Are ships our only incentive?

daqhegh

I've just noticed something. The powercreep is obviously a multi-faceted issue. New ships, new weapons, new BOffs, etc., always have to be better than the old ones to be worthwhile. But what I'm noticing is more specific than that: EVERYTHING WE DO IS PUNCTUATED BY NEW SHIPS (and corresponding new weapons, DOffs, BOffs, procs, and whatnot).

Seriously. Just humor me for a second.

The summer event is so entrenched in ships that getting one gives an account-wide discount on the other. Nifty, yes. But it's also a crafty-as-hell way to get us to keep grinding endlessly.

The first winter event ever introduced the Jem'Hadar Attack Ship, and we all know how that went. The red prize boxes were so lucrative that lottery boxes became the norm from then on.

Speaking of lottery boxes, EVERY one of them has a ship listed as a prize. Even the Doff packages had them (namely the bug ship and cell ship).

Seems like the last few seasons (or half seasons) have had ships added, giveaway and/or purchase alike.

There was a Q event that gave us a ship -- I think it was called "shakedown" - something or other? But yeah. Probably was the Obelisk Carrier.

And the Sela mission -- it's a short, fun, but could-have-been-done-better mission. What incentive could we possibly have to play it? Not Sela, not story development, not even Tuvok. It was the damned SHIP!

Really now...now we have T6s and T5-Us and whatnot. Is it really necessary? Can't we have immersive content that doesn't require constant ship upgrades? I mean, damn. It can't be that hard to come up with content that uses canon ships (like the ones we get free for leveling). It's like the only goal here is bigger, better, more power. The City on the Edge of Never mission is GREAT for a Connie. But I can't make good use of CPT Kirk's legendary cruiser after T1 gets upgraded to T2. Same for my NX. It's amazing at T1, but there's nothing in between to make it remain playable (yeah yeah, specing and skill blah blah blah elitism arguments here). In fact, the closest I can get to an NX is my Fleet Akira, and it ISN'T an NX.

The point I'm making here is that canon ships are in game as courtesy only. We can't have our RP moments in Brunt's Shuttle or the Delta Flyer (or the old Galaxy) and expect not to be obliterated. The new Dyson, Delta, whatever not-canon ships have left the real ones in the dust. Our only incentive to play is to collect these "superior" craft (preferably with money) and forget that canon ships are what make Star Trek STAR TREK. It's saddening to me that power is more important, and the invented ships are almost exclusively better than the ones I grew up admiring.

The abilities are at odds here, too. Like when the **** did CPT Archer's grappler expose a cloaked ship within however many kilometers? Last I heard the grappler was the predecessor to the tractor beam. It had NOTHING to do with cloaking technology. And what of Phased weapons? I get that Cardassians had Phase Disruptors, presumably a combination of phaser and disruptor energies or some similar thing. But PHASED technology was always a grey area. People got phased and almost died. The Enterprise D got phased AND cloaked and nearly destroyed a treaty. Phased weapons? Come on. It's a stretch even for the Dividian episode. But never mind loyalty. If it's part of a new ship it MUST be acceptable.

There was a time when the only man capable of destroying the NCC-1701 was CPT Kirk himself. It would seem that time is lost forever. The lack of meaningful story content is highlighted by the sheer number of ships we have running. More repeatable content means more DPS monsters are needed. The Trek universe itself is lost in this game.

I guess my question is, if there isn't a ship (or console, or new epic weapon or the like) will you be interested in playing new content? I'm guessing the vast majority will say no.

noroblad

there was no ship reward for doing the DR content, but I did that. There is no ship in the mirror event, and I am play that.

I could say I would not open boxes if there were no ship, but it just depends on what the grand prize would be in place of it. Last set of boxes I opened I did for lobi... to buy a ship ... so even though I got no grand prizes I opened them and eventually got what I wanted.

