feel best to cater to it.
Before any other thoughts the first that comes to mind is as usual it was released to early. An extra 5% polish could have made the experience significantly better.
The XP grind is silly. Consider the primary method used to advance your character is directly related to how many enemy ships you destroy. Does that feel like 'Trek?' Even a Klingon would have difficulty justifying their advancement by slaughtering countless inferior Kazon ships.
The lack of consistency in the queue difficulties is a major problem. Why are some elite missions significantly easier than advanced ones?
Are we not reaching the tipping point yet in 'too many' queues? Especially when no mechanism exists to push players toward specific ones at specific times? The best thing about the mirror event is you don't have to wait five minutes to play it IMHO.
Making our characters weaker, defined in MMOs by me in this case as the ability to overcome a challenge for a reward, was a major blunder. Inflation would have been a better solution. By that I mean allow the new normal queues to reward what the old elite queues did and scale advanced/new elite up from their and increase the daily refine cap from 8k to 10k. Considering the road to the end has become longer this would have had the effect of making the 'time' resource required to get end game equipped (Mk 14) the same as the old end game equipped (Mk 12) without making our characters any weaker than they were before DR (using my above defenition) and still given current players a new path to advance down.
Then again I wouldn't have bothered with levels 51-60 considering the specializations are the real 'meat' of the new progression. Nor would I have bothered with tier 6 ships or the entire ship leveling and merely released intel ships similar to how warbirds had been designed in the past.
Instead they made everyone weaker relative to their ability to earn rewards in the game and asked for money if you wanted to again become as strong as you used to be. Atleast that's how I see it.
On one hand , the story content was enjoyable .
I didn't even have problem with the Patrol missions that were included in it, because I leveled Klingons & Feds back in the old days when Patrols were the norm .
As to everything else ... , I honestly think that DR is the NGE of STO .
NOT the EXACT meaning of SWG's NGE , but the spirit of it .
In fact , in some aspects , it's worse then SWG's NGE , as while that took away a lot of stuff , it did not make endgame (and by extension crafting and the Reputations) unplayable for many players with the introduction of this formula :
" You can't play Advanced / Elite queues without Elite Gear , and you can't get Elite Gear without playing the Advanced / Elite queues . "
Borg gear needs BNP's , just like the other Elite Gear needs other things that can ONLY be found in the Advanced / Elite queues .
Add to that the brutal monetization , the XP nerf that kicks in while you're at Level 52-53 in DR where you are STOPPED from playing by design , the 180 degree turn away from an Alt-friendly game , the overly complicated gear leveling system into which you are practically shoehorned into (gone are the days where you could get some weapons for Dil , or for EC from a vendor , and just have fun) , the NPC HP that wen't from ok to absurdly mind numbing ... , and the list goes on .
All of which , when combined left a great many players either scratching their heads wondering what Cryptic was thinking .
... and that's not counting the players who are not able to log in , nor the players who have their Boffs / Doffs or skill trays emptied every time they move from a map ...
And how are those methods different then the RNG award table that was so hated in the original STF's award table ?
As in "random item that you may possibly get" ?
Talk about going "old school" ... .
It's like being given the keys to a sports car that has a speed limiter set to 30 mph.
This... so much this! I think some people are expecting Bale's Batman.
Because when they accept the non-responsive, non-responsible reaction from developers they are supporting said behaviour, in fact they encourage it and cultivate it
People in a position of "journalism", and I use that term loosely, have a responsibility
But yeah you wouldn't be talking to them for long if you were being honest so I guess it's down to the choice between being a phony or not having a podcast
I dont consider a "fan" broadcast to be journalism it is what it is a bunch of people talking about something they enjoy. They might deliver information but if you want someone who is unbiased then it would need to be someone who does not do "fan" broadcast who are outwardly biased towards a single product.
Agreed. Seems there's a lack of principle here.