That's why I said the omega crack is fueling this. The question is - will they find something else to keep the momentum going or will we see sub 1000 numbers come March. I doubt crystalline or mirror again will do the trick. If we do see 800's or 900's in March we may see some very beneficial changes. If they are able to keep the numbers reasonable we won't.
either season 10 or something free to giveway ...maybe the free lobies episodes rerun.People will return for rewards.
i want the game to get people back too...if the game has people leaving we wont see no pve nor pvp updates ...no money = no updates so that is bad for both sides.
steam charts ,empty queus ,friends list ,cryptic marketing (first buyer) ,cryptic mail spam (come back and get these keys) ...guess you need someone to tell you if the water is really wet.
thats simple....free stuffs.Its amzing how people line up for free stuffs.Try it yourself....post something in zone chat and tell first to pm gets that something...you iwll be spammed doesnt matter what you giveaway.
The Winter Event also brought free stuff. There was a new Tier 6 ship - a Carrier even, one of the rarer types of ships to be head, and not affiliated with those zombie species that everyone on the forums seems to hate and despise so much.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
numbers going down =forum fanboys seeing numbers going up
Come on now - look at the average monthly number for each month since the beginning of the chart. The overall typical average for a month is around 1700.
We have 2100+ for January and February. How is that down??
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Come on now - look at the average monthly number for each month since the beginning of the chart. The overall typical average for a month is around 1700.
We have 2100+ for January and February. How is that down??
and that was with a new season followed by winter event followed by 5th year anniversary...basically a non stop event.We will see the gap between the anniversary and s10.
You should know by now that using facts and logic doesn't work on some folk. They're going to be negative just for the sake of being negative.
Not for the sake of being negative.
They don't believe the game is good anymore, they are not happy with the game, and they will try to put everything in that light, because that's basically how our minds work.
Just try to talk about Mechwarrior Online with me.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I'm still trying to figure out how anybody thinks 17% is bigger than 40%...?
I have nothing against PvP (other than I suk at it), but the word "Delusional" comes quickly to mind after reading some of the posts in this thread.
That and grabbing at straws, seems most apropos for many folks around here.
I totally agree with the posts that have said that this poll most likely means very little for what we'll see added to the game over the next year or so.
BUG fixes & Less Focus on Dilithium Grinding would have been my top two choices, if they had been offered.
:cool:
STO Member since February 2009. 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
They don't believe the game is good anymore, they are not happy with the game, and they will try to put everything in that light, because that's basically how our minds work.
Just try to talk about Mechwarrior Online with me.
Why? MWO is a piece of shart...
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 vote for fixing PvP before making more content for PvP but my vote is PvP being fixed mechanics for most all skills are broken and new ones are about to arrive with command. thats a RED ALERT!! for real.
In 2012, when they last ran a poll like this there were over ten thousand responses.
Ten THOUSAND. Four times as many as they got this time.
assuming that the pre-Legacy of Romulus population was smaller, that equates not only to a larger percentage of accounts, but to a larger percentage of accounts invested enough in the game to be on the forums, and active enough to care enough to answer a Cryptic poll.
(LoR showed a population spike, Delta showed a pop spike.)
Games that rely on Churn, don't last long. when your responding population is smaller after two population explosions than it was before, that's indicating that either:
A. The number of people who care about the game is smaller as a percentage of the population
B. the number of invested people has dropped, and the expansion of population is mostly goldfarmer-spambots from that site we're not going to mention that's spamming Qo'noS and Sector space.
Spambots don't buy things in a microtransaction economy, and they tend to drive players away. Esp. new players who might otherwise be spending money on the game.
Either way, the game IS in trouble...eventually. Player retention and replayability of the game itself is an ISSUE.
Episodes take a long time to build, and cost a lot, especially when you're hiring pro voice acting talent. they're resource intensive, and that's why DR had to fill in with Patrols in the first place.
The sheer number of maps in the Exloration clusters was a collection of very resource-intensive data. Note wehn the removal was timed-it's likely they had to do it to accomodate additional voice-files and cut-scenes for the new Delta content. Thousands of custom maps eats a lot of data.
This is where your problem comes in: Exploration was underutilized relative to the size and quantity of files it required. PvP did not, and does not, have the sheer number of stored variables necessary to make removal an economical choice-the necessary patches absorb more programming time than removing Exploration did, simply because of the sheer proportion of benefit-to-cost involved.
