I'd like to see something like the Mirror Invasion event, given extra prizes to queue events. Prizes don't have to be great, but it's something to do and it's a change of pace. Also nice that something you can always do, rather than having to wait for the Na'kuhl event to pop up.
I started playing again in August and I've gone through the story episodes multiple times and have 6 admirals. I'm really not sure how long time players stand it.
So many suggestions have been put forth over the months and even years now...
Among them: random events in Pve Queues, more end-game content, more team play (need for tanks, dps, sci), harder hitting enemies who chase, travel faster and use many abilities (FBP) [improved NPC AI], more traveling in missions to make use of vast map sizes, re-balance power creep vs AI, introduce balanced PvP, lower ship tier PvE & PvP, mixed PvP/E scenarios, special event battlezones with rotating enemies/locations/objectives on adv & elite difficulties, etc. etc.
More Foundry spotlights, challenges, events, or just in general some nod that THERE'S LOTS OF STUFF YOU FOLKS COULD BE PLAYING RIGHT NOW, BOREDOM IS A SELF-INFLICTED STATE!!!
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
STO also has many social meta-MMOs within it, each with its own community, leading players, and competitive angle. The STO Economic MMO, STO DPS MMO, STO PvP MMO, STO Social Engineering MMO, and STO RPist MMO are some of the more popular ones these days.
It seems pretty common for folks to become fed up with the grind or bored of the vanilla storylines in MMOs, realize they're good at one of the emergent meta-MMOs, and find a renewed passion to stick around. After a while, they find they're playing a very different game than most of the other players.
Anyone who has been in STO for years would be aware of the periodic cycles of "boredom" here in STO that are usually made worse between MAJOR updates/Seasons.
This is NOT a doom comment but a way to capture ways to let STO what they should be doing to make this game more "active" during those periods of time.
Year after year one could note that late spring and fall (USA) are the most boring times for STO and they need to do something useful to counteract that trend.
Choose from options here or make up your own ways that DEVs should at least consider for future periods of boredom.
Additional to the lobi crystal episodes I would suggest also adding commendations and/or crafting expertise to the STFs or even the story missions because that grind is terrible.
The commendation rewards need some serious work too!
I've mentioned before that they should make all previous PVE ques choice of marks instead of select marks. It would make obtaining older marks a lot easier and more people would play some of the dead ques. Or everyone would just keep playing Borg STF's.
Remove the boredom of STO? That's easy. Remove the "God Mode" style of play from the game, a.k.a. balance the game.
How much more fun would the game be is all the NPCs scaled up to your level and gear? Of course this would also mean that once you enter a Mission/DSE/RA you can't change gear. This way a player couldn't use all white gear to enter, then switch over to all epic gear to make it easier.
Imagine the forum outrage if the players actually had to face of against things that were just as strong as them. Of course the only problem I see here, is that I don't have enough money to afford that much popcorn.
If it were anything I would say a raiding system that can sort of be used to fill in gaps in story and reputation(especially those bored of doing reps). Basically where you just jump in kinda like how red alerts are where you are fighting one particular boss that has the difficulty of having fun with a new type of content where you can get all that rep stuff and could also be used as an event system like say for example nausicaan pirate dave had escaped in some story or event and then you battle him in some random place of cryptics choosing.
I remember a long long time ago people flamed geko for saying there was too much content for queues which if you look at it now he was very correct a lot of these queues never have people in them because they are mostly old reputations that most players finished years ago where there is nothing useful about doing them anymore when you already have the gear/never wanted it etc. So roughly this game does have too many queues and such but the one thing it has such limited content on is the sector space stuff so it would be an improvement and bring life back to the game especially if they wanted to clean up the queues and maybe replace some of them with raids that take place on the same maps but something different now in 2410(or whatever year it maybe).
A few ideas if Cryptic would be interesting in doing this kind of new content for story purposes and using old content again to make new better stuff to play. First would be the house of torg and their somewhat civil war against the empire and as well the fek'ihr story.
