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STO's Development Direction: Where It Went Wrong and What Can Be Done to Save It
yellowteam1
Member Posts: 12 Arc User
PWE and Cryptic are right for the most part in their assessment that their style of story content for the game does not promote replayability, nor does it promote player cash spending. While it's still important to continue to add to the lore of the game and add more story related experiences, we do actually have a decent amount of that now in the game, especially after all the recent work of the Delta Rising missions and the rework of the Romulan Mystery missions. To summarize, lack of story is not what is holding this game back right now.
What the game needs desperately is balance. This is something that STO has never really had as one of its strong suits, but it has seen far, far better days than the current state of affairs and it is still rapidly deteriorating. Now, when I talk about balance, there's a few things that I mean by the term. One aspect is the balance of time vs rewards. This applies to both currency rewards and to XP rewards. Another aspect is game mechanic balance. This is where we get into the areas of DPS, drain and healing mechanics, hit points and abilities of NPCs, and things like threat control and stealth. All of these systems have seen a steady decline in quality over the course of the last couple of years, with a steep decline with the launch of the Delta Rising expansion.
Why is balance so important? Because without balance, the game isn't fun for very long. If you have every overpowered thing in the game, nothing is a challenge and the game will hold little appeal after a short time. Conversely, if things take insanely long or have an extremely steep real world price tag on them, they also will have lost their value by virtue of simply being overpriced. PWE seems to think that these two seemingly opposite forces will cancel each other out, but they don't. All they've managed to do is make the game unfun for people on both sides of the spectrum.
What would bring back the fun that seems to have more and more rapidly evaporated from the game? Balanced gameplay. This is an oversimplified example, but when I started playing shortly after it went free to play, things were much different. STFs were still DPS dependent, but the only real way to get good amounts of DPS was with an escort type ship. The other types of ships just didn't have the boff seating and console layout for the kind of DPS that escorts had. That said, escorts had rather limited options for self-healing and survivability. You could still find healers and even some threat gen tanks in STFs to be useful, especially when the escorts were single target focused, or were careful with their scatter volleys. Teamwork and different styles of play were useful and needed. This was a fun game.
Over time, this semblance of balance has eroded. The game became progressively easier and easier as more powerful ships, weapons, abilities, and even races were released. Each was a small or moderate increase in power, but they added up over time. Then came the R&D rework. The Fleet tactical consoles were already a decent sized power spike, but this was a much bigger jump. The only problem: it was safely hidden away behind a massive pay-wall, with a giant time-gate in it if you didn't want to pay. Does this method keep things from becoming overpowered? No. All it does is delay the time at which things get out of hand. The R&D revamp, while needed since the old system was pretty much completely obsolete, did not have much in the way of a feeling of fun or of satisfaction from using it. Some aspects had the potential to deliver that feeling, but the price or time required for the payouts were so high that by the time you get to what you wanted, you're more often than not left with the feeling that what you got was not worth all the effort you went through to get it.
After the mitigated fiasco that is the new R&D system, we got Delta Rising. I'll include the prerelease of the mk XIII equipment upgrades in Delta Rising for simplicity sake. This is by far the biggest single jump in power creep in the history of the game. They attempted to mitigate this by releasing the high hp versions of advanced and elite content (queues and episode missions). By this time, the player base is pretty used to this kind of trend, and it may have been a slight adjustment period and things would have settled down and gone back to normal. However, Delta Rising killed one of the last things that the game had going for it: the level progression.
Up until this point, the level cap had been 50 for many years, and was 40 at launch. It also took comparatively little effort to level your character from 1 to 50. The level progression was not terribly much more than a glorified tutorial, preparing you to be ready to play with all of the game's mechanics unlocked for you to use the way you see fit. This meant that the grind that kept us in game was not the long drag of unlocking more powers through levels, but rather in earning dilithium and energy credits and the occasional good loot drop to better equip our characters and ships. This allowed us as players to easily create many different characters and be able to play the endgame content with them. This also allowed the developers of the game to focus most of their content and game balancing efforts on level 50 characters. There was the very reasonable expectation that the overwhelming majority of players will be playing at level 50. It was an even playing field.