See, PvP...is cheap. Three open-maps, (Ker'rat, N'Vak, and Otha), 5 maps (Arena and Shuttle Arena share a map, then there's Solar Wind, Ground Arena, Ground not-arena (I forget the name, the Shantytown map).
most of said maps don't have to support an NPC AI, or NPC animations (except for the open battlezones, but the AI and animations are pretty simplified, and don't have nearly as many variable outcomes.)
The rest is spawnpoints, and a scoreboard that's probably lighter-weight than your doffing UI.
that's pretty much it, all there is.
The PvP portion is the cheapest portion(For resources required) in the game that actually involves more than clicking a UI to slide a bar from left to right, and the old Clusters were pretty damn expensive, resources-wise.
Incorporating even the most extensive rework for PvP, even to the point of giving separate values for individual bridge officer and clickable abilities, entails less man-hours and less computer hours to do, than even ONE episode with voice-acting.
because most of it doesn't require visual changes, alterations to sound effects, coherent new animations or vocalizations, etc.
Up to Delta Rising, PvP was "Playable" and accessable to a population well over that needed to justify it's existence in the game. What borked that up, was balance-changes directed from above, and the incorporation of powers that weren't 'finished' before hitting Holodeck.
Things like Disables with no cooldown, that could be chained with no diminishing returns, spike damage powers that effectively wrote exceptions to the rules...that sort of thing.
This is part of the reason that the "More PvP Queues" was the wrong thing to offer, and probably pushed some voters away among the PvP community. More Queues for pvp won't fix the population drop in the game-type that occurred under the year of D'Angelo as Executive Producer.
A year that saw many, many, many systems rushed into place unfinished, incomplete, or broken, along with a radical increase in bug reports including bugs that were slain years ago returning like zombies, as well as new bugs, like the bug on the crafting UI that basically ignores you when you want to change schools until you close the window and re-open it, the "Bridge officers go on a coffee break" bug during map changes, the "Duty officers join them" and the loadout bugs.
not to mention the rubberbanding, DC, SNR, tray lag...
which stacks on top of bugs that have existed for years in the game already.
"The important things are always simple the simple things are always hard."-Murphy's laws of land warfare.
The problems are simple, but hard to fix;
1. a declining percentage of players invested enough in the game to actually have an opinion and express it on the forums.
2. A year of half-baked and rushed systems alterations, including ten levels with about four levels of content added to the game and whole tiers of equipment and abilities that remain essentially improperly tested, rushed out without serious QA checks to insure that abilities are, in fact, functioning as intended. (Ionic Turbulence is the most recently discussed example-notably, Borticus got that fixed by 'flipping a switch' that someone forgot to flip when it went live.)
The bright spot is, the new EP seems to be taking a more responsive and responsible approach. Since he was announced, certain issues like Ionic Turbulence have actually seen developer attention, and they've actually put up this poll to ask us what we want to see for the first time in two years.
will it be enough?
Hard to say. A LOT of damage was done under the last administration-good ideas, but rushed in unfinished and/or untested can be just as bad as NO ideas.
The best bet they've got now, is to fix the simple things (which are hard) in a step-by-step manner, and Salamiinferno may be the guy to oversee that-unlike his predecessor, so far he's not making expansive promises and he does seem to be encouraging interaction between Devs and the unwashed masses of the forums.
I suspect, based on having been here since 2012 and having seen his handle associated with things GETTING FIXED before, that the odds are good that a series of quiet repairs are ongoing, and there's an intent to build a 'roadmap' to keep and expand the base of players that actually care enough about the game to stay and spend money.
IOW, there is some hope for this game-but it's going to take some time to rebuild the credibility of the game's host developers after events like D'Angelo's Tau Dewa temper-tantrum.
what we're seeing now, is some small, cautious steps being taken,including some outreach to minority groups in STO that have been ignored long-term in the past.
But...
if the new administration falls into the same holes that the old one did, that very well COULD lead to STO struggling on for a few months, then dying off.
Logical and efficient read : As to fixes they come fast if it deals with overpaying or grinding dilithium.
Also if payouts or marks are to many , If the new special missions are broke , which is great.
As for game declining payouts or declining drops and declining marks for harder content , balance is way off still ... and abusive grinds for so little the fixes ....are ..... far .... and ... in-between..... lots ... of ....time for little fixing (shaking head Picard style) Ihearmost the same com my fleet and friends .... but for my noobie friends and others fairly new fleet mates , they don't realize the agony of defeat yet give them time with no real fixes more material declining queue's and few choices for most to do because of emptiness in queue's plus never any scientific efficiency to making things easier with out taking way longer these past 1 1/2 years .
