I stopped playing STO after DR was released (I wasn't really happy in the direction the game was going), but I recently came back, and it seems to me that there's just less people. I find it hard now to get into a game for many PvE queues that were before, very easy to get in to, I never see zone chat when I used to see walls of text in DS9 and ESD, and the clan I was a part of, Nova Core, has shut down due to the clan "not being a community", which I think is what's happening to this game. I still see people around but it just feels like there's less somehow. Am I imagining this? Has anyone else noticed anything similar?
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Nova Core was shut down? I knew PVP was hanging on by a single hand hold before DR, but after DR, well...
I never thought that the game would die after DR. But I knew the population would be greatly diminished. Hell, you can even see this touch STOwiki. It used to be updated very diligently before DR. But it seems a good number of contributors left STO. Because you'll notice lots of things Post-DR have not been updated. Before DR, the newest things were put into the wiki within a day or two going live. Not so anymore.
There are more PvE queues than there used to be, so people are more spread out. That does not mean there are less people, but it may mean it takes longer for a queue to fill up, which can give that impression. I have no idea or comment about a specific fleet and their issues.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
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There are some queues that are impossible to get teams for but that's more due to the failure criteria rather than a lack of people.
The failure criteria do seem to have had a rather lasting effect unfortunately.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
It took a long time to lose player confidence, and I think it will take some effort to pull it back. I used to make reasonable EC from purple farming, but competitive PvE hardly fills up now, and when they do you only receive purple MK12 which has been totally devalued by the upgrade system, that coupled with massively decreased vendor item value pretty much killed EC making for me.
Is it dying compared to Champions Online? Absolutely not lol.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Believe it or not...
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
If Star Wars Galaxies endured the playerbase annihilation of the NGE update in 2005 but still linger on until shutdown in Dec 2011, anything can live on. Diminished, yes. But not necessarily shutdown.
As for zone chat. Yeah DS9 is dead, don't think I've ever seen anyone talk in zone there ESD on the other hand? I really wish people would shut up as most of the conversation, if you can call it that, is rather horrible. Something similar goes for sector space, Delta Quadrant is dead, Beta is intermittent and Alpha is of the ESD quality. So I, along with most of my fleet, is one of those people who are there but you'll almost never see me in zone chat anywhere. The quality of conversation is too low for me to go there except in emergency. So if you're worried about the dead zone chats, blame trolls and other on-line bullies for the rest of us ignoring it.
And SWG only shut down because TOR was coming out and they didnt' want 2 SW MMOs competing against each other. As far as Champs, Cryptic owns the IP, and superheroes happen to be pretty popular in pop culture ATM.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
To me DR didn't help much. As most players didn't like having to grind the same content and DOFF to gain levels. I did it since I kept on playing. Now its not that bad since I'm leveled off. To me it did hurt my other alts I like to play some as well. And in that case is hurting those fleets they was in since I couldn't help them as well on projects.
I can understand the level grind to prevent players from blasting through the little content they offered. But on the other hand it hurt the player base. Fleet's player base dropped, and it killed my chances to play my other alts other than my main 3. Which in turn is less $ STO made cause I had new ships planned to buy for those characters.
Is it dying? I don't think so. We lost players, but the game is still going. I see lock boxes still opening up, and new ships being used as they release them.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
I know the Champs devs are hard at work, but the question is how long before they finish what they are working on?
My character Tsin'xing
With the series of nerfs/takaways that happened in relation to XP and Dil, I saw a slew of players just...*poof* gone. It's like they ragequit offline. I just simply reduced my time by at least 75%.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
This simply isn't true. Everyone who used to pug are now using private to play or are playing an event? Really. A few people have been saying this since DR. Log on now and look at the queues for prime time Friday, they are empty. It is like that on all nights now. This is not what is use to be like by a long shot. I'm apart of a very large fleet that always had chat going, now there is hardly anyone around. People didn't make a dear John forum post, they just left.
I've noticed a steep decline in active players since DR. Is STO dead, no, has it taken a big hit from poor decisions, yes.
The Solonae Battlezone was the best one they every put out in terms of play and repeateable play with the good rewards, even after a number of nerfs.
STO isn't dead, just the occasional hamster.
does the Entry of new players balances out the Leaving VETS? possibly , though everything is different from a personal perspective , the content you play might see a decline while other content peaks , its all based now on what the best reward for the time spent . which is why certain queues are ghost towns .
just my few strips .
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
Except for a couple more PvE queues this is the same game as it was last October when DR launched. PvP is totally dead and past life support for sure. This means no more intelligent planning nor strategy to take down intelligent human foes. Nowadays, the best foe are just senseless NPCs and there is an insatiable need to increase DPS with the coolest consoles/traits/specs to take down those same NPCs.
Since DR, Cryptic has been active to keep the few players "on" by bribing them with new cool toys tight up to FEs. Can't remember the time in which they offer so many weekend events back to back (period from October to Summer 2015 event) to keep players on.
It is practically the same game as it was in DR. Dead...not really but IMO kind of close to it. However, kudos to PWE for trying to keep the line alive with new players coming in from SWTOR, WOW and the other MMOs.
I myself used to enjoy PVPs and that's all I did for the former 4 years prior to DR. Since DR killed it...I adjusted to it and my fleet is what motivates me to keep on going. I'm very sad for the old PvPers who left and took all that keen sense to strategize in this game. So many great people left due to DR.
Then again, new people come but IMO still the outflow was more pronounced that the current inflow. Up to PWE to redefine this game and hope they will at least try to keep on enticing new players to offset the losses of the past.
My fleet is still pretty strong but there is less chat than there used to be and some of the old timers are not around now. I think the STF ques do not pop like they used to is mainly due to the reward nerfs along with the increase in difficulty and time gated fail conditions, not because everyone went to premade groups. They simply are not rewarding enough for the time spent with the possibility of failure for even less or no reward. It gets even worse when a failure is caused by trolls. I know they took the failure conditions from Advanced ques but the rewards are still subpar for the time invested and the wait time for them to pop.
That is my two cents for what it is worth. I still play but not as much as I did before DR and I don't spend any cash mainly because STO is not as much fun as it was pre DR. Sto is probably still pretty healthy financial wise but it has disappointed a lot of players with the forced DPS power creep.
I don't care what the devs say, the amount of players has dropped off considerably from what it used to be before DR.
Besides going to be 50th anniversary soon and a new movie. Perhaps that will drive more people. My fleet has gotten busier lately.
Fleet Leader of:
Liberty Task Force/Liberty Honor Guard
Pride of the Federation/Pride of the Empire
Liberty Guardians
U.S.S. Liberty, NX-42813-L, T-6 Legendary Odyssey Class
Game Handle: Grayfox@GrayfoxJames
Website: https://www.libertytaskforce.com
Armada (STOFA Member Fleet): https://www.libertytaskforce.com/stofa
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Twitter: STOFA@LTFGrayfox
Email: CSDynamix@Hotmail.com
My character Tsin'xing