I spoke to two people in game the other day, they love Delta Rising. Include my opinion on DR, that is a 100% of the people I polled love the Expansion.
There are my numbers!
Congratulations! You have discovered the Epic Rose-Tinted Spectacles of Beancounters +5!
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
I am enjoying Delta Rising.
It's giving my man characters something to do. before DR my four main characters were all maxed out...or as maxed as I wanted them. Playing the game pretty much involved logging in and mining dil. If some special event would roll around...like Mirror Invasion they'd get some playtime but for the most part they weren't used as much as I'd like.
With DR now my characters are played and for more than just dil mining. The specialization point addition ensures I will keep playing them to make them better.
DR is not a perfect expansion...I wish there were more missions and less looking for stuff to do but it's not anything to make me upset as it makes me play my characters longer.
To those who do not like DR I only ask that you make your complaints respectful. We all would like this game to get better but the best way to ensure the devs ignore what you post is by insulting them.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
To those who do not like DR I only ask that you make your complaints respectful. We all would like this game to get better but the best way to ensure the devs ignore what you post is by insulting them.
You're asking people to be more rational. I don't think they'll understand why they should do that if they haven't already gotten the concept of respect already.
It's like asking a horny dog not to stick its nose in other dog's asses.
I'll offer "good luck" before they do a major roll-out.
I'll thank Cryptic when they get it right.
When they drop the ball in QA, I'll point out the bugs in the right forum.
If they ignore those bugs, I'll complain.
And when meta changes have unforeseen outcomes, I'll offer suggestions.
When they take stuff away, I'll ask for it back.
But when they ignore our warnings, and then blame us for the problems - I'll go outside the forums and vocally suggest you avoid coming here.
Every game has malcontents, that no one will ever please.
But when the queues are dead, and fleets are a fraction of their activity; when sales in the exchange drop like a rock, when on a Saturday night you can't organize even one private match for something YOU want to do; and when the visible and public user metrics show the number of active players have dropped by 40%....
I can actively say "Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it".
I could add a lot to this but I however agree with every word
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
To those who do not like DR I only ask that you make your complaints respectful. We all would like this game to get better but the best way to ensure the devs ignore what you post is by insulting them.
The same applies to those who are totally happy with it. If you can't make your point without resorting to insults then you should probably ask yourself why you are bothering to make your point in the first place.
You're asking people to be more rational. I don't think they'll understand why they should do that if they haven't already gotten the concept of respect already.
It's like asking a horny dog not to stick its nose in other dog's asses.
I think for some of us, we've spent five years trying that approach. I don't think what I've posted here is disrespectful but it is impatient.
I was patient when the dev team was at 15 and they couldn't keep cups in the cupboards.
I am less patient now because they've had the resources to really do something since the PWE acquisition and while they have accomplished some great things, they seem hellbent on ratcheting the user acceptance tightly on a skinner box rather than making a game.
And, yes, the typical response to that is, "Welcome to MMOs."
But you don't become a leader by following the lowest common denominator of the genre and I think every success in the increasingly competitive field (PWE even calls western competition "fierce") has come through bucking what the masses are doing and focusing on some kind of unique and sensational value.
The traditional MMO is dying in favor of mobile and other game models, including co-op. The novelty of hinging a game around being online is dying off as an increasing number of non-MMO games have incorporated customer valued elements of MMO design. Cryptic can't sustain on colonizing a dying industry with PWE tactics, trying to terraform the market into a place where PW models work.
Even in a dying industry, you can have massive growth if you remember what needs and values you offer in a broader sense and don't limit your MMO to "what free-to-play MMOs are doing".
Look at what subscription MMOs are doing and bring more of that into play. Look at what offline games are doing.
I think Cryptic has overinvested in an MMO deployment platform with its engine. I'm not saying they need a new engine. But they can't bank on the interoperability of the engine anymore than a better 8 track cassette assembly line is a great investment. They need individual quality for individual products.
A one size fits all development track for the engine doesn't work anymore. A one size fits all business model doesn't work. The amount of effort they're putting into hacking on a business model that is a bad fit could be applied to building a better model.
