Poor planning means that some things don't work as intended.
Poor Q&A processes means they don't catch the problems.
Poor Support means the problems are often ignored, then laughed at by people like Gecko.
My game crashes 2-3 times per 2 hour session.
But there is hope.
The new Ep is engaged, communicates regularly, and a plan exists for the game for the next year. Thats a huge change from last year. They are starting to address the various defects that enable ridiculous DPS. Small but noticeable improves have happened, most recently in the Foundry's accessibility.
But with each step forward, we get new problems. UI is still painfully slow. The lag during prime time here on the west coast is nuts. Oh and the mysterious CTD's that plague many. Heck even P1 Podcast made mention of it during their usually Cryptic-Friendly commentary.
As a Star Trek fan, I have waaay too much hope for the future. Maybe i need to be more of a Firefly/BSG/Blakes Seven fan.
There's a "secret" spot in the game where you can have loads of fun, totally unaffected by any updates. A few dozen players have been exploiting this secret spot like mad to have fun since season 9. The funny thing is the devs STILL have no idea this area exists. To find it can be a simple task or an extremely difficult one, depending on your mindset. One is not simply invited to the secret fun spot. Open your mind, take a good look around, and if you're lucky, you'll find it.
I work on my theme captains (a very small subset of my roster).
Working on my Solane Dyson science captain, horrible Dyson consoles and all. Unlikely to ever see many spec points beyond what one picks up from 51-60. Solanae ship bits with Dyson weapons.
Going to work on an engineer for the Samsar. In the same boat as the previous captain for spec points. Kobali ship bits with who knows what for rep.
Should figure out which mothballed captain is going to get stuck in the Breen carrier.
Finally broke down and bought a T6 ship, my Risian Corvette torpedo bomber captain will use the trait and my cannon boat captain will use the ship. As close as I can call anyone a main the torp bomber is it but the spec points will be a long time coming. Cannon captain will likely only see the 51-60 spec points. I love the Kumaris but I don't want to throw money on upgrades on an end of lifed ship. Basically my Kumari, Oddy, and Vesta three packs are in the bone yards and free T5-U and T6 (with the exception of the Phantom) are all I'll fly.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You kinda described my feelings towards WoW after that games most recent expansion. I came back to STO in January after burning out on the WoW equivalent of Doff (which feels far more mandatory than here) ... since I hadn't played seriously in years so many things feel fresh to me.
I mean, with the exception of logging in for the ambassador event the last time i seriously played exploration clusters were still a thing, all romulans were evil, and reputations didn't exist. I've been thoroughly enjoying myself, though i still hate certain aspects of the game, such as ground combat (that system is absolutely HORRIBLE, and shooter mode, the "fix", made it even worse!)
Lifetime Subscriber since Beta ^ Click image to listen to my favorite Trek theme song! ^
More often than not, I just log in to do doff missions or grind some points for special events.
What is fun in this game these days?
Anyone like to share what some good fun things they do?
Every patch has nerfs and now it seems to only time you can get rewarding xp or dil is during the weekend events.
All the added and new cool downs just waste more of my limited play time.
The only reason that keeps me from giving up on this game is that I'm a Star Trek Fan for many many years.
First, I rp like it's Star Wars.
After the nerf to all things fun...I'm not sure Cryptic wants us to play anymore.
All I'm doing now is getting my alts lvl'd and Borg STF/Voth BG ready then...IDK.
I feel more sorry for the new players.
That's one hell of a learning curve and excessive grind or mucho $$.
NO to ARC RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
It wasn't planned, I didn't ruminate for days on end about it, I just haven't bothered clicking that cute wee arrowhead icon on the taskbar. Probably haven't installed the last two patches now, I think.
Don't get me wrong: I haven't quit, but I've lost my interest (especially after the underwhelming Romulan arc revamp). For now, I'll poke my head in whenever there's a new mission for my main, but I won't be grinding to Mk XIV, I won't be finishing off my two unlevelled alts (KDF and RR), and I won't bother with anything that requires repeating the same thing dozens of times.
