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Whats still wrong with STO?
watever2
Member Posts: 24 Arc User
I have had STO since 2010 and if it wasn't for the armada with 1500+ members I helped build I would have uninstalled STO ages ago. Here are some of my thoughts on what is wrong with STO.
Classes are meaningless when the only objective in group content is who can do the most dps.
Every PvE queue is little more than a dps race.
Too much emphasis on the next lock box or ship no one has ever heard of instead of improving game mechanics.
Despite what people say STO is a pay to win game, you can achieve high dps just by buying ships/consoles/upgrades.
Special events are boring "Do this 100 times to get something mediocre".
Dilithium and the daily refine limit is just there to strangle the less well off players and force the rich players to spend real money.
PvP barely functions.
Fleet starbases are supposed to be hubs for fleet members yet they are ghost towns because why would you go there?
Story missions are bland go here, go there, operate this, with reams of text that detaches you from the immersion of being in a sci fi game.
The hud is still as TRIBBLE as it was on day 1. I have more abilities than I have action bars? And no I don't want to put main abilities on the vertical bar.
Every race/class does the same missions from the start. Boring and tedious. Even bloody Klingons have to do What Lies Beneath???
There is no sense of being part of a Federation/Defence Force uniting against a common foe. If STO was a TV series it would not make it past season 1.
Classes are meaningless when the only objective in group content is who can do the most dps.
Every PvE queue is little more than a dps race.
Too much emphasis on the next lock box or ship no one has ever heard of instead of improving game mechanics.
Despite what people say STO is a pay to win game, you can achieve high dps just by buying ships/consoles/upgrades.
Special events are boring "Do this 100 times to get something mediocre".
Dilithium and the daily refine limit is just there to strangle the less well off players and force the rich players to spend real money.
PvP barely functions.
Fleet starbases are supposed to be hubs for fleet members yet they are ghost towns because why would you go there?
Story missions are bland go here, go there, operate this, with reams of text that detaches you from the immersion of being in a sci fi game.
The hud is still as TRIBBLE as it was on day 1. I have more abilities than I have action bars? And no I don't want to put main abilities on the vertical bar.
Every race/class does the same missions from the start. Boring and tedious. Even bloody Klingons have to do What Lies Beneath???
There is no sense of being part of a Federation/Defence Force uniting against a common foe. If STO was a TV series it would not make it past season 1.
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And the eternal question shall be : "Can i haz your stuff, please?" (see, i said please, i'm more polite than the average!)
More seriously, though... Like @bcwhguderian1941 said, if the armada is the only thing holding you back, you might as well ditch it and leave...
Lol what’s with peeps and their negative relationship with DPS? I really don’t get it.
Cryptic just recently released two maps where getting most DPS out of it is not the contributing factor. Why not play them?!
Quite frankly your entire post reads like one from somebody who already decided to quit the game but who just needs his reasons validated.
Sorry I can't do that for you!
As somebody who has a good time in STO let me throw at your points:
- Be glad that classes are meaningless cuz the average STO Joe can’t handle the most simplest PvE tasks already. Now you want to depend the entire outcome of a match on his competency?
- Only ISA and CCA are DPS races, rest of them all have other stuff to do. ISA and CCA are the maps that are played the most so in short they present what the players want the most. Live with it!
- Cryptic needs to earn money so that you can play this game. That’s why they care most for stuff peeps pay for.
- You can pay or you can play. It’s completely fair and the nature of most free2play games dude.
- Do a 5 minute task up to 25 times to get a free reward that holds the same in game worth than 30 bucks. If its really too much to ask of you, leave it out.
- The Dil marked is an ecosystem giving everybody a chance from paying player to to freebees, from those who play 24/7 to those who can only log twice a week.
- STO sopped the claim to be a pvp game 3-5 years ago? Still not over it?
- If your base is empty join a fleet which has peeps roleplaying on it. We do regular fleetstuff every few weeks there. I invite you to one of our promotion parties next time if u like.
- Story missions got better over the years. If they are not good enough for you set different standards in the foundary and show me your efforts when you are done.
- The hud has its limits, yea you are right with that. Still I can play the game with it just fine.
- So you want different missions for every race? Cool I want that too and I bet even Cyptic does. Sadly this is not an AAA game so content is limited depending on how much your pay2win peeps are willing to pay!
- As you pointed out correctly STO is not a TV series but a game that just celebrated it’s 7th birthday.
Gratz dude.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
FTFY. The bigger issue is get to 60 and it's "well what do I do now?" The eternal grind? oh so much fun....not... What this game really needs and it's so primed for it, is SANDBOX THINGS TO DO.
Visit planets and do side missions, or have a place to live etc. Or the exploration sectors back but this time, we make first contact, see they are warp capable, and have a full chain of missions to set up relations, and depending if you do well enough is going to decide if they remain peaceful, or even join the Federation(or KE or RR).
Also first contact with non-warp civilizations and you dress up to observe. And again depending on how you do, do you remain covert, contaminate the culture, or do you get caught and have to find a way out.
TL;DR time to add in some sandbox elements to give us something to do.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Back when Borg STFs still had random rewards my motivation to play them was a lot higher. Would I get the engine part this time? Such random epic rewards are a central element of raids in many MMOs. And they should be reintroduced in STO as well. I don't mean adding existing set pieces to the respective queues. I'm talking about new, unique and special items that could have a minor chance to drop from a certain queue.