To really answer the question though we need to know what the substitute prize would be. I would gladly grind for the right space trait bridge officer. I would grind for the right crafting DOFF. I would grind for dil. I would grind for the right console or weapon or engine etc too. When I say grind I mean I would open a box to win it OR play a daily mission for 2 weeks to get it or whatever. I am not alone --- loads of ppl did the dyson mission to get the 3 piece set. Loads of ppl did the JH series to get the space set there. Loads of ppl did the breen grind. People will do things for useful rewards that are not ships.

So I think you are wrong. Many 2 week events have had ships, yes, but I think players would do them if the reward were worth having.

And on top of that, not to put too harsh a tone on it, but the free grind ships mostly stink (the ones that are rewards for 2 weeks of daily grind or a special event mission). How often do you really see a free ob carrier these days? Or a free dyson that is not romulan?

jam3s1701

I would yes tbh it's nice having a free ship of sorts to get but the grind is getting a tad tedious tbh.

I would love more story content and less grind but Tbh it won't happen so ill keep playin and grind what i need when I want to. .

hausofmartok

I made a comment about this before DR came out. Which was "Ships are not a game". Geko told us we'd be getting the same amount of content as LoR, but this has turned out to be untrue. Half of DR is tedious Patrol missions. What we did get though was a ton of new ships to buy and enemies with more HP and DMG to make you buy those new ships to play "comfortably".
Can you play the new content at the new difficulty without upgrading to T5U or T6? Yes, but not comfortably (read: very easily). The average MMO player will want to be able to steam roll content and will need to shell out a grip of cash for Dil or grind a ton to do all the upgrades he needs along with his new T6 ship or fleet T5U ship.
I think DR has turned off a lot of players from the game and did little to attract a new crowd compared to LoR. I was here for LoR and the queues were humming in PvE and PvP after release and for quite a while longer after that. What I have seen after DR was a small bump in players and now dead queues all around.

rekurzion

I'm not against the grind but I agree mostly. Isn't there a way to have us grind for new gear while keeping the canon ships relevant throughout all of the content and still make an equal profit?

I mean, instead of so many new ships (which I do understand need to be provided "once in a while") how about allowing us to modify our existing favorite ships at a similar cost? That would be more canon anyway as most of the upgrades in the shows are done to the existing ships rather than cranking new ship after new ship. Old ships are modified for added longevity.

i would like to see a more extensive upgrade feature where you can really customize with limitation the design of a ships boff seating, weapon slots and console slots. Also HP amount. Put it behind a heavy grind, I don't really care or even sell it for a comparable price to the cost of some of your new ships.

But I don't think you would lose any money if you could for example give players the ability to take a Connie and trick it out with 4 fore and 4 aft with more advanced boff seating and higher console ability compared to forcing us to grind/buy (some really pretty and some ugly) higher tier ships.

theanothername

I'm usually a one mainship per character & all but one currently have theirs (not all T5U yet but that will come too eventually). While I do try to get at least one free to grind event ship on either my main or the next best suitet I usually end up to have it still boxed in the bank. I'm not really interested in having new ships for my chars. I'd say I'm curious if new ones are announced. Love to read the stats & watch the sceens and in some cases might consider it as a possible secondary ship; but thats it. Getting more ships? Even if at some point away team in space gets released (hopefully completly optional, non-mandatory playstyle) I doub't I would.

My "fun" in a space mmo is very far from the accumulation of spaceships. I see them as extension of my characters; part of the playstyle & story. Not a gun to switch.

I want to take them "out there". To the final frontier. See new strange places & fly to places no other player has flown before. Hitting "replay" doesent really do it & the foundry while some nice occasional diversion did not either.

I want to walk the hallways of the ships & get to know the crew better. Maybe even have some random events happening inside. Or even redecorate my captains quaters (in case of my bulwark a captains quarter at all would be a nice start).