I think my impatience is pretty much in proportion to their stubbornness.
Given how much forum rage I've seen about DR I feel compelled to chime in and comment that overall I am really enjoying the expansion. Positives:
- New content (story missions and patrols) are the best they've done to date.
- Crafting update is a richer structure than we've seen in the game. More fun.
- Upgrade system is vastly preferred to invalidating gear and having to just buy new stuff. This last update made crafting much less painful on materials cost and have really brought it to a good place.
- Specializations are a great way to have a constant payoff over time as you play through content. Nice abilities and additions.
- Intelligence powers add some nice variety to gameplay though they may be of little value to min-maxers (unclear on ultimate benefit of them).
Now there are definitely some issues with the update that caused some grief, especially at the beginning.
- Advanced queue difficulty went off the charts for some queues. This is improving, and there are several I can play regularly in a PUG quite reasonably (sadly Borg Disconnected is NOT one of them).
- Skill points were all over the map a bit but are settling down.
Fundamentally they have altered the endgame design with this expansion with the intent of providing long-term goals on the scale of months of gameplay, not just hours/days. This seems an intelligent goal given how long ago I started seeing "done everything, finished game, leaving now" threads.
However player impatience has often lead to massive doom and gloom threads. I do not think it is a fundamental flaw to build in slower progression rates that allow content to trickle out over time. Likewise I don't think every player should expect to be playing Advanced & Elite queues on the first weekend of a level cap increase.
There is merit to long term goals. I actually enjoy the fact that my ship is improving bit by bit over timescales of weeks & months. There is always more to do on it.
Now, the availability of XP, dil, and just how these progressions are set are always up for debate, and there were some clear mistakes on launch, many of which that have been addressed so far.
Unfortunately with players having gotten used to playing a character for a month and maxing out in all abilities/powers/equipment changing to a slower progression system will cause a lot of rage and frustration.
That doesn't make it a bad decision.
What I do hope is to see, as devs have mentioned on podcasts, the introduction of new mechanics to help make things a bit friendlier for alt progression (much of DR seems focused on single-character progression and does severely neglect the multiple character mode, pushing rewards off to very distant timescales for that kind of play).
Given how much forum rage I've seen about DR I feel compelled to chime in and comment that overall I am really enjoying the expansion. Positives:
- New content (story missions and patrols) are the best they've done to date.
- Crafting update is a richer structure than we've seen in the game. More fun.
- Upgrade system is vastly preferred to invalidating gear and having to just buy new stuff. This last update made crafting much less painful on materials cost and have really brought it to a good place.
- Specializations are a great way to have a constant payoff over time as you play through content. Nice abilities and additions.
First off, I am totally happy that you enjoy the game. I am not being sarcastic - I am really glad that many people are enjoying it enough to keep the servers going.
HOWEVER.....
New content - yes, they are some of the best to date - however, due to the low XP rewards and the level locks, it's hard to enjoy them as a cohesive experience, compared to many of the lower level missions which dovetail nicely into each other.
Crafting - This is where I vehemently disagree, in terms of enjoyment - I find nothing fun about a pure timegate that blatantly encourages cash purchases to bypass it. I find it insulting not only on that level, but the random lottery that is built into it.
Upgrades - As I have said before, the upgrade costs more than quadruple the original cost of many items. I would much, much, much rather be able to re-purchase rep and fleet gear at XIV for 3 or 4 times the cost of Mk XII than play the click+click+pray upgrade game. I can't overstate that enough, especially if I were to roll new alts - being able to simply grind out the item once at Mk XIV would be far, far preferable to me than grinding out XIIs and then grinding out upgrades.
Specializations - While I agree that long time goals can be nice, ridiculous long time goals are ridiculous. Not only are the unlocks so infrequent that you can literally get completely bored of the game between specialization points, it is another over-simplified skill tree, that, in all likelihood, we get changed the same way rep traits were when the balance issues of so many passives becomes apparent. It's a system that's almost designed to break.
Again, I am glad you can continue to enjoy the game - I suspect that we are fundamentally different types of people and gamers, and I respect that you are having fun.
