The 'Why' of endgame

bareel

We have all kinds of new progression mechanics post DR which aside from some details are actually a very good thing. The new specializations, the gear upgrading, and so on.

But we have no reason to bother.

For the PvP player the game is terribly unbalanced and it appears the community is pretty sparse right now. Even bootcamp is, mostly, dead. Perhaps with time it will all shake out but without the hope for any form of 'balance pass' or new content it's future looks as it always has, bleak. Man I miss the creativity of the warhammer mmo's pvp content, the balance might have been bad but some of those battleground were crazy fun.

For the casual hardcore who enjoys to PuG queues, well the queues are dead. And I really don't think having more traits or doing more DPS is going to change the inability of PuGs to coordinate. Just today tried an ANA and I followed one guy letting him draw fire. I rescued a ship then we went to another spot. I managed to get two of the tractors down at that location when the timer expired and we lost, the other three didn't manage to accomplish anything. I attempted communicating with the tools and tiny amount of time the game offers but yeah. So I guess I could work on shaving a few more seconds off killing the CE but really, eh, don't care already sick of killing it.

For the hardcore players well they are still stuck with either silly easy (for premade) advanced queues, or rolling the dice with the few elite queues available and hoping they are not bugged. But even beyond that when the only difference is a bit more enemy HP to blast I fail to see how that content can remain engaging.

Progression systems are great. But I need a reason to bother. Remove the PuG unfriendly fail states from advanced. Add actual elite content. Put a developer on PvP, make that their only job. Please.

vsilverwings1

Just did a lengthy but thought out post only to find PWE decided to forget I'd logged in...thanks.

Basically I've been in this boat for a while. I've gone from 8 to 4 characters with 1 being the top toon. Treading water now as I'm not grinding alts, most content is doable with existing setups and those that aren't I need a team that's able to (and active queues).

STO has become a matter of increasing the bar of white pixels and scraping up bits of resources. Done all the content but it's the state of the game that's stopping me wanting to pursue more not the grind itself. Think PWE is whipping Cryptic for more money so we get more stuff designed only to generate money regardless of the state it's in which becomes more desperate as more people seem to be leaving.

Cryptic and PWE will be learning the hard way I've said that often enough and I'm waiting for what their next move will be before investing more time and effort in to this game.

Unknown

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ashkrik23

Spec points would have been fine had they kept the grind at the same XP costs.

mirrorchaos

funny thing is, if cryptic had lost a fair chuck of its sto playerbase, then they would of gone into a frenzy to bring something out a bit sooner then it should to bring those players back. so far, not a damn thing which suggests the player numbers are there, they either just dont care about endgame hoop jumping like some damn dog any more, or they are all in private queue which means its built a community within a community and is ironic as the queue system was originally intended to bring more players to team up, especially the stubborn ones who refuse to ask for help or accept on the chat screen.

if the developers are not too interested in keeping star trek online as a money making machine any longer, i cant see it lasting much beyond 2018, 2 years in game time to tell a story, 2409-2411. but if they are serious about their game, they dont have that many choices left but to open up to the community again and feel out new ideas on what could be good for a storyline and what would not be.

an example is bluegeek the other day setting up a thread discussing new ways of making endgame more enjoyable and yet cryptic has their own plan, it would be like stating you know your female friend so well and youre sure she is your girlfriend only to find out she went behind your back and fell for another man which opens up this overlapping grey area of miscommunication when you find out it never happened and presuming to know isnt working or trying to talk it out was already a wasted effort because in her mind she already chose. it is very similar logic to what is going on at the moment in cryptic and the community.

as for the current endgame, i knew it wouldnt work even when it was announced, someone who doesnt learn from the past is likely to repeat previous mistakes, not holding on to the idea of players typing into the chat bar "LFG CGE" or "LF2M KASA" or whatever and forcing them to cooperate, is now a lost art because the entitled and now spoiled enough here it wont return, didnt learn from it, community has regressed. removing old STFs, a real team challenge requiring reasonable coordination, some measure of trust and communication. gone, split into small fast runs, no challenge left and the entitled are spoiled again to not want it's return, didnt learn from it, end game means are unbalanced, no teamwork or cooperation at all, community has regressed.

there is no way to get any meaningful endgame progression back any further, cryptic dont care to know and have their own plans and the community doesnt have the stones to pull together and make something of it.

baudl

Certainly agree with the OP, but to say the queues are dead is not really true. Sure 70% of advanced queues are not pugable, because they either are too difficult for the below average Joe, or they simply do not reward anything comprehensible. I mean, trillium K from 50% of all queues means that people will only do the one that is the easiest or fastest.
Result is, that some queues have a waiting time of 10 seconds...others have no queue at all.

This is a major design fail both in reward structure and difficulty (mostly completion time actually, can't be that some take 30 minutes others only a fraction of that and reward the same)
A major overhaul of ALL queues is desperately needed. And a tiered reward system must be included in each and every queue to motivate people to participate. It should include dmg and healing aswell as NPCs freed/healed/liberated...for each and every player and NOT for the grp as a whole. If somebody is carrying a grp, he/she should be rewarded accordingly. If there is no connection between perfomance and reward, no player will feel motivated to actually play "good" or play at all (afk trolls)

isawesomeisnt

ashkrik23 wrote: »

Spec points would have been fine had they kept the grind at the same XP costs.

Grind, what grind? anyone is forcing you to grind? or make your playstile that feels like grind?, or are you saying that there is some kind of grind over there?

If so, people must be carefull because.

A player has died playing a game, and maybe you didnt knew, here is the notice
Grind with moderation guys.


Siganture banned solution
time to nerf url links?