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So let me get this straight...
gfreeman98
Member Posts: 1,200 Arc User
We all know the forums are awash with complaints about all manner of things - nothing new there, it's been that way since the beginning. However the latest flack over Delta Rising seems to be that leveling to 60 "takes too long/requires too much grinding, etc."
When the game was new everyone started out at Ensign. Some got to Rear Admiral faster than others and complained about there being "nothing to do" now that they're topped out. So some of us purposely tried to take our time, enjoying all the content before we topped out. Then they opened up level 50, and again some people rushed that just as fast as they could, then complained about having "nothing to do" now. So the forums were awash with complaints that it was too easy to level up, and demands that "Cryptic must do something about this!".
Oh the irony. :rolleyes:
When the game was new everyone started out at Ensign. Some got to Rear Admiral faster than others and complained about there being "nothing to do" now that they're topped out. So some of us purposely tried to take our time, enjoying all the content before we topped out. Then they opened up level 50, and again some people rushed that just as fast as they could, then complained about having "nothing to do" now. So the forums were awash with complaints that it was too easy to level up, and demands that "Cryptic must do something about this!".
Oh the irony. :rolleyes:
Post edited by gfreeman98 on
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Pre-DR the game leveled far too quickly. Post-DR it levels far too slowly. The entire track from 1 to 60+Specialization should be re-scaled to some value in between pre and post, IMO.
How dare we !!!!
-rep
-gear
-spec points (with extremely low xp reward, so it's a HUGE grind)
-R&D (time gated grind)
-R&D resources
-upgrades (since it's random for the most part)
-upgrades resources (dil+EC+kit)
So yeah, this game is a giant grind fest, with a bunch of story mission in the middle.
Welp...
Now that breeze is a TRIBBLE and it's coming from Their side of the internetz.
:cool:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Are these two supposed to be opposites or something ... I don't think so ... is grinding supposed to be "Hard" or something, I don't get it ... I'm not sure you get the concept of "Irony"
Before DR: level 1-50 in under a week for experienced captains.
Post DR: level from 50-60 in 1-2 weeks for experienced, active captains with decent gear at 50 followed by A FULL YEAR OF LEVEL GRINDING PER ALT to get the specialization tree opened.
1-2 weeks from 50-60 was FINE. There is an issue of NO CONTENT with which to do said leveling, but the xp required and timeframe were fine. The 50 levels for the spec tree is another story: it is way too slow.
I take from it (whether it is something I like or not) - they don't make the missions any more for people that just hop into the game to do a new mission and then leave again. These people don't stick around long enough to buy something, or to act as "content" for other players.
They are making missions for people that play the game a bit more than that. And they probably hope to convert those "story-only" players into regular players.
That may not work out. Maybe the basic theory is actually sound, but they need to offer a bit more than what they did (repeating Argala every day n times doesn't sound like something that generates regular players). But I would see this as an attempt to make the story missions affect their income more - and if it works, it is a reason to make more story content than before. And that is the important take away from me - maybe that would be worth all the extra grind - If the STO storyline advances more quickly, or stories can go into more depth than before.
My gripe with DR is that I'm chained to one ship now, the one I paid hundreds of thousands of dilithium to upgrade all the equipment on. The costs are too high to upgrade another ship. So all those ships I paid zen for are now mothballed.
I've been here since beta
At least going by the Priority One podcast and jesse, the upgrade cost may get adjusted, at least in a manner that might help alts or alternate builds. ( may, because nothing is guaranteed until it's in a patch and released.)
I think the ship upgrades are probably as good as they are gonna get.
what I mean is, Missions are like stepping stones, and players should have enough missions to go from level 1 to level whatever without running out and having to get their feet wet.
before DR there was more then enough to accomplish this, post DR, there is not enough again, just like when the game launched. But we forgave it then because the game JUST launched.
but now we have a established years old game, it shouldn't be having these issues.