I still have fun leveling up alts, flying new ships, trying new loadouts, playing new content (finally did the DR episodes just over a week ago).
I still need to do most of the Deferra ground missions, most of the STFs, and the Foundry so I don't expect to be bored any time soon.
If you've done it all and there's nothing you want to keep doing, then you should stop for awhile. Come back when there's new content. The point of playing is supposed to be to have fun, not farm dil or marks.
Life's short, play something else if you aren't enjoying STO. But before you go, can I has your stuffs?
Delta Rising basically redefined the game from being a casual mmo it was to a hardcore mmo like the rest. If you're the sort of player that pushes a 70k dps build and likes running nothing but premades with other like minded players around a vent server and headsets then this is the best expansion ever. If you were a casual that liked to pug and still get a lot out of the game without a large investment however, this xpack was a big debbie downer.
People's opinion of the expansion will likely depend on which side of the fence they fall upon.
Did KDF fleet alert, ended up rubberbanding-lag like mad, the ships wouldn't shoot or turn or respond to commands, after a long fight getting nausea we ended up failing despite having no problem till the last round keeping the base at full health. Funny enough the shuttle event on the same map had no such lag whatsoever.
I bet anyone the next patch notes will have no mention of this, and if I lose this bet, the fix will work for 1 week, and then revert back the following, after which it will simply be neglected on the false excuse that nobody plays KDF (as if the Fed queue is any less deserted).
The pug queues for colony invasion are at a constant zero. So is Klingon Starbase Incursion. And so is Nebula Rescue. Defera's on 20 h cool-down. Crystalline entity's been played over and over it's just madness at this point waiting for the next cool-down. I find those maps fairly fun to collect some fleet marks yet can't play them.
Roll back this morning, 3.5 hours of gameplay, 3 system-wide computer freezes of the kind requiring hard-reset - no change in hardware or software of any kind whatsoever on an otherwise fully stable system.
If that wasn't bad enough, one happened in BHE while fighting with the tray, that yet again is lagging like mad while in queues (but otherwise now finally responsive out of combat) that my character died at least 3 times due to the shield/health not activating whatsoever, causing the whole team to fail the pug as the restart took too long. One member was also absent on re-boot re-join, probably disconnected, probably gave up knowing there'd be no chance 1 person down (which was true).
Now the bright side: no disconnects today so far.
Hard as I try to ignore it, looking to the bright side of things, finding my own fun, a term keeps haunting my 6 alts. After several ouija sessions, they find a string of letters that when fed to the bootlegged EMH-I reports to spell out abandonware, an archaic 21st century term that the EMH tries in vain to explain to the group to represent its own existence prior to its rescue (abduction) scrubbing plasma vents despite being a fully capable emergency medical hologram with near-limitless potential. 'Cause I donno, maybe directly asking for a serious look at bug fixes and game stability is too blunt, so maybe a star trek inspired story get the point across better
I haven't logged in since finishing the grindaversary. No need to, nothing to do, game is pointless and on top of that is effectively unplayable. I don't even miss it, haven't felt like I needed to login for a while. I'm all out of ffffs to give.
I used to have fun doing PvP, it was mainly what I did...then I started feeling dirty with DR and the Intel stuff. I mean, lol, I'd run a Sci in a BoP with 4x Sci BOFFs at one point...and never felt dirty about it. DR, Intel, and yeah...I stopped because it became tainted...meh, I didn't feel abused - I felt abusive. Just not any fun for me.
I used to have fun hitting up all sorts of Space PVE queues. That started to die off before DR, though. More and more folks just showing up for content they weren't ready for - looking for folks to carry them - trying to get their rewards off the backs of others. DR made that far worse for some odd reason. Where all sorts of folks saw their power leap with DR from the simplest of things, there were folks showing up to create a failgasm. Others got tired of it too, and the public queues died up. I don't want to do some channel run where things are done in the blink of an eye, that's not fun for me...that random group that at least has a chance to get it done from a public queue, that's where I had fun. More and more folks showing up to guarantee a failure...yeah, outside of CCA and ISA I no longer touch the queues.