Anyways yeah thats my 2 cents because the fleet holdings, reputations, queues, etc. That and the dilithium exchange right now combined kinda bored of that stuff so the game really needs some new kind of gameplay or some sort to put some life back into the game.
I'll say what I said in the DST50 gaming panel. Reopen the exploration clusters as navigable areas but make the "Unknown System" dialogue open to non-canon planet-centric Foundry missions.
As part of this, allow authors to pin missions to a specific cluster and order their missions if in a series so that mission 4 cannot precede mission 2 etc. This does not mean that authors who have created a chain are guaranted missions spawning one after the other, it merely means that their missions will be played in order when they randomly occur in a players queue.
I've mentioned before that they should make all previous PVE ques choice of marks instead of select marks. It would make obtaining older marks a lot easier and more people would play some of the dead ques. Or everyone would just keep playing Borg STF's.
Or alternatively they could release more PVE queues that have missions with overlapping marks so that people chasing after different marks aren't spread out. EG Voth vs Vaaudwar PVE would reward Dyson & Delta marks.
Remove the boredom of STO? That's easy. Remove the "God Mode" style of play from the game, a.k.a. balance the game.
How much more fun would the game be is all the NPCs scaled up to your level and gear? Of course this would also mean that once you enter a Mission/DSE/RA you can't change gear. This way a player couldn't use all white gear to enter, then switch over to all epic gear to make it easier.
Imagine the forum outrage if the players actually had to face of against things that were just as strong as them. Of course the only problem I see here, is that I don't have enough money to afford that much popcorn.
That's was once called PvP... or what's left of it, and the community.
I'm still hopeful enemy NPC's will start spamming FBP II & III at some point. Would be great to see what that does to the DPS league.
Even give them Kinetic Reflect console (Like from the Vesta console set) to ensure everyone gets their fair share of "a taste of your own medicine".
That would certainly spice things up.
Maybe, super big targets like the Gates in ISA/CSA could get ADV FBP IV just to really make people scratch their head.
The problem with queues, aren't the queues. The problem is the players. They want ISA and CCA because all it requires in the use of of the spacebar. They don't have to do anything except pewpew. If you look at the queues, the ones that are full, are the ones that just require pewpew. The ones that are empty, require more than pewpew.
Have you considered taking a break during these periods..?
When you feel burned out and bored in an MMO, like STO, to the point where you start wondering ''Why do I still start this game?'', it's a sign to play something else for a few weeks or months.
I off course do understand STO is a bit of an odd one out MMO wise, as many people that play STO don't otherwise game at all, or not in the same way as many MMO players, like me, do, and thus don't really have an array of MMO alternatives to jump to when one gets boring.
Off course Cryptic -could- do stuff also, events or such, to alleviate the boredom, plenty of MMO's have Halloween events for a week or two, to give an example.
Remove the boredom of STO? That's easy. Remove the "God Mode" style of play from the game, a.k.a. balance the game.
How much more fun would the game be is all the NPCs scaled up to your level and gear? Of course this would also mean that once you enter a Mission/DSE/RA you can't change gear. This way a player couldn't use all white gear to enter, then switch over to all epic gear to make it easier.
Imagine the forum outrage if the players actually had to face of against things that were just as strong as them. Of course the only problem I see here, is that I don't have enough money to afford that much popcorn.
All the NPCs are scaled up to your level (in places where you're not required to be L50/L60 to enter in the first place). It doesn't do anything.
And yeah, upping the enemy stats again would produce an endless stream of whining from the lowbies (again). But since they already removed all the fail conditions except in Elite queues, all that would actually accomplish is make things take longer to finish.
Without fail conditions, everything is auto-win. Just respawn if you die, nobody cares.
OMG..All my fellow fleetes are gone! TRIBBLE...why Cryptic goes through these ups/downs is beyond me. I guess they like living on the edge of metrics. Same old same since this went F2P.
