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My problem with STO and how to fix it
plansta629
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I started playing this game way back in fall of 2012(I was 14 then) and I loved it, STO is definitely a little under rated for the content that it has. I played for a while and I was a pretty bad player until I joined some fleets and eventually found my way to a group of PvP players the Turkish RP Heroes. So I became very competitive and I spent quite a lot of money and time into the game so that we could be some of the best players in the game. I was a good player at the game obviously not the best but I put effort into basically until Delta Rising came out. The transaction history on arc wasn't working but I know that I spent over $300 on Zen and the New Romulus pack on this game and everything that i used that money on is now USELESS.
The most recent thing to TRIBBLE me off was the addition of the JHSS. I own the JHAS and I spent $50 and over 20 hours trying to get that ship and I finally got it and got the full character probably only 2 months away from the release of Delta Rising. The JHAS was worth so much and it was at the time the only ship in the escort meta and now not even 6 months later it is obsolete and replaced by another ship that is equally as expensive or time consuming to obtain, not even an upgrade token for JHAS owners. As I said the game is a lot of fun to play but it is only fun if you are on an equal playing field as everyone else and I stopped playing early fall of 2014 and so much has come out that for me to even try to get competitive again it would either take months or $100s to get there. I look at the amount of Grind that I have to do if I ever want to even PvE again and it's just way too much.
For those of you who don't know Free to Play games like STO are designed to keep players for 3-6 months and milk them for as much money in that time as possible. That is where the problem lies in this game, the game is not a complete game, it's an advertisement for ZEN. The way that they keep you playing for long enough to spend enough money is by periodically releasing content (Reputations) that you will have to grind through and it will occupy you for a couple months. Most players leave the game after a couple months because that's when the first purchases they made become invalid.
I can't just rant for 3 paragraphs without offering a solution so here is what I think could be done to keep players and make everyone hate cryptic a little less. The first step is to cut ZEN prices for ships drastically, Tier 5-U and Tier 6 ships should cost max $10. Also master keys should cost $0.50 or less. This one may be a little difficult: ALL SHIPS THAT ARE OR PREVIOUSLY WERE PART OF THE PVP AND PVE META SHOULD STILL BE PART OF THE CURRENT META. That would probably mean that ships would have to go through refreshes probably just bumping the stats every time a ship starts obsolete at NO COST. I feel like lockbox ships(including the JHAS) should be on the same stat and meta level as ZEN ships, the way to balance this is by making lockbox ships more flexible and be more interesting than ZEN ships (A bit like how legendary cards are in Hearthstone) and they would also look better.
Finally the reputation system needs to go away and be replaced by more meaningful and story driven content. No one in this game actually likes doing the same 2 PvE queues every day for reputation marks we just do it so we can complete our builds. Obviously this would mean that there needs to be more story mission content probably voiced too. As for what would happen to the reputation system I can't really think of a great solution that leaves everything that was there originally but makes it less time consuming. Probably just shortening the time to complete the reputation trees and providing marks from story missions. If reputation becomes easier to get through for players then the queues that exist should get a bump in difficulty and become a bit of a challenge that pre-made teams can brag about.
Anyway I don't what this to be as much an attack on STO as it is a critique I legitimately wish I could play this game but the barrier to entry is now way to high for me to even consider. Thanks to everyone who didn't just read the TL;DR and please post your own opinions and responses.
TL;DR
I'm a long time player fed up with how much time, effort and money it costs to have fun at the game. Major overhauls to the economy, balance and reputations would have to be made for this game to be fun for me and probably many others to want to play again
~Ben
The most recent thing to TRIBBLE me off was the addition of the JHSS. I own the JHAS and I spent $50 and over 20 hours trying to get that ship and I finally got it and got the full character probably only 2 months away from the release of Delta Rising. The JHAS was worth so much and it was at the time the only ship in the escort meta and now not even 6 months later it is obsolete and replaced by another ship that is equally as expensive or time consuming to obtain, not even an upgrade token for JHAS owners. As I said the game is a lot of fun to play but it is only fun if you are on an equal playing field as everyone else and I stopped playing early fall of 2014 and so much has come out that for me to even try to get competitive again it would either take months or $100s to get there. I look at the amount of Grind that I have to do if I ever want to even PvE again and it's just way too much.
For those of you who don't know Free to Play games like STO are designed to keep players for 3-6 months and milk them for as much money in that time as possible. That is where the problem lies in this game, the game is not a complete game, it's an advertisement for ZEN. The way that they keep you playing for long enough to spend enough money is by periodically releasing content (Reputations) that you will have to grind through and it will occupy you for a couple months. Most players leave the game after a couple months because that's when the first purchases they made become invalid.