With the launch of Delta Rising and the increase of the level cap from 50 to 60*, that level playing field has been lost. I say level 60* with an asterisk because in reality, you aren't really done leveling when you hit 60. The content finishes unlocking for you to play, but you aren't done unlocking more powerful abilities and increasing your stats. Delta Rising actually brought the leveling grind from a mere 50 levels (and relatively quick levels at that) to a whopping 110 levels. And now with the Command specialization, we have increased that 110 to 150.
This may have been tolerable if the previous ease of leveling was left in place. It could have even been fun, going through and unlocking all those specialization points by playing STFs. However, this is not what Cryptic had in mind. They wanted to artificially inflate the time it took players to progress through their content, not provide a more fun experience for players. So they nerfed the ever-living TRIBBLE out of XP gain.
Again, this may have been somewhat tolerable if not for the fact that they released Delta Rising with the traditional XP gain style intact, and gave us nearly a week to try it out. This was apparently not what they'd intended, but in true PWE fashion, they'd completely ignored what the tribble server testers had told them about the XP progression. Then, in one of the worst moves I've seen a developer make towards its player base (there have been worse done by others, but not in games that I've been a part of personally), Cryptic nerfed XP gain by about 70%, REMOVED any specialization points people had earned past level 60 regardless of how or where they earned them, and called a sizable chunk of the player base cheaters and exploiters for playing the game in the most efficient way provided to them. All they had to do to fix the issue was to make STFs more time efficient to level up than using system patrols, nerf the XP gain from system patrols, or even specifically the ones in Tau Dewa that were being "exploited". Either of those methods would have been fine. But instead the entire game suffered.
Now, instead of leveling up becoming a new opportunity to have fun with the game, it has had the opposite effect. It has in fact drained the last bits of fun out of the game. The level progression is so slow now that you can no longer afford to try and raise more than one character to full potential. If you do, you will be woefully behind everyone else's progression. This is also true of newer players coming into the game. They are at a distinct disadvantage compared to players who have been grinding levels since Delta Rising was released. Gone is the level playing field.
In my opinion, if Cryptic wants to save this game and get their player base's time, money, and trust back, they'll need to bring balance back to the game. That will mean balancing the time vs rewards for various sources of resource gathering (queues and other team or solo pve content), and it will mean bringing back a level playing field for players to play on. That means making it much, much easier to level up a character, and instead making the customization choices you make when you're finished leveling actually make the difference. It also wouldn't hurt to bring this kind of balance to the realm of PvP, as well as a number of other desperately needed things for that area of the game such as a reward system or a ranking system, and possibly some sort of tiered queuing system based on player ability (not just gear level).
These may seem like daunting tasks, or even too expensive to be feasible, but that simply means you need to think more creatively. Cryptic needs to take a few steps back before it can really take better steps forwards. It's gone down the wrong path here, and I'm not sure how much clearer we as players can make it for the makers and owners of the game than we already are. We all want STO to succeed, and many of us have put our hard earned cash towards helping it do so in the past. Please do right by the game we all love and put us back on the path towards balanced, fun gameplay that we will feel good about paying money for.
What the game needs desperately is balance. This is something that STO has never really had as one of its strong suits, but it has seen far, far better days than the current state of affairs and it is still rapidly deteriorating. Now, when I talk about balance, there's a few things that I mean by the term. One aspect is the balance of time vs rewards. This applies to both currency rewards and to XP rewards. Another aspect is game mechanic balance. This is where we get into the areas of DPS, drain and healing mechanics, hit points and abilities of NPCs, and things like threat control and stealth. All of these systems have seen a steady decline in quality over the course of the last couple of years, with a steep decline with the launch of the Delta Rising expansion.
Why is balance so important? Because without balance, the game isn't fun for very long. If you have every overpowered thing in the game, nothing is a challenge and the game will hold little appeal after a short time. Conversely, if things take insanely long or have an extremely steep real world price tag on them, they also will have lost their value by virtue of simply being overpriced. PWE seems to think that these two seemingly opposite forces will cancel each other out, but they don't. All they've managed to do is make the game unfun for people on both sides of the spectrum.