I understand that Cryptic wants to slow down leveling and I'm fine with that, but slow it down with respect to the amount of content, and by that I mean STORY content, PvE queues are extras, patrol missions are extras, exploration if they were still in would be extra.
I should be able to start at level 1 and go from story arc to story arc and by the time I play through all of it, I should be at 60 or at least within sight of it.
But more over, I shouldn't be stunted every level having to grind out the last few bubs of the XP bar just to get the next mission to unlock.
I think that is what people's problem is, that you are in the middle of enjoying content and then you have to stop to grind out to pop the level and then go back to the story, only to stop again.
you can't enjoy a story line when you have to stop to grind out some XP, it interrupts the flow.
-AE
Short answer... Both.
I got around the ship upgrade cost by using lobi ships on my main toons. But the gear upgrade costs are too much as well (IMO). I also don't see why upgrade cost for some things seem more than others, for instance it seems that eng/tac/sci consoles cost a lot less than a ship weapon to upgrade. When I upgraded my primary toon I was using green and blue upgrade tech from the exchange and it cost me somewhere around 400-500,000 dilithium to get every part of my ship to MK XIV. My other two main toons I used almost all blue tech upgrades so my dilithium cost was better, maybe 300-400,000 dilithium (I'm just going off memory here).
I did listen to that podcast and I hope they do something to ease the costs soon. My question would be why did they release an incomplete (and broken IMO) upgrade system? Now if they reduce the costs those of us that already spent the money are just SOL?
I've been here since beta
Is THAT good game design ?
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Is the difference between elite XP and normal really that much?
And honestly if it is, and you play on normal, you should probably expect a slower leveling experience
I cant say for everyone else but I wasnt really complaining all that much about content although, yes, it had gotten stale. With the release of DR we were given the light of promise of a new expansion and, true to their word, Cryptic gave us some ne content and a level cap. With it came a tsunami of bugs both old and new and issues galore. Suddenly systems that were capable of playing the game well started to crash. Some graphic cards struggled with the new GFX. Random DCs and the return of the nefarious memory leak.
On top of that, the nerfhammer swung mightily and the damage was great. Rewards were halved, entire sectors closed down, a multitude of players vilified as exploiters (later rescinded). XP was halved, pets were nerfed and the NPC AI was left for the most part unaltered. The fiasco surrounding the new three-tier difficulty setting and insta-fails on below-elite STFs I think the players have more than a right to complain about the state of the game at the moment. Yes, we wanted new content but not at such a price. I would have much rather they fix the current state of the game then force a half-baked and obviously immature expansion onto players. Most, if not all of these issues were reported in beta but those reports were ignored and the issues were pushed out live.
The cons far outweigh the pros of DR at the moment and the players will continue to react appropriately. To insist they have no reason to complain is inane.
I certainly haven't noticed any issues - my main, who I may log into once a week, is now 52 and hasn't run into any roadblocks in progression; meanwhile, a toon I started after DR dropped, and which I may get to play for as much as an hour every other day or so, is still in the Romulan Mystery arc, and is level 42. (And either the Patrol Escort rocks hard, or I've outleveled all my missions, because the USS Halsey just steamrolls those poor Tal Shiar TRIBBLE...)
Again, my point was pretty simple:
People used to complain leveling was too quick/too easy, now people complain leveling is too long/too hard.
All the details of why that is are valid, mission timers for example, but extraneous to the point above.
I just made an observation in which I find a wee bit of irony and pointed it out. If you disagree, that's fine set me straight.
Sure, some people climbed the mountain pretty quickly before. But now someones not only given them a taller mountain to climb but dug a trench around it and filled it with man-eating sharks with laser beams attached to their heads
Time will only tell!