You know... stuff that anybody who knows Star Trek but never have heard about STO would expect it to be constantly improved upon cornerstones of a Star Trek MMO.

rickeyredshirt

The answer is no. For almost 5 years Cryptic has failed to make engaging content. Now that they have formally stated that they won't be releasing any more canon ships, my interest has sunk to nil.

theanothername

rickeyredshirt wrote: »

The answer is no. For almost 5 years Cryptic has failed to make engaging content. Now that they have formally stated that they won't be releasing any more canon ships, my interest has sunk to nil.

I don't think there are that many canon designs left to use. Ent J AFAIK would be bigger than ESD; Millenium Falcon was a easter egg/gag of which I don't think is enough to canonize without getting the wrong attention of mickey lawyers (besides being the wrong type of canon ST fans want) and then there was this kitbash thing with the intrepid saucer & I think peregrine wings of which I saw a picture once but I'm not even sure that it was seen on screen.

kayajay

You know, even a basic Tier 6 ship for reaching Level 60 would have been nice. With the Dyson, you had the option of the Z-Store versions, but just a little taste of 6 would have been nice. I was also disappointed the Kazon Raider wasn't a 6. A ship at 50 would have been nice, but for the agonizing grind to 60...I think we deserved it.

hemihead

There are too many ships in this game. I would pay, grind, or craft to get to fly the ship I like to play in the endgame.

vestereng

I don't see it being that simple.

You have a category who buy star trek ships, picard338 flying the "enterprize", who'd never buy a fake star trek ship.

Then you got people who don't care what it looks like but just want the empty stats.

Somewhere in there you also got whales who buy everything.


Overall though "ships as content" I am going to have to say yes if we don't include power creep and the different reasons for buying them.


And what has happened very recently definitely high lights part of this discussion since real star trek ships are more or less done for.

I believe the developers fully recognize just how many people buy ships because they are star trek, not because of their stats - that was the whole reason behind the expansion and the decision to do a level cap.

Knowing that fake star trek ships on their own, without better additional incentive - not just regular power creep but a whole new tier, will not sell.


If you think about it, it's isn't until now cryptic has to stand on their own feet - in where they can't live off other people's ship designs.

They had the last 4 years to come up with meaningful content while they were "safe" behind canon ships.

The impression I get is they are always so far behind deadlines there isn't time for reflection and mostly everything is rushed out cutting corners and working on a minimal effort.

Mods missing from crafting for example...

Then at other times they seem to have time to waste and not doing anything, bugs left untouched for years while they go delete crafting or change the doff UI for no reason, as if they seemingly have absolutely have nothing to do just trying to justify the paycheck for that month.

All that being said, the current state and current direction - not least the expansion, is by far the worst so far.
LoR for example I thought was a great release so it IS possible for them or maybe the people working there at the time to release something good.

All the while the last 2½ years they have also spent seemingly most of their time deleting and nerfing everything they thought they could milk some more of the players over.

And I mean sure by all means fix leaks or exploits but stuff like nerfing vendor trash or deleting exploration there is just no defense for that.

Doubly sad because it's knowing the time they took away deleting that could have been spent doing something constructive.

So yeah, there really isn't enough negative things that can be said about it

crusader2007

I'd like to see more ground weapons or even some pets like the ones from the winter event. Would be nice to have a beagle rather than cats running around ESD

jodarkrider

As someone who prefers ground STF's... new ships are like.. mehhhhh for me... But, since majority of the playerbase prefers space, it's why we see new ships as an incentive. C-store, Lobi, you name it. As it's what gives them the revenue... ><

daqhegh

rickeyredshirt wrote: »

The answer is no. For almost 5 years Cryptic has failed to make engaging content. Now that they have formally stated that they won't be releasing any more canon ships, my interest has sunk to nil.