I used to have fun talking about all sorts of mechanics and the like on the forums. I mainly hung out in the Builds or PvP sections to talk about how the various game mechanics worked. As time went on, more and more folks posted without a clue that there was any kind of forum infrastructure. They posted everything to General Discussion even if there were dozens of other forums where the post should have gone. This led to switching from those subforums where I was happy to Today's Post, which led to reading all sorts of things that I normally wouldn't have...which led to all sorts of arguments with folks I just never would have had...which led to me wondering about the planet needing to be hit by an asteroid because there's no hope for the species.
So when I stop to think about it, it's kind of funny (to me). When do I have the most fun in STO? When I avoid other people. No forums, no chat channels, no group content...man, I can lose track of time dorking around just having fun. It's kind of mind-boggling for me, cause I've played MMOs for over 17 years and I've never felt this way. Hell, in the past...I've been one of those "MMO guys" arguing with the folks looking for a single-player game..."Dudes, it's a MMO...other people...get it?" But you know what? I just don't really want to play with most of the people playing this game anymore...I want to stick my head in the sand (yeah, something I once accused somebody of wanting to do) and just pretend they're not there.
And here I thought my mother and myself were the only ones to watch and remember Blake's Seven. *cheers*
Nope and I hated how they ended that to, remember watching it with my dad as I grew up, came on right after Doctor Who. My dad was cussing for a month after that last fire fight
sure sto is not without its problems, there are some things that need fixing like the frequent disconnects and pve que missions need making more playable.
overall I still enjoy the game though and can always find something to do to fill the time I have.
there have been a lot of good things brought to sto lately like T6 ships, ship mastery, specializations, the new crafting system and weapons upgrading that all add extra rewards and goals to aim for.
if you are not enjoying the game perhaps you are concentrating on the wrong stuff and need to find some different things in the game to try.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
If you are still in the game after DR, you are a hardcore whale.
So what keeps them playing? They ain't got nothing else to play and, or, are star trek fanatics.
Sure as hell isn't the gameplay...
Of course the developer apologists will come out and try to rationalize why they sabotaged the game, paying the developers money for ruining the game, saying they decided to protect the game when really they have no choice, being no-life subs, and are actually ruining the game.
To me it's funny because the developers defintely wants you to worship them but their behavior shows you they are actually like small children, who when left un-checked, cannot be trust lighting the house on fire and torturing the cat etc.
At the same time my gut feeling tells me they are royally ashamed of themselves - they might to some degree have gotten away with copy-paste, the nerfing of everything and adding super grinding but game is what it is, no one can out-lie reality.
Do you see a single developer standing up for the game? And justifying what they've done? No you do not.
What I am see is the game getting progressively worse and with the whales having to buy, no matter what, there is no kill switch, there is no regulation.
And so there will be no limitation on how crappy it can get which is what we are seeing now
Well fun is a highly subjective thingy. For me its simply: Grab a few fellow fleet mates / ingame friends I know for up to three years and queue up for some PVE!
Basically all other activities I do are just to progress my toons (one thing that everyone does in every mmopg) and are only activities I endure to have more fun with the fun part later on.
Grind boring Argala for XP, Grind boring BZ for Dil, Grind recourses for base, send Doffs to work, play the exchange, pay RL money to get a new shiny, deal with the current ev-..no grindv-ent. All of that is not fun but I keep on doing it in order to have more fun later on and its sad how substantial this TRIBBLE has become. But by itself this is ok if it helps the game running.
However the situation turned very bad atm because general participation in PvE maps is as low as ever meaning my only way to have fun in this game is as risk and the very reason I do all those things cryptic wants me to do right along with it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The only things DR added as new stuff to do was grind based content (upgrind, T6, spec...). Then, they nerfed pretty much everything that was already in the game.