- Delta Rising launch and how it compared to Legacy of Romulus launch
-Leveling & story progression
-Upgrade system progression
It's been no small surprise that people seem to be at odds with cryptic over what they are calling their best release ever and the data that players have access to that show the number of people playing the game. According to Al, the reason why they say Delta Rising is the most successful launch ever is because of how smoothly the launch happened. The previous expansion you had queues to log in on launch day, and this was to ensure that the server was able to handle the stress. Legacy of Romulus was mainly about attracting new players into the game by introducing a new faction, though older players returning were also attracted. Delta Rising on the other hand was about introducing a whole new level of endgame content into the game. New players would be attracted by the shininess of the new endgame content, but the goal was to give older players something new to do.
From there, they went on to talk about both level and story progression. I of course to say this, but what I got from their talk about level progression is that the slow progression was intentional. They designed it so that you would want to progress yourself further. Ideally, it should take about 35 hours of game play for us to go from 50 to 60. Al does admit though that the steps we needed to take to reach there, such as playing the patrol missions (which despite what people say, are actually part of the story), were and I think are still giving about 1/3 of what we should be getting. They're still working on adjusting the XP gain so we can get to that idealistic gameplay time.
Finally out of what I've been listening to, they talk about the upgrade system. This system according to Al was supposed to be progression over time for most players. They wanted players to feel like if they're spending their dilithium cap every day, that they see progress when they upgrade. It wasn't their goal for you to need to upgrade everything right away. You have the option to do by buying zen (which Al said is their primary source of revenue) and converting to dilthium, but you do not have to feel like you have to upgrade everything.
TL;DR version for those who think this is a wall of text: Delta Rising was designed to keep you playing through progression.
I did find it funny that they reduced how long it takes to level ships, because they admitted it wasn't fun to have to grind that long to level. Then they turn around and increase how long it takes to level from 50-60+. That was so funny.
I think leveling to 60 should run with the missions. Especially when they come out with new missions, they don't reduce the level requirements for any of the missions within the 50-60 range. That would have helped some.
The way it is now, looks like as they keep coming out with more missions, we will end up with a TRIBBLE load of level 60 missions in the future, and hardly any to level to that point. New players at that point will find it an almost endless grind just to play those missions. Lol.
If they let us level through the episodes to level 60, I can understand then increasing how long it takes to get the 60+ level. But even then, it shouldn't be nearly as long as it is now.
And Dil cost should go down a significant amount across the game. Especially in the upgrade system. If they do reduce it, and it is so little that it will not matter, then they are just blowing smoke, while still telling us to suck it. Lol.
Thanks for the update. Yes they really gave OLD players something brand new to do... RETIREMENT:D
What a bunch of geniuses :P
Did you look through my post? I clearly said that the slowing of skill points was intentional by the devs.
Clearly, the community I've come to like pre-Delta Rising essentially no longer exists. To me, it just sounds like everyone wants everything NOW.
The real issue is "Too much change, all at the same time, that broke player enjoyment by forcing repetitive grind to repair damage to players' equipment rather than providing any achievement". In other words, rather than DR and all the changes entailed making players feel like they went from 100 to 110, it instead made players feel as though they were arbitrarily yanked back from 100 to 90, and then had to grind to get back to their starting point of 100... lots of work for no achievement.
You could say "Oh, you didn't need to grind and then just allow yourself to level up naturally!" Well, yes... but that meant not playing Delta Rising. You can say, "Oh, you don't need to do X mission over and over again to level up!". Well, yes... but that means gaining vastly less progression in all the nerfed (and in some cases, broken or cut off) areas rather than the one area with good progression: Delta Rising. You could say "Well why not just level up using doffing if it's that horrible?" Well, yes... but those points were heavily nerfed too.
And that's before we get to the real problems...
Leveling to 60 is where it starts, not where it ends. The Specialization System has another 50/60 levels on top of that, at the highest XP required per new Spec Point. This in itself wouldn't be an issue... except that Cryptic made having a high level of Spec Points necessary to train Intel boffs in Tier 3 Intel Skills, and made Intel boffs bind-on-pickup so we can't get another player to train a boff for us, or buy/sell on the exchange. We're on our own with them. So the points don't sit there as a 'bonus' on their own, but rather as a necessity for full use of another system within the game. We need to grind those Spec points to fully utilize Intel boffs and by extension, Intel ships. The alternative is once again, lower grade skills or ships. But let's face it: that's a workaround to deal with Cryptic's ineptitude, not an ideal (or necessary) design consideration.