I can't just rant for 3 paragraphs without offering a solution so here is what I think could be done to keep players and make everyone hate cryptic a little less. The first step is to cut ZEN prices for ships drastically, Tier 5-U and Tier 6 ships should cost max $10. Also master keys should cost $0.50 or less. This one may be a little difficult: ALL SHIPS THAT ARE OR PREVIOUSLY WERE PART OF THE PVP AND PVE META SHOULD STILL BE PART OF THE CURRENT META. That would probably mean that ships would have to go through refreshes probably just bumping the stats every time a ship starts obsolete at NO COST. I feel like lockbox ships(including the JHAS) should be on the same stat and meta level as ZEN ships, the way to balance this is by making lockbox ships more flexible and be more interesting than ZEN ships (A bit like how legendary cards are in Hearthstone) and they would also look better.
Finally the reputation system needs to go away and be replaced by more meaningful and story driven content. No one in this game actually likes doing the same 2 PvE queues every day for reputation marks we just do it so we can complete our builds. Obviously this would mean that there needs to be more story mission content probably voiced too. As for what would happen to the reputation system I can't really think of a great solution that leaves everything that was there originally but makes it less time consuming. Probably just shortening the time to complete the reputation trees and providing marks from story missions. If reputation becomes easier to get through for players then the queues that exist should get a bump in difficulty and become a bit of a challenge that pre-made teams can brag about.
Anyway I don't what this to be as much an attack on STO as it is a critique I legitimately wish I could play this game but the barrier to entry is now way to high for me to even consider. Thanks to everyone who didn't just read the TL;DR and please post your own opinions and responses.
TL;DR
I'm a long time player fed up with how much time, effort and money it costs to have fun at the game. Major overhauls to the economy, balance and reputations would have to be made for this game to be fun for me and probably many others to want to play again
~Ben
CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHUUUUUUUUUUUUUDG
Post edited by plansta629 on
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Comments
PvP: It's dead Jim. DR killed it.
The rest: This game only caters to whales and casuals now. The only competition left is DPS e-peen comparing or exchange undercutting.
The solution: Let it go.
By the way, the JHSS isn't a relevant ship in either PvP or PvE.
Its not just that PvP is dead it was pretty much always dead. I guess I'm still a little bit butthurt about how Cryptic screwed up Star Trek and maybe the best solution is to hope they die in hole and the license is given to someone nice like bioware.
Also I wasn't insta-vaped in Kerrat but it was pretty sad how much I sucked.
I'll find a good home for it. You can trust me, my name's Big Lou. :cool:
Also, the bugship's been out of the top seat ever since the Scimitard, FPER, and Nicor came out. The recent t6s like the Vaadwaur OPscort just made it more obsolete.
It's what happened to me lol. I haven't PvPed since. Surgical Strikes with disables... just terrible. Especially when they could chain disable, fire 50k single DHC shots while cloaked and Neutronic was still broken.
Queues would still pop pre-DR, now the queues are a bunch of goose eggs. DR was the nail in the coffin I guess.
I only take out the bug on rare occasion.
I must have missed where Trek was all about people killing each other. Let's see, how did it go again...
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Her five-year mission:
To explore strange new forms of combat.
To seek out new life and new civilizations, and destroy them.
To boldly blow up what no man has blown up before!
Wasn't that it?
Hehe, half the queues were dead before DR.
The #1 cause of queue death is people deciding they no longer require that type of mark. Usually because they finished that rep.
I thought PvP died in season 5? or was it 4? I forget....
My character Tsin'xing
Yeah you're right PvP is not what star trek is, but STO right now is not what star trek is either. Right now in STO there is just too much of a focus on grinding which if i'm not mistaken is entirely KILLING npc's.
Last time I checked Kirk wasn't captain of MINING ship Enterprise.
I also think that its just bad business to make the customer feel like their purchases are invalidated after a couple months.
And I know why
ahm.. anyway
Can the forum mods please either
a) put the thread into any of the other 30 game related sections and not the RPG and everything else one.
b) make the forum section descriptions bigger
c) hire an forum counselor or
d) send me one of those Dr. Pepper drinks, never had that one. Oh sorry, thats "beverage" over there.
No. Dr. Pepper is awful. 23 flavors of ferengi lobes.
HERESY!
/10char