The BOFF revamp was awesome, but it's not content whatsoever.
I have logged about twice in 2 weeks, and a I was basically forcing myself to complete the kobali set from the grindversary.
Before DR I logged once per day, at least.
If you are still in the game after DR, you are a hardcore whale.
I finally broke down and spent money ($20) this season to buy my first non-free T6 ship.
Since I am still here after DR apparently I am a hardcore whale for having non-fleet non-optimized (free) T5-U ships, free T6 ships, and having spent $20.
I this the "everyone gets an award" version?
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Comments
Poor planning means that some things don't work as intended.
Poor Q&A processes means they don't catch the problems.
Poor Support means the problems are often ignored, then laughed at by people like Gecko.
My game crashes 2-3 times per 2 hour session.
But there is hope.
The new Ep is engaged, communicates regularly, and a plan exists for the game for the next year. Thats a huge change from last year. They are starting to address the various defects that enable ridiculous DPS. Small but noticeable improves have happened, most recently in the Foundry's accessibility.
But with each step forward, we get new problems. UI is still painfully slow. The lag during prime time here on the west coast is nuts. Oh and the mysterious CTD's that plague many. Heck even P1 Podcast made mention of it during their usually Cryptic-Friendly commentary.
As a Star Trek fan, I have waaay too much hope for the future. Maybe i need to be more of a Firefly/BSG/Blakes Seven fan.
There's a "secret" spot in the game where you can have loads of fun, totally unaffected by any updates. A few dozen players have been exploiting this secret spot like mad to have fun since season 9. The funny thing is the devs STILL have no idea this area exists. To find it can be a simple task or an extremely difficult one, depending on your mindset. One is not simply invited to the secret fun spot. Open your mind, take a good look around, and if you're lucky, you'll find it.
Maybe we'll see you there...
I work on my theme captains (a very small subset of my roster).
Working on my Solane Dyson science captain, horrible Dyson consoles and all. Unlikely to ever see many spec points beyond what one picks up from 51-60. Solanae ship bits with Dyson weapons.
Going to work on an engineer for the Samsar. In the same boat as the previous captain for spec points. Kobali ship bits with who knows what for rep.
Should figure out which mothballed captain is going to get stuck in the Breen carrier.
Finally broke down and bought a T6 ship, my Risian Corvette torpedo bomber captain will use the trait and my cannon boat captain will use the ship. As close as I can call anyone a main the torp bomber is it but the spec points will be a long time coming. Cannon captain will likely only see the 51-60 spec points. I love the Kumaris but I don't want to throw money on upgrades on an end of lifed ship. Basically my Kumari, Oddy, and Vesta three packs are in the bone yards and free T5-U and T6 (with the exception of the Phantom) are all I'll fly.
Wait , so he wasn't talking about Eppoh breeding ???
There is hope.
I will work on finding that secret spot.
I mean, with the exception of logging in for the ambassador event the last time i seriously played exploration clusters were still a thing, all romulans were evil, and reputations didn't exist. I've been thoroughly enjoying myself, though i still hate certain aspects of the game, such as ground combat (that system is absolutely HORRIBLE, and shooter mode, the "fix", made it even worse!)
^ Click image to listen to my favorite Trek theme song! ^
First, I rp like it's Star Wars.
After the nerf to all things fun...I'm not sure Cryptic wants us to play anymore.
All I'm doing now is getting my alts lvl'd and Borg STF/Voth BG ready then...IDK.
I feel more sorry for the new players.
That's one hell of a learning curve and excessive grind or mucho $$.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
It wasn't planned, I didn't ruminate for days on end about it, I just haven't bothered clicking that cute wee arrowhead icon on the taskbar. Probably haven't installed the last two patches now, I think.
Don't get me wrong: I haven't quit, but I've lost my interest (especially after the underwhelming Romulan arc revamp). For now, I'll poke my head in whenever there's a new mission for my main, but I won't be grinding to Mk XIV, I won't be finishing off my two unlevelled alts (KDF and RR), and I won't bother with anything that requires repeating the same thing dozens of times.