What would bring back the fun that seems to have more and more rapidly evaporated from the game? Balanced gameplay. This is an oversimplified example, but when I started playing shortly after it went free to play, things were much different. STFs were still DPS dependent, but the only real way to get good amounts of DPS was with an escort type ship. The other types of ships just didn't have the boff seating and console layout for the kind of DPS that escorts had. That said, escorts had rather limited options for self-healing and survivability. You could still find healers and even some threat gen tanks in STFs to be useful, especially when the escorts were single target focused, or were careful with their scatter volleys. Teamwork and different styles of play were useful and needed. This was a fun game.
Over time, this semblance of balance has eroded. The game became progressively easier and easier as more powerful ships, weapons, abilities, and even races were released. Each was a small or moderate increase in power, but they added up over time. Then came the R&D rework. The Fleet tactical consoles were already a decent sized power spike, but this was a much bigger jump. The only problem: it was safely hidden away behind a massive pay-wall, with a giant time-gate in it if you didn't want to pay. Does this method keep things from becoming overpowered? No. All it does is delay the time at which things get out of hand. The R&D revamp, while needed since the old system was pretty much completely obsolete, did not have much in the way of a feeling of fun or of satisfaction from using it. Some aspects had the potential to deliver that feeling, but the price or time required for the payouts were so high that by the time you get to what you wanted, you're more often than not left with the feeling that what you got was not worth all the effort you went through to get it.
After the mitigated fiasco that is the new R&D system, we got Delta Rising. I'll include the prerelease of the mk XIII equipment upgrades in Delta Rising for simplicity sake. This is by far the biggest single jump in power creep in the history of the game. They attempted to mitigate this by releasing the high hp versions of advanced and elite content (queues and episode missions). By this time, the player base is pretty used to this kind of trend, and it may have been a slight adjustment period and things would have settled down and gone back to normal. However, Delta Rising killed one of the last things that the game had going for it: the level progression.
Up until this point, the level cap had been 50 for many years, and was 40 at launch. It also took comparatively little effort to level your character from 1 to 50. The level progression was not terribly much more than a glorified tutorial, preparing you to be ready to play with all of the game's mechanics unlocked for you to use the way you see fit. This meant that the grind that kept us in game was not the long drag of unlocking more powers through levels, but rather in earning dilithium and energy credits and the occasional good loot drop to better equip our characters and ships. This allowed us as players to easily create many different characters and be able to play the endgame content with them. This also allowed the developers of the game to focus most of their content and game balancing efforts on level 50 characters. There was the very reasonable expectation that the overwhelming majority of players will be playing at level 50. It was an even playing field.
With the launch of Delta Rising and the increase of the level cap from 50 to 60*, that level playing field has been lost. I say level 60* with an asterisk because in reality, you aren't really done leveling when you hit 60. The content finishes unlocking for you to play, but you aren't done unlocking more powerful abilities and increasing your stats. Delta Rising actually brought the leveling grind from a mere 50 levels (and relatively quick levels at that) to a whopping 110 levels. And now with the Command specialization, we have increased that 110 to 150.
This may have been tolerable if the previous ease of leveling was left in place. It could have even been fun, going through and unlocking all those specialization points by playing STFs. However, this is not what Cryptic had in mind. They wanted to artificially inflate the time it took players to progress through their content, not provide a more fun experience for players. So they nerfed the ever-living TRIBBLE out of XP gain.
Again, this may have been somewhat tolerable if not for the fact that they released Delta Rising with the traditional XP gain style intact, and gave us nearly a week to try it out. This was apparently not what they'd intended, but in true PWE fashion, they'd completely ignored what the tribble server testers had told them about the XP progression. Then, in one of the worst moves I've seen a developer make towards its player base (there have been worse done by others, but not in games that I've been a part of personally), Cryptic nerfed XP gain by about 70%, REMOVED any specialization points people had earned past level 60 regardless of how or where they earned them, and called a sizable chunk of the player base cheaters and exploiters for playing the game in the most efficient way provided to them. All they had to do to fix the issue was to make STFs more time efficient to level up than using system patrols, nerf the XP gain from system patrols, or even specifically the ones in Tau Dewa that were being "exploited". Either of those methods would have been fine. But instead the entire game suffered.
Now, instead of leveling up becoming a new opportunity to have fun with the game, it has had the opposite effect. It has in fact drained the last bits of fun out of the game. The level progression is so slow now that you can no longer afford to try and raise more than one character to full potential. If you do, you will be woefully behind everyone else's progression. This is also true of newer players coming into the game. They are at a distinct disadvantage compared to players who have been grinding levels since Delta Rising was released. Gone is the level playing field.