My issue isn't that they've run out of canon ships. It's that they've made them obsolete without hope of regaining relevance. That just isn't right for a Star Trek game. When was the Defiant truly useless? Hell, the Sao Paulo was the replacement Defiant (more likely for lack of wanting to build new ship sets, but still). And Voyager was practically invincible with an infinite number of shuttles. The Enterprise-D didn't blow up until Riker crashed it in the movie (same with the Connie and CPT Kirk). This game somehow succeeded it making canon video game friendly ships utterly useless. Never mind that we didn't get a Warship Voyager for the Delta Expansion (Which, by the way, I'd be willing to pay real life money for, even at T-5). It makes me sad.

talonxv

Problem is, look at it from continuity of the timeline. Would you really keep building ship designs that are almost 30-40 years out of date? I mean no navy in it's right mind would keep building ships that far out of date. And yes Starfleet whether you want to admit it or not is a navy.

New stuff comes down the pike. I mean if I was seriously in charge of star fleet, Excelsiors would of LONG been replaced by Excaliburs, constitutions and constellations would of been retired and not allowed to be built, even with modular building the game so claims.

Defiants would of been retired, hell even Akiras would be on the way out along with Soverigns. Hell the Ent E would be 30 years old. They'd still be in use but they would no longer be front line ships.

I'd be building Odysseys, Vestas, Stargazers, Excaliburs, Avengers, ya know new build ships. Older ships, would be retired for damn sure.

And IMHO the starter ship would NOT be a reliant. More than likely it would be a Nova since it's about the size of a Frigate and they'd also slowly be retired for newer ships.

daqhegh

talonxv wrote: »

Problem is, look at it from continuity of the timeline. Would you really keep building ship designs that are almost 30-40 years out of date? I mean no navy in it's right mind would keep building ships that far out of date.

Okay, if you want to go chronologically, I agree. Thing is, part of this game is actually being in the Star Trek universe. That means flying the ships we know and love. Sure, the NX isn't half as powerful as the Sovereign. That's how it should be, you know, since the NX is WAAYY friggin' old. But the relevance factor is missing. Really--why is it the PVE content is so ship level specific? I get that NPCs level with the character and that's fine. But why can't we keep a Connie all the way through without serious issues? It doesn't need to be a T-5 so much as we need to be able to tweak it (and others) to make it more flexible. The new upgrades shouldn't render the old ships completely useless.

futurepastnow

valoreah wrote: »

Wait, what? Is there a link to this anywhere?

They didn't so much say they wouldn't make any more canon ships, as there aren't any more canon ships worth making. The only ones left are horrific kitbashes like the Yeager class, which is so ugly it would honestly drag down the quality of their ship design.

So yeah, complaining that they won't add more canon ships when the only remaining canon ships are terrible.

That said, I do hope we get T6 ships that are variants of the existing Assault Cruiser, Tactical Escort, etc. types and can use the canon ship parts in customization.
____________________

And as for incentives, as an avid player of the Space Barbie endgame, I find nice new costumes to be a pretty good incentive. I've pretty much only completed the last several rep systems to get the ground sets and unlock their costumes. I was severely disappointed in last year's winter jackets, just bright green and red. I hope for something more, but I expect just a few new colors.

talonxv

daqhegh wrote: »

Okay, if you want to go chronologically, I agree. Thing is, part of this game is actually being in the Star Trek universe. That means flying the ships we know and love. Sure, the NX isn't half as powerful as the Sovereign. That's how it should be, you know, since the NX is WAAYY friggin' old. But the relevance factor is missing. Really--why is it the PVE content is so ship level specific? I get that NPCs level with the character and that's fine. But why can't we keep a Connie all the way through without serious issues? It doesn't need to be a T-5 so much as we need to be able to tweak it (and others) to make it more flexible. The new upgrades shouldn't render the old ships completely useless.

Well much as it may gall me to the core of my being, that is one thing that BSGO got right. You could take one ship, kit the HELL out of it and fly it and nothing else for the rest of your time if you so chose.

Granted i'd love to have a 4/4 NX for craps and grins as you are saying, but really, not building any more canon ships, well like it's been said, what ships are left?