I could go with a rotating que system that might funnel players into more than just the most profitable ones, though it would be nice to see them revamp how the payout system works to make the other que more appealing, such as rotating the ques that given marks related to a given rep. Though it would be nice to just have more incentive to run the ques than just marks/dil.
Anyone who has been in STO for years would be aware of the periodic cycles of "boredom" here in STO that are usually made worse between MAJOR updates/Seasons.
This is NOT a doom comment but a way to capture ways to let STO what they should be doing to make this game more "active" during those periods of time.
Year after year one could note that late spring and fall (USA) are the most boring times for STO and they need to do something useful to counteract that trend.
Choose from options here or make up your own ways that DEVs should at least consider for future periods of boredom.
Treasure hunts/scavenger hunts where players follow clues from location to location and compete for in-game prizes. Like a harder version of doff missions (20-30 steps or so) only the players, themselves, must complete the mission, successfully, to get the next clue (then also figure out said clue). Missions leading to the final mission may have lobi, console, dil, weapon (ship or personal) or armor prizes of their own (all related to the mission). Have the final mission relate to the big prize, as well (i.e. TOS lost ship mission = TOS ship, rescue of a bridge officer or group of duty officers = same, etc.). There could be a time limit AND a limited number of big prizes for each scavenger/treasure hunt.
I mentioned a long time ago my idea: repurpose the already existing nemesis system to be a first contact system.
Nemesis is part of sto's inheritance from champions. It is a tool where a player uses a stripped down version of the character builder to design an npc enemy and minions to be their "archenemy". This npc's minions occasionally spawn and attack the player, defeating the minions gives one of several canned random missions or progresses a short story arc that ends with a doomsday device and the nemesis imprisoned where you can either let them escape (restart the chain of events) or retire them and make a new one.
I proposed using this system to design an alien race then have some canned first contact missions ending in one of two or three outcomes (join federation, stay independent, become kdf slave world, etc) and then get the chance to do it again. leverages existing code, provides replay ability, is semi random, and feels trekkish.
To minimize the dev time on mission design, could combine it with a foundry contest.
Remove the boredom of STO? That's easy. Remove the "God Mode" style of play from the game, a.k.a. balance the game.
How much more fun would the game be is all the NPCs scaled up to your level and gear? Of course this would also mean that once you enter a Mission/DSE/RA you can't change gear. This way a player couldn't use all white gear to enter, then switch over to all epic gear to make it easier.
Imagine the forum outrage if the players actually had to face of against things that were just as strong as them. Of course the only problem I see here, is that I don't have enough money to afford that much popcorn.
All the NPCs are scaled up to your level (in places where you're not required to be L50/L60 to enter in the first place). It doesn't do anything.
And yeah, upping the enemy stats again would produce an endless stream of whining from the lowbies (again). But since they already removed all the fail conditions except in Elite queues, all that would actually accomplish is make things take longer to finish.
Without fail conditions, everything is auto-win. Just respawn if you die, nobody cares.
I'm not talking upping the stats again. They can reverse that. I'm talking full loadout. I'd have more enjoyment from Patrols, DSE's, RA's, STF's and missions if the NPC's were setup up to be enemies, instead of just stat blocks to shoot at.
Take a regular DSE, say Klingon Rebels or In to the mirror. At level 60, as it is now, this isn't even a challenge. Most of the time, high 90%, I don't even use boff abilities or skills for them. I just use standard pewpew and everything just dies.
Now if I went in to that same DSE, at level 60, and all the NPC's were in T5, T5-U, or T6 ship stats, fully seated with boffs(randomly generated skills), a preset full skill tree, at least 1 randomly generated full primary specialization, and all VR Mk XII gear. I would actually have to fight them using skills and abilities.
They could do this for every 10 levels. That way, a level 30 entering this DSE is facing off against an appropriate level 30 NPC. The only thing here is, they would have to set instance levels on it all. This way a level 60 couldn't enter a level 30 version and vice versa. Only battlezones would not be setup up like this.
This would present every player a challenge. Because then they couldn't "Gode Mode" through it all.