In my opinion, if Cryptic wants to save this game and get their player base's time, money, and trust back, they'll need to bring balance back to the game. That will mean balancing the time vs rewards for various sources of resource gathering (queues and other team or solo pve content), and it will mean bringing back a level playing field for players to play on. That means making it much, much easier to level up a character, and instead making the customization choices you make when you're finished leveling actually make the difference. It also wouldn't hurt to bring this kind of balance to the realm of PvP, as well as a number of other desperately needed things for that area of the game such as a reward system or a ranking system, and possibly some sort of tiered queuing system based on player ability (not just gear level).
These may seem like daunting tasks, or even too expensive to be feasible, but that simply means you need to think more creatively. Cryptic needs to take a few steps back before it can really take better steps forwards. It's gone down the wrong path here, and I'm not sure how much clearer we as players can make it for the makers and owners of the game than we already are. We all want STO to succeed, and many of us have put our hard earned cash towards helping it do so in the past. Please do right by the game we all love and put us back on the path towards balanced, fun gameplay that we will feel good about paying money for.
Post edited by yellowteam1 on
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Comments
The difference here is the non-hostile, almost eloquent way of bringing these issues under a single context.
Nicely written post, OP.
you dont want to feel ripped off? dont buy into it. the balance is snafu for a reason, because they can milk the cash cow for all its worth, and why should they care for your carefully worded entitlement claim?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
That attitude has cost them so much money.
I don't think he was joking. There is a lot of topics covered here, parts of them have been discussed elsewhere and have often taken up entire rants individually. Some of them tend to put Cryptic or PWE under unfairly harsh judgement.
PWE has had STO for over two years now. I've liked many things they've done with the game, and even many things they continue to do with the game. However, the problems outlined in this post have become so large that for me personally, they've completely eclipsed the good things the company and the devs are doing even now. I want to play STO, and I'd be happy to put in money here and there for reasonable returns. However at present, I find the game unplayable and lacking any sort of appeal. The things that I would find appealing are completely negated by the constant negative feeling I get just by being logged in and seeing everything else that's wrong.
Some posters do go beyond that, but usually they're so far overboard it's good for some entertainment.
And even when they're not, again, I would expect any professional to be able to take the heat.
The stuff you read on game forums is nothing compared to the vitriol plenty of other professionals receive regularly.
But is it it true that it's bad for the game? in what manner is it bad?
Every time a new lockbox ship is announced I see people saying "Wow, this ship is really powerful, I must buy it". Sure, there are some that scream "oh no,more power creep".
But if the former is buying and the later is complaining but not leaving. At least the business side of the game isn't hurt at all.
So did things really get wrong? From our perspective, that may be something we don't like and find wrong - but if we're still here, and the money is flowing (even if it is not coming from you personally*)... Than you have not much to convince Cryptic from changing and putting more focus on balancing the game.
You'd have to somehow show that balance will be good for business. But can you? Are there examples of games similar to STO that improved their balance and became more succesful than before?
*)But remember, pretty much anyone playing this game is directly or indirectyl contributing t Cryptic making money. if you sell dilithium, you are creating incentive for Dilithium buyers to purchase Zen. If you buy or sell stuff on the Exchange you might be contributing to other people buying and selling lockboxes and master keys. If you're playing queued content, you are helping others make Diltihium they can sell for Zen. if yo're in an active fleet with a Starbase, you may have people that use the Exchange or Dilithium exchange to get stuff for the fleet projects.
Because the only design devs earning their pay these days are the ones milking the genre into death with these rng boxes.
Whether Cryptic/PWE listens to that feed back, or not, is no different they choice to play or not play.
The feedback he provided was not rude. He stated how he felts and why. We don't have to agree with his feed back. We can leave our own if we have a different view and why.
There is no reason for us to dismiss how he feels or to tell him he shouldn't express himself. Even if Cryptic doesn't listen he at least know he said what he needed to say even if it does go nowhere.