I hope you can at least see why I personally am unhappy, and respect that as well.
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
I do admit DR has some positive points. Their story missions (NOT Friends in Unlikely Places or the other ones where you run errands) are improving, and the content is engaging and even fun.
However, the amount of negative points places DR in my list of worst improvements to the game. Leveling alts is a nightmare, PvP is so broken that I avoid it (coming from a former frequent pvp player, that's saying a lot), grinding is more repetitive than before, and crafting is a mess.
stardestroyer001, Admiral, Explorers Fury PvE/PvP Fleet | Retired PvP Player
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9 My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
I love the starship mastery system. It adds a little something to the whole feeling of a starship being truly mine.
And it's nice getting the opportunity to rethink my builds, along with the upgrades. Picking and choosing what I feel is actually worth keeping in my build, and slowly making each piece better. I'm glad they're working to decrease some of the time gates for mastery and resource requirements for the upgrades - these are definitely things that needed to be re-evaluated after the launch. But overall, I'm really happy that this new system exists.
That's probably the biggest thing that stands out to me in DR, and the thing I was most excited for - besides the awesome voice acting, which is in a league of its own
I love the starship mastery system. It adds a little something to the whole feeling of a starship being truly mine.
And it's nice getting the opportunity to rethink my builds, along with the upgrades. Picking and choosing what I feel is actually worth keeping in my build, and slowly making each piece better. I'm glad they're working to decrease some of the time gates for mastery and resource requirements for the upgrades - these are definitely things that needed to be re-evaluated after the launch. But overall, I'm really happy that this new system exists.
That's probably the biggest thing that stands out to me in DR, and the thing I was most excited for - besides the awesome voice acting, which is in a league of its own
I forgot, the loadout fix is a bright spot as well. I'm relieved that they finally got around to fixing the issues with it.
stardestroyer001, Admiral, Explorers Fury PvE/PvP Fleet | Retired PvP Player
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9 My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
I forgot, the loadout fix is a bright spot as well. I'm relieved that they finally got around to fixing the issues with it.
Still broken for me, to this very moment. Same with hotbar buttons still randomly disappearing. I have been filing in game reports every time. Yeah, another unreasonable issue I am having.
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
I forgot, the loadout fix is a bright spot as well. I'm relieved that they finally got around to fixing the issues with it.
Not sure if serious...
Loadouts are biggest cluster [beeeep] in this game. Nowhere near fixed.
The dress is gold and white. Over 70% people says so. When viewed from a certain screen angle it appears blue and black. The dress displayed on amazon is a blue and black dress, but it's not the same dress in the picture. If you're seeing blue & black you're slightly colored blind. A normal upright screen = white and gold.
I love the starship mastery system. It adds a little something to the whole feeling of a starship being truly mine.
And it's nice getting the opportunity to rethink my builds, along with the upgrades. Picking and choosing what I feel is actually worth keeping in my build, and slowly making each piece better. I'm glad they're working to decrease some of the time gates for mastery and resource requirements for the upgrades - these are definitely things that needed to be re-evaluated after the launch. But overall, I'm really happy that this new system exists.
That's probably the biggest thing that stands out to me in DR, and the thing I was most excited for - besides the awesome voice acting, which is in a league of its own
I'm in the not sure if serious boat here. The Ship Mastery system is just a minor stat increase per ship. All have it at T5-U or T6. Either way it's just nothing special per ship at all. Had there been a system which made you choose from 2-5 different paths so you could actually define how you want to play your ships then fair enough, that's a concious decision to go "Hey I need extra turn rate over hull strength" or "I'll go extra Partgen instead of extra Beam Damage". The current system is a sugar pill, doesn't give you anything meaningful and can rot your teeth.
The timegates and general design of the R&D and Upgrade systems are a disgrace. Lottery's with pay to skip timegates...
I've said so much on the topic, I'm just bored of repeating myself.