STF's can be set up
Normal: As they are now
Advanced: T5/T5-U
Elite: T5-U/T6
They could do the same thing for ground. Full skill tree, full primary specialization, and all VR Mk XII gear.
The main thing here is, it would hurt their metrics to do it. Because of the lockout due to level. Especially on STF's. Those would have to be 50-59. Then level 60's get their own instances. Which would lock Elite to level 60.
Of course having Elites locked to level 60 is something people have been asking for for a while now.
How about just more content in general. You have to wait so long for one episode, you get so bored in the meantime doing the same old stuff over and over.
OP is fail... no mention of Foundry at all? pfft....
That probably falls under the "Make your own...State with your own DETAILS please." heading, with the "DETAILS" part including the return of incentives for playing Foundry missions and some methodology for choosing which missions are eligible. I'm STOld, I still remember when they gave out Fleet Marks, etc. *sigh*
Of course, there's always playing the Foundry missions for the actual missions themselves... but I think the idea is to spitball new ways of keeping players interested, and we can already run (or even create) Foundry content.
Remove the boredom of STO? That's easy. Remove the "God Mode" style of play from the game, a.k.a. balance the game.
How much more fun would the game be is all the NPCs scaled up to your level and gear? Of course this would also mean that once you enter a Mission/DSE/RA you can't change gear. This way a player couldn't use all white gear to enter, then switch over to all epic gear to make it easier.
Imagine the forum outrage if the players actually had to face of against things that were just as strong as them. Of course the only problem I see here, is that I don't have enough money to afford that much popcorn.
All the NPCs are scaled up to your level (in places where you're not required to be L50/L60 to enter in the first place). It doesn't do anything.
And yeah, upping the enemy stats again would produce an endless stream of whining from the lowbies (again). But since they already removed all the fail conditions except in Elite queues, all that would actually accomplish is make things take longer to finish.
Without fail conditions, everything is auto-win. Just respawn if you die, nobody cares.
I'm not talking upping the stats again. They can reverse that. I'm talking full loadout. I'd have more enjoyment from Patrols, DSE's, RA's, STF's and missions if the NPC's were setup up to be enemies, instead of just stat blocks to shoot at.
Take a regular DSE, say Klingon Rebels or In to the mirror. At level 60, as it is now, this isn't even a challenge. Most of the time, high 90%, I don't even use boff abilities or skills for them. I just use standard pewpew and everything just dies.
Now if I went in to that same DSE, at level 60, and all the NPC's were in T5, T5-U, or T6 ship stats, fully seated with boffs(randomly generated skills), a preset full skill tree, at least 1 randomly generated full primary specialization, and all VR Mk XII gear. I would actually have to fight them using skills and abilities.
They could do this for every 10 levels. That way, a level 30 entering this DSE is facing off against an appropriate level 30 NPC. The only thing here is, they would have to set instance levels on it all. This way a level 60 couldn't enter a level 30 version and vice versa. Only battlezones would not be setup up like this.
This would present every player a challenge. Because then they couldn't "Gode Mode" through it all.
STF's can be set up
Normal: As they are now
Advanced: T5/T5-U
Elite: T5-U/T6
They could do the same thing for ground. Full skill tree, full primary specialization, and all VR Mk XII gear.
The main thing here is, it would hurt their metrics to do it. Because of the lockout due to level. Especially on STF's. Those would have to be 50-59. Then level 60's get their own instances. Which would lock Elite to level 60.
Of course having Elites locked to level 60 is something people have been asking for for a while now.
What you suggest would require redesigning how every NPC in the game behaves, not only to incorporate what behaviors it takes from existing abilities, but also adding in a full set of BOff and Spec abilities, etc. I did actually argue for something along those lines (smarter NPC's rather than inflated numbers) during feedback prior to Delta Rising, but the response was basically that rewriting the AI for every NPC in the game is a prohibitively large undertaking. This far after the launch of Delta Rising and all of the subsequent content, I just don't see it becoming any more realistic than it was back then.