I still need to do most of the Deferra ground missions, most of the STFs, and the Foundry so I don't expect to be bored any time soon.
If you've done it all and there's nothing you want to keep doing, then you should stop for awhile. Come back when there's new content. The point of playing is supposed to be to have fun, not farm dil or marks.
Life's short, play something else if you aren't enjoying STO. But before you go, can I has your stuffs?
People's opinion of the expansion will likely depend on which side of the fence they fall upon.
I bet anyone the next patch notes will have no mention of this, and if I lose this bet, the fix will work for 1 week, and then revert back the following, after which it will simply be neglected on the false excuse that nobody plays KDF (as if the Fed queue is any less deserted).
The pug queues for colony invasion are at a constant zero. So is Klingon Starbase Incursion. And so is Nebula Rescue. Defera's on 20 h cool-down. Crystalline entity's been played over and over it's just madness at this point waiting for the next cool-down. I find those maps fairly fun to collect some fleet marks yet can't play them.
Roll back this morning, 3.5 hours of gameplay, 3 system-wide computer freezes of the kind requiring hard-reset - no change in hardware or software of any kind whatsoever on an otherwise fully stable system.
If that wasn't bad enough, one happened in BHE while fighting with the tray, that yet again is lagging like mad while in queues (but otherwise now finally responsive out of combat) that my character died at least 3 times due to the shield/health not activating whatsoever, causing the whole team to fail the pug as the restart took too long. One member was also absent on re-boot re-join, probably disconnected, probably gave up knowing there'd be no chance 1 person down (which was true).
Now the bright side: no disconnects today so far.
Hard as I try to ignore it, looking to the bright side of things, finding my own fun, a term keeps haunting my 6 alts. After several ouija sessions, they find a string of letters that when fed to the bootlegged EMH-I reports to spell out abandonware, an archaic 21st century term that the EMH tries in vain to explain to the group to represent its own existence prior to its rescue (abduction) scrubbing plasma vents despite being a fully capable emergency medical hologram with near-limitless potential. 'Cause I donno, maybe directly asking for a serious look at bug fixes and game stability is too blunt, so maybe a star trek inspired story get the point across better
Much food for thoughts.
Taking a break after the anniversary is over, sounds a good idea.
Currently I'm re-watching blu-ray Star Trek The next Generation series.
Up to season 4 of 7 now.
Voyager series will be next, then Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5.
About 6months of watching I think.
And here I thought my mother and myself were the only ones to watch and remember Blake's Seven. *cheers*
I used to have fun doing PvP, it was mainly what I did...then I started feeling dirty with DR and the Intel stuff. I mean, lol, I'd run a Sci in a BoP with 4x Sci BOFFs at one point...and never felt dirty about it. DR, Intel, and yeah...I stopped because it became tainted...meh, I didn't feel abused - I felt abusive. Just not any fun for me.
I used to have fun hitting up all sorts of Space PVE queues. That started to die off before DR, though. More and more folks just showing up for content they weren't ready for - looking for folks to carry them - trying to get their rewards off the backs of others. DR made that far worse for some odd reason. Where all sorts of folks saw their power leap with DR from the simplest of things, there were folks showing up to create a failgasm. Others got tired of it too, and the public queues died up. I don't want to do some channel run where things are done in the blink of an eye, that's not fun for me...that random group that at least has a chance to get it done from a public queue, that's where I had fun. More and more folks showing up to guarantee a failure...yeah, outside of CCA and ISA I no longer touch the queues.
I used to have fun talking about all sorts of mechanics and the like on the forums. I mainly hung out in the Builds or PvP sections to talk about how the various game mechanics worked. As time went on, more and more folks posted without a clue that there was any kind of forum infrastructure. They posted everything to General Discussion even if there were dozens of other forums where the post should have gone. This led to switching from those subforums where I was happy to Today's Post, which led to reading all sorts of things that I normally wouldn't have...which led to all sorts of arguments with folks I just never would have had...which led to me wondering about the planet needing to be hit by an asteroid because there's no hope for the species.