I'll max out these specialization points in my own time, and at a casual pace. I'm not going to jump into the game several times a week and grind Argala; that's as boring as hell. I wont ridicule anyone else for doing that, but (for me) it truly sucks any enjoyment out of the game (what enjoyment there is left that is). I don't personally see the point of grinding Argala (or the Tau Dewa patrols when they worked) to max out specialization points - what is one to do once they've got there? They'll be bored, depressed, and likely wont play for a good chunk of time cause they'll have exhausted their STO experience.
Edit: You're not wrong in what you say, balance is an important concept, and the current level progression is an insult to anyone who has (or who desires to play) more than a single character - especially casual gamers, it's just not feasible. Regardless, I think a lot of this is pressure from PWE, and as Cryptic are owned by them, I doubt they've much of a say. I can't begin to ponder what internal politics are like, but so long as Cryptic are underneath PWE, we're stuck with that we've got.
Personally, I feel one of the biggest things hurting the game at the moment is the percentage-based bonuses - it is increasing every bit of power-creep exponentially each time.
Unfortunately, changing it at this point would take a lot of effort and undoubtedly ruffle a lot of feathers in the process due the large reduction to everything and the usual transitional 'growing pains'. Delta Rising was a great opportunity to 'revamp' stat distribution, but that ship has already sailed. It also seems like things are going in the opposite direction with the more recent additions being primarily percentage-based(the Vaadwaur Restrictor universal console and the Anchored trait being prime examples).
That doesnt necessarily mean no balance (between classes for example) can be achieved it just means its not in their interest to do so because they want you to buy the next ship with the new trait/console/layout and if that trait/console/layout is op it sells better.
yeah, kinda
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Vaadwaur_Astika_Heavy_Battlecruiser
required for trait
_per_ character, not account
I can tell you, that has created a lot of resentment in the many chat channels that I frequent
In addition to dropping down XP, Fleet Marks have dropped down per run as well. This means that it takes far more runs of Fleet Mark Missions to be able to pull off the upgrades. This is yet another example of inequity in the game. It makes it a penalty against starting a new fleet now. It also imposes a penalty among those who are still trying to max out their base.
It seems to give the message of get in on fleets with maxed bases, the rest are yet another time sink in a game that is pretty time intensive as it stands.
I shall play on. I just wish it was as fun as it used to be.
Had a nice little friends and family guild? Well, you'd find out who were truly friends as everyone else would bail to a guild with all the quality of life perks, which were not of a trivial effect to normal gameplay. Cheaper repairs, faster travels, mass summons, mass rez.
To stay in business, the f2p model was developed, which has alienated a large portion of the remaining players, but is the direct result of the original design issues.
I feel, Cryptic has lost its way and forgot that games are supposed to be fun, not frustrating.
If I'm playing other games, I'm not playing STO, which means, I become less and less invested and that translates into fewer keys baught and the c-store just doesn't matter to me anymore.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this.
I could say more, but, what's the point.
You sir, are a one of the worst trolls in these forums and i am not jesting.
If u cant see the purpose of this "carefully worded entitlement claim" then fine ... but u should take your advice and if u feel this is pointless then"don"t buy into it".
Loyalty takes flight when your "friends" TRIBBLE you over the most favorable aspects, like dumping all thier resources into things which yield the most favorable number of credits in exchange, or using up the provisions before everyone gets thier fair share.
That's a "loyalty" issue, and it certainly is NOT owned by those taking flight from such immaturity.
Gods forbid that opinions be expressed on a forum ... .
Right after you show us your credentials as a moderator .
(or any credentials what so ever , other then trolling from up a mighty high horse)
As for the OP , it's a nice (and wordy) sentiment , but Cryptic has taken hardcore to selling power .
They call it "abilities" , but that's just fancy rewording for systems and power .
To achieve "balance" you would actually have to care about stuff like "how things like that effect the rest of the game ?" .
The example of Cryptic's "care" can be exemplified by the quote below :
... and that's the way they roll ...
Why should devs care ? Well i am not sure how many fat cows are in this game but if most players leave they will be some very lonely cows ... trying to play one STF after DR has become long waiting game at some hours of the day, if more leave ... But hey maybe the devs will make STF playable solo then, cows should have enough dps ... wait, would this still be a mmo then ?
I hate it when people wave that word around in response to player criticism, as it tends to ignore the fact that PWE isn't entitled to anything, either.