It'd be nice, but it's probably not an attainable goal at this point.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Aside from drastically increasing their production capabilities, I doubt there's anything Cryptic could do about this that I would find better than my own personal solution: play new missions, then go play WoW until the next one is released.
Comments
I started playing again in August and I've gone through the story episodes multiple times and have 6 admirals. I'm really not sure how long time players stand it.
Among them: random events in Pve Queues, more end-game content, more team play (need for tanks, dps, sci), harder hitting enemies who chase, travel faster and use many abilities (FBP) [improved NPC AI], more traveling in missions to make use of vast map sizes, re-balance power creep vs AI, introduce balanced PvP, lower ship tier PvE & PvP, mixed PvP/E scenarios, special event battlezones with rotating enemies/locations/objectives on adv & elite difficulties, etc. etc.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
It seems pretty common for folks to become fed up with the grind or bored of the vanilla storylines in MMOs, realize they're good at one of the emergent meta-MMOs, and find a renewed passion to stick around. After a while, they find they're playing a very different game than most of the other players.
Additional to the lobi crystal episodes I would suggest also adding commendations and/or crafting expertise to the STFs or even the story missions because that grind is terrible.
The commendation rewards need some serious work too!
How much more fun would the game be is all the NPCs scaled up to your level and gear? Of course this would also mean that once you enter a Mission/DSE/RA you can't change gear. This way a player couldn't use all white gear to enter, then switch over to all epic gear to make it easier.
Imagine the forum outrage if the players actually had to face of against things that were just as strong as them. Of course the only problem I see here, is that I don't have enough money to afford that much popcorn.
I remember a long long time ago people flamed geko for saying there was too much content for queues which if you look at it now he was very correct a lot of these queues never have people in them because they are mostly old reputations that most players finished years ago where there is nothing useful about doing them anymore when you already have the gear/never wanted it etc. So roughly this game does have too many queues and such but the one thing it has such limited content on is the sector space stuff so it would be an improvement and bring life back to the game especially if they wanted to clean up the queues and maybe replace some of them with raids that take place on the same maps but something different now in 2410(or whatever year it maybe).
A few ideas if Cryptic would be interesting in doing this kind of new content for story purposes and using old content again to make new better stuff to play. First would be the house of torg and their somewhat civil war against the empire and as well the fek'ihr story.
Anyways yeah thats my 2 cents because the fleet holdings, reputations, queues, etc. That and the dilithium exchange right now combined kinda bored of that stuff so the game really needs some new kind of gameplay or some sort to put some life back into the game.
As part of this, allow authors to pin missions to a specific cluster and order their missions if in a series so that mission 4 cannot precede mission 2 etc. This does not mean that authors who have created a chain are guaranted missions spawning one after the other, it merely means that their missions will be played in order when they randomly occur in a players queue.
Or alternatively they could release more PVE queues that have missions with overlapping marks so that people chasing after different marks aren't spread out. EG Voth vs Vaaudwar PVE would reward Dyson & Delta marks.
That's was once called PvP... or what's left of it, and the community.
I'm still hopeful enemy NPC's will start spamming FBP II & III at some point. Would be great to see what that does to the DPS league.
Even give them Kinetic Reflect console (Like from the Vesta console set) to ensure everyone gets their fair share of "a taste of your own medicine".
That would certainly spice things up.
Maybe, super big targets like the Gates in ISA/CSA could get ADV FBP IV just to really make people scratch their head.
When you feel burned out and bored in an MMO, like STO, to the point where you start wondering ''Why do I still start this game?'', it's a sign to play something else for a few weeks or months.
I off course do understand STO is a bit of an odd one out MMO wise, as many people that play STO don't otherwise game at all, or not in the same way as many MMO players, like me, do, and thus don't really have an array of MMO alternatives to jump to when one gets boring.
Off course Cryptic -could- do stuff also, events or such, to alleviate the boredom, plenty of MMO's have Halloween events for a week or two, to give an example.