As for looks of gameplay ) Top notch ! Maps excellent ! Ships Superb ! klingon ships choices and looks, fire rehire new klingon designers please immediately ! unless there supposed to be ugly and horrible , then great work!
As for making TIME in game : you've accomplished making everything take longer from dang near A to Z , like ship skills uhg , assignments are same length with less reward these days , every time you fix drops there is a drop nerf waiting to happen within a week away for sure .......... to get great drops in game you go where ??? these days ?? things done are just lengthened and lowered for drops thats worst content added so far since delta , thats not really helping out for long end gameplay the correct way to make game longer from all i read from all posts so far !.... its about making better content we play not look at only .... better ships or graphics , proper time grind rewards and as for the root of it all gameplay is the real problem .....
I'm still trying to figure out how anybody thinks 17% is bigger than 40%...?
I have nothing against PvP (other than I suk at it), but the word "Delusional" comes quickly to mind after reading some of the posts in this thread.
That and grabbing at straws, seems most apropos for many folks around here.
I totally agree with the posts that have said that this poll most likely means very little for what we'll see added to the game over the next year or so.
BUG fixes & Less Focus on Dilithium Grinding would have been my top two choices, if they had been offered.
:cool:
To bad they didn't put : Fixing Broken Stuff on the Choices list ?
When this event is removed perhaps the lag it brought with it will be gone as well for everyones benifit
But it will return next year with the event in a different event name
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
Comments
either season 10 or something free to giveway ...maybe the free lobies episodes rerun.People will return for rewards.
i want the game to get people back too...if the game has people leaving we wont see no pve nor pvp updates ...no money = no updates so that is bad for both sides.
Steam Charts? http://steamcharts.com/app/9900#All
The numbers are up again! Game not Dying?
Of course it is. It is always dying. Life is also known as a deadly disease and the only cure is death.
The Winter Event also brought free stuff. There was a new Tier 6 ship - a Carrier even, one of the rarer types of ships to be head, and not affiliated with those zombie species that everyone on the forums seems to hate and despise so much.
numbers going down =forum fanboys seeing numbers going up
Come on now - look at the average monthly number for each month since the beginning of the chart. The overall typical average for a month is around 1700.
We have 2100+ for January and February. How is that down??
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
and that was with a new season followed by winter event followed by 5th year anniversary...basically a non stop event.We will see the gap between the anniversary and s10.
Not for the sake of being negative.
They don't believe the game is good anymore, they are not happy with the game, and they will try to put everything in that light, because that's basically how our minds work.
Just try to talk about Mechwarrior Online with me.
I have nothing against PvP (other than I suk at it), but the word "Delusional" comes quickly to mind after reading some of the posts in this thread.
That and grabbing at straws, seems most apropos for many folks around here.
I totally agree with the posts that have said that this poll most likely means very little for what we'll see added to the game over the next year or so.
BUG fixes & Less Focus on Dilithium Grinding would have been my top two choices, if they had been offered.
: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
Why? MWO is a piece of shart...
"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."
Also if payouts or marks are to many , If the new special missions are broke , which is great.
As for game declining payouts or declining drops and declining marks for harder content , balance is way off still ... and abusive grinds for so little the fixes ....are ..... far .... and ... in-between..... lots ... of ....time for little fixing (shaking head Picard style) Ihearmost the same com my fleet and friends .... but for my noobie friends and others fairly new fleet mates , they don't realize the agony of defeat yet
As for looks of gameplay
As for making TIME in game : you've accomplished making everything take longer from dang near A to Z , like ship skills uhg , assignments are same length with less reward these days , every time you fix drops there is a drop nerf waiting to happen within a week away for sure .......... to get great drops in game you go where ??? these days ?? things done are just lengthened and lowered for drops thats worst content added so far since delta , thats not really helping out for long end gameplay the correct way to make game longer from all i read from all posts so far !.... its about making better content we play not look at only .... better ships or graphics , proper time grind rewards and as for the root of it all gameplay is the real problem .....
But it will return next year with the event in a different event name
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
Still really positive step though. More polls I say!!!!
Then please fill out my dissertation survey on feline attachment, it'd be a massive help (-:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/87XKSGH
Keep your eyes peeled for future STO Player Polls, and thanks again everyone!
~CaptainSmirk