I mean, every time I read that word, as though PWE is making a game for the world to enjoy out of the pure goodness of their own hearts and how dare anybody ask them to change it? It's more like "Leave Brittany Alone!" not some kind of reasonable point.
The game as a money maker (which is the reason for existence of ANY product) is a negotiation between content creator (Cryptic) and player (us). The publisher (PWE) is merely a middleman between the two and would do well to stay out of their way (PWE does not often stay out of the way, and that's one source of the game's problems).
While there's only one content creator, there are a myriad of players with different paths to their respective wallets.
Some like window dressing, others like solid gameplay. These desires are not mutually exclusive. Solid gameplay, however, is mutually exclusive from sales by power creep.
I, too, have abandoned my alts. They now generate some extra dilithium during special events and that's about it. Only one character has (and ever will) completed the Delta Rising Missions and completed a sub-specilization (I'm a long, long damn way from even thinking about finishing a primary one). I do not find playing Argala 500 times a week fun or worth my time, so I'm basically locked out of the newly-tuned high-level content until I eventually get to level 110 or 150 through what used to be considered normal gameplay.
I and players like me used to be reliable sources of income for services and some window dressing. Now there's so little for me to do in the game until I finished re-leveling so as to not TRIBBLE my teammates in the content I used to enjoy playing (once I ran Elite STFs, now I'm eating humble pie in Advanced) that it's almost pointless for me to play at all outside of the occasional new or reworked story mission or the special events.
And why should I give PWE one cent in this situation? Damn right I'm "entitled." I'm entitled to my own money. I'm entitled to spend it as I please. And I'm entitled to make suggestions to those who wish for me to relinquish that money. I'm entitled to set those conditions. To think anything else is illogical.
These "entitlement" posts, wether well-stated or not, is the player opening negations with the content creator. A perfectly natural and expected state of affairs.
But let's be real; unless OP (or for that matter, many of those writing about many of Cryptic's "wrongs" in their opinion) was a big-name gamer or reviewer in the gaming world, with legions of fans or followers, it's unlikely any action will ever be taken, and even if so, it wouldn't conform to what those writers wanted or hoped.
I approve of the level-headed writing, but it should have stated OPINION: in the title and at the start. As it is, it still comes off as one supposedly representing the many, rather than an OPINION that can be discussed civilly.
Oh how I love you for this!
Peanuts!
Pop Corn!
Hot Nuts! Get yer Hot Nuts Here!!!
hahahahhhaaaa
You would have been better off posting this on STO's Reddit, as hyperionx09 suggested.
Because, as evident in this thread already, and like the proverbial apple barrel, it only takes one or two to cause things to go south real quick.
Just saying.
Well said by the way.
I also believe that everyone has a right to post their thoughts on the state of the game good or bad.
Just as everyone has the right to praise or put those posts down.
I personally find posting a cathartic experience if nothing else.
I'm not a developer, nor do I work in the video game industry.
STO is the first MMORPG that I've managed to stick with. The initial learning curve and adjustment to the MMORPG genre was hard for me, and my love of Star Trek is what kept me through it. I've been playing since Feb 2012, and played pretty much every day for well over two years.
I've been a fleet leader of four or five different fleets of different sizes at different times. I'm currently still a co-leader of a fully upgraded fed fleet called Quantum Mechanics.
I'm one of the admins of a non-official STO facebook group called Star Trek Online, which has close to 12,000 members in it.
I've occasionally played with and do talk with some of the highest DPS performers in the game. I don't mean that last one as a bragging point, but simply as a way of showing that I'm familiar with how the endgame mechanics function.
I'm a lifetime subscriber, and I have about 15 characters on my account that are all level 50, with a couple of them at or close to 60. I have characters of all different careers and factions.
I've spent maybe 3,500 hours in game total so far. I'm not currently actively logging in these days. This is partially due to the general state of the game, and partially due to some computer issues of my own that have complicated the couple of attempts I've made to get back into the game a bit. I do keep up with current changes in the game through others that are still active.
Hopefully that gives you a decent idea of who it is that is "stating their opinion as fact". I'm not trying to claim to be an ultimate authority on any of this, but simply trying to voice the frustration and desires of many people I've come in contact with as well as my own.