I think 2015 was, all in all, an awesome year content-wise. There was a new episode each month, and a big story arc was finally concluded. People may have misgivings in individual episodes, and might have wanted more content (like those Iconian Red Alerts the game still could use), but each month one could look forward to a continuation of the story. And very importantly- the story had an actual ending, and we could move on to a new story arc. The whole Iconian subplot was in the game from the start over countless of episodes- it needed to escalate and finally be concluded. I am not quite happy with all the temporal shenengians we're involved in now, but the Iconian subplot was concluded, so maybe this one will eventually be and we can look forward to something new.
And it might not just b ethe story content - it also felt there was a new ship every month (not sure if that is exactly correct), so even for the space barbie fans among us (like me) there was something to look forward to and a whole month left to explore.
I am not saying 2016 is a bad year. I think numerically speaking, we actually got a similar amount of story and a similar amount of ships, and I bet the TOS fans here couldn't be happier - but a large part of that came as part of a single expansion, instead of spread across the year. Particularly since the expansion it took a long time for something new to be released and it kinda feels like a content drought.
There are probably certain reasons for it - like also having to manage the console release, and the decision to roll out the TOS Anniversary content in one big release.
But if I had a say in it, I hope that 2017 we go back to a release schedule that's more like 2015. Something new to look forward to every month works much better for me then all those special events and weekends.
What do you think? What do you prefer (other than more of everything, that's a given)? Would you rather see content released in big expansions, or month by month? How do you feel about long-running story arcs being concluded? Should arcs be longer or shorter?
I wonder also how the devs feel about it? What works better for them? I can imagine that needing to release a new episode monthly could be stressful, too, on the other hand, larger releases have the challenge that really everything needs to work together at the time of the planned release date. But on the other hand - Agile Development tends to stress shorter release cycles with smaller features so that at any time, you have a solid product that you can release, so the big release system would actually be working against agile development methods.
What do the "metrics" say?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
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I think about it this way: Every mission follows a variation on the same formula. Fight in space, beam down, fight on the ground, press a few non-fight buttons to advance the story, fight more on the ground, beam up, fight more in space, collect reward. This isn't really the writers' fault because it's only following what the game engine enables the player to do. And after a while it all blends together and I derive no enjoyment from experiencing the story itself, even if it's new.
The vast majority of rpgs follow this formula. Quests almost always involves talk to this contact, kill this group of npcs, click on this object or loot an enemy, and then talk to a contact again. At least we don't kill rats so we can give 100 rat tails to a contact and each rat tail has a 0.1% chance of dropping. Our quests are far more involved than a lot of quests which is part of the reason why we are lucky to get 20 quests per year while other MMOs get 300 quests per year.
The aggregate story that happens in a mission is where it's at. And STO delivers. It wouldn't hurt in my opinion if the stories were a bit more deeper and complex occassionally, but one can't really say that all the missions are the same.
The key ingredients of a STO story are very similar to that of a typical Star Trek episode, the focus is just more strongly on combat.
But that wasn't really my point - my point was that it's nice to have a new story mission to look forward to each month.
LoR's story is great, but I missed all the PR stuff. It happened in the time I wasn't playing STO.
The thing I like so much about last year was the constant and regular release schedule. I don't want these big releases. I like to get something every month (or every week, or every day, but I take what I can get.)
It may seem like there's been less this year, but think about some of the quality of life fixes that they've done. The focus on the consoles (which is a good thing for the game - bringing in fresh cash that helps the game overall, and allowing them to grow the market for STO) and the lighting update are not small things to accomplish, and probably took up a lot of development time.
That being said, I wish they'd add more content creators to the staff. Not every episode has to deal with the major storyline, and it'd be nice to see some one off side episodes here and there focusing on some little used parts of the game. One off species specific stories would be great additions, or a few side stories on DS9.
Unfortunately, the apparent need to fit all of the stories into the "Episode" tab story blocks is something that is hurting the game in my opinion.
Overall, 2016 has been a good year in my opinion. AoY was an amazingly immersive experience - though brief - and I'm hoping they do more content like that, only I hope they don't make us create new characters for all of it and instead allow us to use the existing characters that we have nurtured and grown over the years.
Looking forward to what they are planning in the future, I just wish there was some better PR for the game. It's been really sloppy lately in my opinion.
Agreed.
They do if all they want to do is sit in one ship in Ker'rat all day, waiting out their cooldowns and ganking half-dead, distracted farmer alts.
My favorite piece of sto content of all time remains mine trap. No boss fight. Every captain ability has value at some phase of the mission. And the rewards are based on lives saved not enemies killed or time taken. I was really happy when priority one was able to get my comments about it to the designer in an interview.
I don't care how fast i complete missions or accumulate stuff. so tacs, meh. dps parsing isn't the game i play. They way i play I can still have fun. I hope you can find fun somehow too.
I didn't bother playing STO through 2015 almost entirely. Even though I've read the News at least once a week. The announcement of AoY alone brought me back full force.
What some people can do with it is amazing (and sometimes better than what Cryptic does with it) - but it would be foolish to belittle Cryptic's contribution to this.
But now I'm back, and I WILL BURN THESE FORUMS LIKE I SHOULD HAVE BAJOR!!!!!
People still farm Ker'rat?
We get one scene in one mission where we can have our boffs do the tasks. Then it is right back to us going the menial drudge work. We use the ziplines and cables twice. We got in mission doff missions in the 2800 and in the bar on nimbus. nothing in the last few years though.
There exist some great mechanics that could bring much more variety than just "show up and blast everything then click a glowie". But for some reason they only get used once and then forgotten.
I'm pretty sure the new ESD we have is a rebuild of the one lost in that battle (the old round ESD), but I do agree. With how huge the Iconian war was and how epic the final battle was...it ended rather suddenly.