BTW if you think the voice acting is fantastic, have you ever played the Mass Effect Series as a Female Shepherd? Or Dragon Age: Origins? Easily two of the best voice acted games going (Dragon Age even has Kate Mulgrew in it!). Even the annoying cloying overly American voice acting in Guild Wars 2 is better than STO, not saying the actors themselves are bad (Neelix is a real standout actually) but the storylines they were given were avg at best. Not the worst I've heard but nowhere near what I would consider very good.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
I was serious. Once they announced the T5-U and gear upgrade systems, I was excited. It was a nice way to keep my original end-game gear relevant at the new end-game. And I'm still enjoying the systems, because I went into it expecting it to be a longer-term goal. If I'd have been fully upgraded within the first couple weeks of the expansion, I'd have felt a little shortchanged. It's definitely a mechanic that's going to keep me shooting for progress for the next while.
Oh for sure, totally in agreement that there are tons of well voiced games out there. Saints Row comes to mind as an example of great VO and funny, if at times corny, writing. But for STO it was just great to hear the actors take up their roles from ST:VOY again. It put a smile on my face every time one of them popped up in a mission
[
The timegates and general design of the R&D and Upgrade systems are a disgrace. Lottery's with pay to skip timegates...
I've said so much on the topic, I'm just bored of repeating myself.
I'm continuously mystified as why so much forum chatter is on the topic of time gates and "evil" dil costs to skip the timers.
Is impatience the core ethic of gamers? Why is the concept of a progression system that is supposed to take months to play out so hateful?
I actually enjoy the fact that there is a long-term specialization/equipment path that will play out over many months of gameplay.
Why does everyone feel like they have to upgrade every system in a ship over one weekend?
If you don't like the dil costs to skip a timer, it is so very easy to not click them and come back tomorrow! I do it all the time!
I genuinely enjoy the upgrade system, and now that materials costs have been dramatically reduced in the last update it really works quite well. It just won't get you completely maxed out in a weekend.
But I really believe that's a better way to build a game for the long term.
For years in the game there was really nowhere up to go with my characters. That felt stagnant. I really enjoy the fact that there are constant rewards and goals for me in the game that will last for some time to come.
Comments
Congratulations! You have discovered the Epic Rose-Tinted Spectacles of Beancounters +5!
It's giving my man characters something to do. before DR my four main characters were all maxed out...or as maxed as I wanted them. Playing the game pretty much involved logging in and mining dil. If some special event would roll around...like Mirror Invasion they'd get some playtime but for the most part they weren't used as much as I'd like.
With DR now my characters are played and for more than just dil mining. The specialization point addition ensures I will keep playing them to make them better.
DR is not a perfect expansion...I wish there were more missions and less looking for stuff to do but it's not anything to make me upset as it makes me play my characters longer.
To those who do not like DR I only ask that you make your complaints respectful. We all would like this game to get better but the best way to ensure the devs ignore what you post is by insulting them.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
It's like asking a horny dog not to stick its nose in other dog's asses.
Helpful Tools: Dictionary.com - Logical fallacies - Random generator - Word generator - Color tool - Extra Credits - List of common English language errors - New T6 Big booty tutorial
I could add a lot to this but I however agree with every word
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
The same applies to those who are totally happy with it. If you can't make your point without resorting to insults then you should probably ask yourself why you are bothering to make your point in the first place.
Free Tibet!
I think for some of us, we've spent five years trying that approach. I don't think what I've posted here is disrespectful but it is impatient.
I was patient when the dev team was at 15 and they couldn't keep cups in the cupboards.
I am less patient now because they've had the resources to really do something since the PWE acquisition and while they have accomplished some great things, they seem hellbent on ratcheting the user acceptance tightly on a skinner box rather than making a game.
And, yes, the typical response to that is, "Welcome to MMOs."
But you don't become a leader by following the lowest common denominator of the genre and I think every success in the increasingly competitive field (PWE even calls western competition "fierce") has come through bucking what the masses are doing and focusing on some kind of unique and sensational value.
The traditional MMO is dying in favor of mobile and other game models, including co-op. The novelty of hinging a game around being online is dying off as an increasing number of non-MMO games have incorporated customer valued elements of MMO design. Cryptic can't sustain on colonizing a dying industry with PWE tactics, trying to terraform the market into a place where PW models work.