So when I stop to think about it, it's kind of funny (to me). When do I have the most fun in STO? When I avoid other people. No forums, no chat channels, no group content...man, I can lose track of time dorking around just having fun. It's kind of mind-boggling for me, cause I've played MMOs for over 17 years and I've never felt this way. Hell, in the past...I've been one of those "MMO guys" arguing with the folks looking for a single-player game..."Dudes, it's a MMO...other people...get it?" But you know what? I just don't really want to play with most of the people playing this game anymore...I want to stick my head in the sand (yeah, something I once accused somebody of wanting to do) and just pretend they're not there.
Nope and I hated how they ended that to, remember watching it with my dad as I grew up, came on right after Doctor Who. My dad was cussing for a month after that last fire fight
overall I still enjoy the game though and can always find something to do to fill the time I have.
there have been a lot of good things brought to sto lately like T6 ships, ship mastery, specializations, the new crafting system and weapons upgrading that all add extra rewards and goals to aim for.
if you are not enjoying the game perhaps you are concentrating on the wrong stuff and need to find some different things in the game to try.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
So what keeps them playing? They ain't got nothing else to play and, or, are star trek fanatics.
Sure as hell isn't the gameplay...
Of course the developer apologists will come out and try to rationalize why they sabotaged the game, paying the developers money for ruining the game, saying they decided to protect the game when really they have no choice, being no-life subs, and are actually ruining the game.
To me it's funny because the developers defintely wants you to worship them but their behavior shows you they are actually like small children, who when left un-checked, cannot be trust lighting the house on fire and torturing the cat etc.
At the same time my gut feeling tells me they are royally ashamed of themselves - they might to some degree have gotten away with copy-paste, the nerfing of everything and adding super grinding but game is what it is, no one can out-lie reality.
Do you see a single developer standing up for the game? And justifying what they've done? No you do not.
What I am see is the game getting progressively worse and with the whales having to buy, no matter what, there is no kill switch, there is no regulation.
And so there will be no limitation on how crappy it can get which is what we are seeing now
Well fun is a highly subjective thingy. For me its simply: Grab a few fellow fleet mates / ingame friends I know for up to three years and queue up for some PVE!
Basically all other activities I do are just to progress my toons (one thing that everyone does in every mmopg) and are only activities I endure to have more fun with the fun part later on.
Grind boring Argala for XP, Grind boring BZ for Dil, Grind recourses for base, send Doffs to work, play the exchange, pay RL money to get a new shiny, deal with the current ev-..no grindv-ent. All of that is not fun but I keep on doing it in order to have more fun later on and its sad how substantial this TRIBBLE has become. But by itself this is ok if it helps the game running.
However the situation turned very bad atm because general participation in PvE maps is as low as ever meaning my only way to have fun in this game is as risk and the very reason I do all those things cryptic wants me to do right along with it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
The BOFF revamp was awesome, but it's not content whatsoever.
I have logged about twice in 2 weeks, and a I was basically forcing myself to complete the kobali set from the grindversary.
Before DR I logged once per day, at least. No offense, but as you may know, there is actually a Star Wars MMO, and it's f2p. Well, it's more a free to try than anything else, but I digress.
Fun and STO thats an oxymoron because STO is not fun its a job and work is not fun
Dont try to have FUN its forbidden in this game
Timegated game...and time gated forum
Nerfs as far as the eye can see
All good thoughts on the current state of fun in STO.
Food for thought.
I finally broke down and spent money ($20) this season to buy my first non-free T6 ship.
Since I am still here after DR apparently I am a hardcore whale for having non-fleet non-optimized (free) T5-U ships, free T6 ships, and having spent $20.
I this the "everyone gets an award" version?
I used to like doing elite STFs before the revamp but now I barely log in at all.
"I hate the game yet I'm going to keep playing it and hang out on the game's official forums talking about how much I hate it" = cool dude