And yeah, upping the enemy stats again would produce an endless stream of whining from the lowbies (again). But since they already removed all the fail conditions except in Elite queues, all that would actually accomplish is make things take longer to finish.
Without fail conditions, everything is auto-win. Just respawn if you die, nobody cares.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Treasure hunts/scavenger hunts where players follow clues from location to location and compete for in-game prizes. Like a harder version of doff missions (20-30 steps or so) only the players, themselves, must complete the mission, successfully, to get the next clue (then also figure out said clue). Missions leading to the final mission may have lobi, console, dil, weapon (ship or personal) or armor prizes of their own (all related to the mission). Have the final mission relate to the big prize, as well (i.e. TOS lost ship mission = TOS ship, rescue of a bridge officer or group of duty officers = same, etc.). There could be a time limit AND a limited number of big prizes for each scavenger/treasure hunt.
Nemesis is part of sto's inheritance from champions. It is a tool where a player uses a stripped down version of the character builder to design an npc enemy and minions to be their "archenemy". This npc's minions occasionally spawn and attack the player, defeating the minions gives one of several canned random missions or progresses a short story arc that ends with a doomsday device and the nemesis imprisoned where you can either let them escape (restart the chain of events) or retire them and make a new one.
I proposed using this system to design an alien race then have some canned first contact missions ending in one of two or three outcomes (join federation, stay independent, become kdf slave world, etc) and then get the chance to do it again. leverages existing code, provides replay ability, is semi random, and feels trekkish.
To minimize the dev time on mission design, could combine it with a foundry contest.
I'm not talking upping the stats again. They can reverse that. I'm talking full loadout. I'd have more enjoyment from Patrols, DSE's, RA's, STF's and missions if the NPC's were setup up to be enemies, instead of just stat blocks to shoot at.
Take a regular DSE, say Klingon Rebels or In to the mirror. At level 60, as it is now, this isn't even a challenge. Most of the time, high 90%, I don't even use boff abilities or skills for them. I just use standard pewpew and everything just dies.
Now if I went in to that same DSE, at level 60, and all the NPC's were in T5, T5-U, or T6 ship stats, fully seated with boffs(randomly generated skills), a preset full skill tree, at least 1 randomly generated full primary specialization, and all VR Mk XII gear. I would actually have to fight them using skills and abilities.
They could do this for every 10 levels. That way, a level 30 entering this DSE is facing off against an appropriate level 30 NPC. The only thing here is, they would have to set instance levels on it all. This way a level 60 couldn't enter a level 30 version and vice versa. Only battlezones would not be setup up like this.
This would present every player a challenge. Because then they couldn't "Gode Mode" through it all.
STF's can be set up
Normal: As they are now
Advanced: T5/T5-U
Elite: T5-U/T6
They could do the same thing for ground. Full skill tree, full primary specialization, and all VR Mk XII gear.
The main thing here is, it would hurt their metrics to do it. Because of the lockout due to level. Especially on STF's. Those would have to be 50-59. Then level 60's get their own instances. Which would lock Elite to level 60.
Of course having Elites locked to level 60 is something people have been asking for for a while now.
That probably falls under the "Make your own...State with your own DETAILS please." heading, with the "DETAILS" part including the return of incentives for playing Foundry missions and some methodology for choosing which missions are eligible. I'm STOld, I still remember when they gave out Fleet Marks, etc. *sigh*
Of course, there's always playing the Foundry missions for the actual missions themselves... but I think the idea is to spitball new ways of keeping players interested, and we can already run (or even create) Foundry content.
What you suggest would require redesigning how every NPC in the game behaves, not only to incorporate what behaviors it takes from existing abilities, but also adding in a full set of BOff and Spec abilities, etc. I did actually argue for something along those lines (smarter NPC's rather than inflated numbers) during feedback prior to Delta Rising, but the response was basically that rewriting the AI for every NPC in the game is a prohibitively large undertaking. This far after the launch of Delta Rising and all of the subsequent content, I just don't see it becoming any more realistic than it was back then.
It'd be nice, but it's probably not an attainable goal at this point.