Even in a dying industry, you can have massive growth if you remember what needs and values you offer in a broader sense and don't limit your MMO to "what free-to-play MMOs are doing".
Look at what subscription MMOs are doing and bring more of that into play. Look at what offline games are doing.
I think Cryptic has overinvested in an MMO deployment platform with its engine. I'm not saying they need a new engine. But they can't bank on the interoperability of the engine anymore than a better 8 track cassette assembly line is a great investment. They need individual quality for individual products.
A one size fits all development track for the engine doesn't work anymore. A one size fits all business model doesn't work. The amount of effort they're putting into hacking on a business model that is a bad fit could be applied to building a better model.
I think my impatience is pretty much in proportion to their stubbornness.
- New content (story missions and patrols) are the best they've done to date.
- Crafting update is a richer structure than we've seen in the game. More fun.
- Upgrade system is vastly preferred to invalidating gear and having to just buy new stuff. This last update made crafting much less painful on materials cost and have really brought it to a good place.
- Specializations are a great way to have a constant payoff over time as you play through content. Nice abilities and additions.
- Intelligence powers add some nice variety to gameplay though they may be of little value to min-maxers (unclear on ultimate benefit of them).
Now there are definitely some issues with the update that caused some grief, especially at the beginning.
- Advanced queue difficulty went off the charts for some queues. This is improving, and there are several I can play regularly in a PUG quite reasonably (sadly Borg Disconnected is NOT one of them).
- Skill points were all over the map a bit but are settling down.
Fundamentally they have altered the endgame design with this expansion with the intent of providing long-term goals on the scale of months of gameplay, not just hours/days. This seems an intelligent goal given how long ago I started seeing "done everything, finished game, leaving now" threads.
However player impatience has often lead to massive doom and gloom threads. I do not think it is a fundamental flaw to build in slower progression rates that allow content to trickle out over time. Likewise I don't think every player should expect to be playing Advanced & Elite queues on the first weekend of a level cap increase.
There is merit to long term goals. I actually enjoy the fact that my ship is improving bit by bit over timescales of weeks & months. There is always more to do on it.
Now, the availability of XP, dil, and just how these progressions are set are always up for debate, and there were some clear mistakes on launch, many of which that have been addressed so far.
Unfortunately with players having gotten used to playing a character for a month and maxing out in all abilities/powers/equipment changing to a slower progression system will cause a lot of rage and frustration.
That doesn't make it a bad decision.
What I do hope is to see, as devs have mentioned on podcasts, the introduction of new mechanics to help make things a bit friendlier for alt progression (much of DR seems focused on single-character progression and does severely neglect the multiple character mode, pushing rewards off to very distant timescales for that kind of play).
First off, I am totally happy that you enjoy the game. I am not being sarcastic - I am really glad that many people are enjoying it enough to keep the servers going.
HOWEVER.....
New content - yes, they are some of the best to date - however, due to the low XP rewards and the level locks, it's hard to enjoy them as a cohesive experience, compared to many of the lower level missions which dovetail nicely into each other.
Crafting - This is where I vehemently disagree, in terms of enjoyment - I find nothing fun about a pure timegate that blatantly encourages cash purchases to bypass it. I find it insulting not only on that level, but the random lottery that is built into it.
Upgrades - As I have said before, the upgrade costs more than quadruple the original cost of many items. I would much, much, much rather be able to re-purchase rep and fleet gear at XIV for 3 or 4 times the cost of Mk XII than play the click+click+pray upgrade game. I can't overstate that enough, especially if I were to roll new alts - being able to simply grind out the item once at Mk XIV would be far, far preferable to me than grinding out XIIs and then grinding out upgrades.
Specializations - While I agree that long time goals can be nice, ridiculous long time goals are ridiculous. Not only are the unlocks so infrequent that you can literally get completely bored of the game between specialization points, it is another over-simplified skill tree, that, in all likelihood, we get changed the same way rep traits were when the balance issues of so many passives becomes apparent. It's a system that's almost designed to break.
Again, I am glad you can continue to enjoy the game - I suspect that we are fundamentally different types of people and gamers, and I respect that you are having fun.