As for the thing about leveling being too fast, it has been clear for quite some time that leveling in STO was always little more than an elongated Tutorial. Leveling introduced new systems to the player's arsenal one piece at a time to play with. Level 51-60 introduces nothing new so in that respect is worthless. But... levels 1-50 continue at the old rate of progression so there's no rejigging of the cap level, we still will see people fly up to 50 in a day, then to 60 in two days, then a slow, long, boring grind to get the Spec Points needed to train their intel boffs. All with everything but DR's patrols being XP nerfed. Meaning that if you want to progress and not play the equivalent of a "demo game", you have to sit in DR grinding mindless patrols.
So for people with no imagination, there's still "nothing to do", for those who want to log in, play the latest missions and migrate to another game will still do so... and for the rest of us, who want to stay in STO, there's less to do that offers decent XP!
These changes have introduced nothing of value, and have removed value. The whole thing was so poorly thought out I wonder whether they thought through the potential negatives of their changes at all.
And you're seriously wondering why people are peeved? Really?
For a lot of players, it isn't about getting it "NOW". For a lot of us it is that they progression is at a pace that makes it less fun to do.
The game is suppose to be fun. However, they are making everything about the grind. They feel that grinding is fun. Honestly, it can be as long as it is done right, and they don't make everything a grind.
They did add new content for existing players. But the content is all about grinding, and spending Dil.
They didn't have content to level through. Instead, they just want us to repeatedly grind the same patrols ever and over. Guess what, that is the same thing we were doing before DR after we reached level 50. The only difference now is that we are doing it to try and level to the new cap.
They replaced verity, and entertainment with repetitive grinding. Whereas, they could have spent less time on trying to increase how long it takes to grind, and spent more of that time on creating more content for the new levels.
Granted, some would have power leveled through the content, and then complained about the lack of content. But we already have those few now at level 60 that have mentioned that they have nothing to do. But they are not the majority of players.
A lot of players are tired of the constant grind. A lot of players came to STO because it was different from the grindfest MMOs out there. Now they are trying to turn it into one. The fun and enjoyment that many had is now replaced with work, and not playing.
Personally, I was expecting more from DR. The game has so much potential. I expected them to reach into the vast imaginations they have to give us exciting new looks into new species they come up with. To take us into the Delta quadrant to meet some of the species that Voyager met. Explore new planets, and meet new races.
I even hoped that they new upgrade system wouldn't be so heavily focused on Dil, and that they would give a lot of new missions that will tell the stories of the races Voyager met, as well as new races.
Being able to pick up new weapons, and gear that was MK IV, from missions, and then only need to upgrade their quality. But they went the route of money and grind. Not surprised, just disappointed. All that potential wasted.
So, when I log in, I don't waste time with grinding all the time. I just log in to mess around. I may run some PVE/STF missions, but I am in no big hurry to get to level 60 just to keep doing what we did at level 50. I have 13 characters now, and don't expect any to be at level 60 anytime soon.
I did and found that part about giving something to OLD players to do amusing
Sorry that you missed the OLD pre-DR community...I DO TOO...but should be intended to those who alienated the community NOT to those left behind
So, it's your average MMO paradigm then? Got it.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
delta rising is something else. Cryptics pretty much said, you say leavening up is too short? Fine we will make you grind for a year! That will keep you busy not really thinking about the consequences.
You say it's all too easy? Fine we will give you a new elite mode! Again failing to take the consequences of their actions, simply adding more hit points and tougher criteria. In Cryptics defense this is what we wanted but in doing so players who can't handle elite but want their i rewards still dive in then say it's too hard! Well of course because it's designed that way and not for someone who hasn't done normal before to join in and be capable with poor equipment.