At some point in a game like this, you gotta start putting out new ships. However robbing Tron IMHO was a BAD IDEA.

gavinruneblade

daqhegh wrote: »

Okay, if you want to go chronologically, I agree. Thing is, part of this game is actually being in the Star Trek universe. That means flying the ships we know and love. Sure, the NX isn't half as powerful as the Sovereign. That's how it should be, you know, since the NX is WAAYY friggin' old. But the relevance factor is missing. Really--why is it the PVE content is so ship level specific? I get that NPCs level with the character and that's fine. But why can't we keep a Connie all the way through without serious issues? It doesn't need to be a T-5 so much as we need to be able to tweak it (and others) to make it more flexible. The new upgrades shouldn't render the old ships completely useless.

Very true.

And let's not forget the roleplaying/head canon side of things. I know some fleets rp they are still in the TOS era and others TNG, that's part of why we have those uniforms.

This game has fans and players from all over. It doesn't need to exclude them from the fun in order to remain true to its own canon.

talonxv

gavinruneblade wrote: »

Very true.

And let's not forget the roleplaying/head canon side of things. I know some fleets rp they are still in the TOS era and others TNG, that's part of why we have those uniforms.

This game has fans and players from all over. It doesn't need to exclude them from the fun in order to remain true to its own canon.

While true, however, time has to march on. And it's not like STB channel hasn't proven we can take on normal difficulty with tier 1 and 2 ships and still win and do it without dying too often.

So having your favorite ships and uniforms to reflect an era, that onus is on the players to keep that alive.

Sorry PWE has a responsibility to keep the game moving along.

gavinruneblade

talonxv wrote: »

While true, however, time has to march on. And it's not like STB channel hasn't proven we can take on normal difficulty with tier 1 and 2 ships and still win and do it without dying too often.

So having your favorite ships and uniforms to reflect an era, that onus is on the players to keep that alive.

Sorry PWE has a responsibility to keep the game moving along.

You missed entirely, or chose to ignore, the point I made. Nothing needs to be exclusionary. The game and timeline can move forward, while giving people an option to use other ships and ship skins.

More options are virtually always better than fewer options.

leviathan99

My ship demand is pretty much saturated.

I'd like it if the Winter promo was, say, Q's Vicious Animal Things offered in a BOff 3-pack, all Intel officers, sci/eng/tac.

dpsloss88

Most people play this game for the ships...

leviathan99

dpsloss88 wrote: »

Most people play this game for the ships...

And what happens when their desire is satisfied?

daqhegh

dpsloss88 wrote: »

Most people play this game for the ships...

Ships exclusively? Wow. There's a lot of this game that doesn't involve ships.

starkaos

Cryptic could do a lot with those Holographic ship disguises that are available through the GPL store especially if they make permanent versions available. However, there are very few canon ships that aren't available as Fleet T5-U versions. The only Canon Starfleet ships that aren't available as Fleet T5-U versions are the Tier 1 ships and Tier 2 Cruiser.

bobbydazlers

my only incentive is having fun, whether that be in a space mission like CE or mirror or even starbase defence or in a ground mission like colony invation or dyson ground or even nimbus3.

of course its always fun to get a new ship but i enjoy other stuff also like the summer event jet pack and jetboard.
also other things that add to my fun like the summer and winter events that are highlights of the year and all my normal stuff gets put on hold when they are live.

i did see mention of a ground vehicle like a buggy or some such and that would be cool also if it ever comes to pass.

jellico1

Non Canon ships hold very little if any interest to me...STO created ships if they copy the canon look I have a little interest in like the Fed Guardian cruiser.

This game has ZERO end game content which is what holds it back

Its nothing but GRIND content to max level in ship and gear then your done...There isn't anything left ...just more grind on a different character or ship

sim city type ..colony/ Exploration of space solar systems and planets needs to be incorporated into the game so we have real end game content and players have a sense of ownership of the game

Grind on......................