I hope you can at least see why I personally am unhappy, and respect that as well.
However, the amount of negative points places DR in my list of worst improvements to the game. Leveling alts is a nightmare, PvP is so broken that I avoid it (coming from a former frequent pvp player, that's saying a lot), grinding is more repetitive than before, and crafting is a mess.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
And it's nice getting the opportunity to rethink my builds, along with the upgrades. Picking and choosing what I feel is actually worth keeping in my build, and slowly making each piece better. I'm glad they're working to decrease some of the time gates for mastery and resource requirements for the upgrades - these are definitely things that needed to be re-evaluated after the launch. But overall, I'm really happy that this new system exists.
That's probably the biggest thing that stands out to me in DR, and the thing I was most excited for - besides the awesome voice acting, which is in a league of its own
I forgot, the loadout fix is a bright spot as well. I'm relieved that they finally got around to fixing the issues with it.
Missing the good ol' days of PvP: Legacy of Romulus to Season 9
My List of Useful Links, Recently Updated November 25 2017!
Admittedly, they're still working on tracking that down. There are a few hiccups that are still being reported in the bug forum.
But it's way better than the original bug was.
Still broken for me, to this very moment. Same with hotbar buttons still randomly disappearing. I have been filing in game reports every time. Yeah, another unreasonable issue I am having.
Not sure if serious...
Loadouts are biggest cluster [beeeep] in this game. Nowhere near fixed.
I'm in the not sure if serious boat here. The Ship Mastery system is just a minor stat increase per ship. All have it at T5-U or T6. Either way it's just nothing special per ship at all. Had there been a system which made you choose from 2-5 different paths so you could actually define how you want to play your ships then fair enough, that's a concious decision to go "Hey I need extra turn rate over hull strength" or "I'll go extra Partgen instead of extra Beam Damage". The current system is a sugar pill, doesn't give you anything meaningful and can rot your teeth.
The timegates and general design of the R&D and Upgrade systems are a disgrace. Lottery's with pay to skip timegates...
I've said so much on the topic, I'm just bored of repeating myself.
BTW if you think the voice acting is fantastic, have you ever played the Mass Effect Series as a Female Shepherd? Or Dragon Age: Origins? Easily two of the best voice acted games going (Dragon Age even has Kate Mulgrew in it!). Even the annoying cloying overly American voice acting in Guild Wars 2 is better than STO, not saying the actors themselves are bad (Neelix is a real standout actually) but the storylines they were given were avg at best. Not the worst I've heard but nowhere near what I would consider very good.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
I was serious. Once they announced the T5-U and gear upgrade systems, I was excited. It was a nice way to keep my original end-game gear relevant at the new end-game. And I'm still enjoying the systems, because I went into it expecting it to be a longer-term goal. If I'd have been fully upgraded within the first couple weeks of the expansion, I'd have felt a little shortchanged. It's definitely a mechanic that's going to keep me shooting for progress for the next while.
Oh for sure, totally in agreement that there are tons of well voiced games out there. Saints Row comes to mind as an example of great VO and funny, if at times corny, writing. But for STO it was just great to hear the actors take up their roles from ST:VOY again. It put a smile on my face every time one of them popped up in a mission
I'm continuously mystified as why so much forum chatter is on the topic of time gates and "evil" dil costs to skip the timers.
Is impatience the core ethic of gamers? Why is the concept of a progression system that is supposed to take months to play out so hateful?
I actually enjoy the fact that there is a long-term specialization/equipment path that will play out over many months of gameplay.
Why does everyone feel like they have to upgrade every system in a ship over one weekend?
If you don't like the dil costs to skip a timer, it is so very easy to not click them and come back tomorrow! I do it all the time!
I genuinely enjoy the upgrade system, and now that materials costs have been dramatically reduced in the last update it really works quite well. It just won't get you completely maxed out in a weekend.
But I really believe that's a better way to build a game for the long term.
For years in the game there was really nowhere up to go with my characters. That felt stagnant. I really enjoy the fact that there are constant rewards and goals for me in the game that will last for some time to come.