The problem is, none of what you really listed is Sandbox content. It's written missions. Totally different. Not sure you know what sandbox really means if you ask for sandbox things to do then ask for more scripted missions. Minecraft is a sandbox game. There are no quests or missions. It's simply a system where you can build and do what you want. This is a themepark MMO. It would not be very easy at all for them to transform it in to a sand box game where players had the ability to change things and build and do what they wanted.
People complain about RNG. About never being able to get that piece. I remember back in WoW Cataclysm days, this one Off-Hand that I wanted. Never ever dropped. 6 months of raiding every week, already moved beyond that tier, still no drop. Guild stops even running it anymore as there is new content out and no one really needs anything from the first tier anymore. So I PuG the damn thing for about 2 months, every week. Thing finally drops and someone else beat my roll. Still have not gotten the thing.
For this reason, games have started putting in currencies, so you can eventually get what you want and luck is not involved. Instead of some people getting lucky and getting it the first time they run something and others like me never ever getting it, everyone runs it a set amount of times and then gets what they want.
I can't tell you which system is better honestly. One has chance and excitement and the other has guaranteed results, but feels like a grind. Is it really any less of a grind than random chances though? Not really. It just feels less exciting because you can't "win the lottery" and get that rare drop your first try, or see someone else get it and share in their excitement.
Tanking, healing or any other non-dps role is an almost useless novelty at this point, except for pvp... but wait, what pvp?
Neither can I. I'm therefore advocating for a mixed system which allows both groups of players to play in their prefered way. For me, the chance of getting somthing unique that cannot be obtained otherwise is a huge motivator to play a queue. And if I'm really unlucky and get frustrated I still have the reputation sets to fall back on.
Such games never get old even if their graphics fall behind simply because there's near-endless combinations to experiment with, learn, and get skilled at, and playing alongside and against others means your skill level will always be tested.
If I was to suggest a method to alleviate things in game. I would say more mid-game content. LoR held attention because while they came in and did some of the missions everyone did. They had all their own stuff before and after much of it. AoY by contrast was a handful of beginning missions. Then launch into all of what every other Fed character has done before. All of it.
So perhaps a little mid-game branching to make replaying more interesting. So instead of rushing off to play Skirmish and that arc. You see the Deferi early or something.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
No, not really since I do not bother to focus on DPS. High DPSers do not represent the majority of players.
Not true. Undine Infiltration Elite is pretty easy, it usually fails because of the lack of reading comprehension nd / or critical thinking which takes before combat starts. BotSE is more or less pretty easy, Mk XII gear is good enough as long as you have situational awareness and know some good tactics. Space elite on the other hand is much more of a DPS race than ground elite.. too much DPS for me. But The Tzenkethi Front Advanced and Gravity Kills Advanced are not that difficult since not every single ship needs to be destroyed. Just focus on the objective and be aware what other players are doing; cover other players who are carrying the bombs.
Not everyone needs to play elite.
Unfortunately, this is one way for a F2P game to make money. Cryptic needs money to pay bills and employees; it is not a charity organization filled with volunteers. I simply do not open lock boxes unless I want Lobi Crystals.
I don't think so. I can handle Advanced space and Elite ground missions just without the need to bother with trying to get all the fancy ships, consoles and upgrades.
On my secondary F2P only account all 3 captains have reached level 60 and still flies the free ships I have selected when they were level 40. Despite having the free T6 event ships since the 2016 Anniversary Event, I still fly those ships... even Advanced STFs. Based on the few times other players posted combat logs in ISA, I generally do 15k DPS, which is fine for that queue.
A bit of an exaggeration. Assuming you have previous experiences with the Summer and Winter Events you simply need to do the daily mission to get the vouchers 25 times. Each takes 3 minutes or less per day so in total it should take an experienced player about 75 minutes spread across 25 days to get the Event Ship.
The Anniversary Event is a bit different. It takes more time since players need to travel to 3 different locations to do the omega mini-game. The mini-game is pretty short; lasting only 50 seconds. No effort is even required since a score of zero still qualifies as fulfilling the mission requirements. Most of the time is likely spent traveling to the 3 locations especially for low level players since they are flying ships that cannot achieve warp 9.9 in space. You get 400 vouchers from completing the "Of Signs and Portents" for the 1st time on a captain. That means you only need to do the daily mission 15 times... though that does mean you need to play the omega mini-game 45 times.
If you don't like the ship, then don't bother with the event. Just buy your ship from the C-Store.
I guess you do not really understand how the economy works.
Increasing the daily refinement cap devalues refined Dilitihum. The more refined Dil there is in the economy, the less valuable it becomes, thus more refined Dil is required to exchange for Zen. Prior to the introduction of the Phoenix Pack the exchange rate was as high as 450:1 from what I recall. After the Phoenix Pack was introduced, the exchange rate dropped as low as 270:1 which is the point where I decided to use some refined Dil to purchase Zen.
Increasing the refinement cap will simply cause the exchange rate to climb back up. As more refined Dil enters the economy, the closer the exchange rate will close in on the 500:1 limit. If there is so much refined Dil in the market where Zen seller deem 500 refined Dil for 1 Zen is not a good value, then fewer players will be willing to sell Zen.
Not everyone cares for PvP.
Not everyone cares to be in a fleet.
STO is a F2P game. Voice actors generally prefer to be paid for there efforts... especially if actors are reprising their roles. I do not play many F2P MMOs, but feel free to provide a list of F2P MMOs that are fully voice acted.
However, Cryptic has already started to remedy "text only mission" with voiced missions; old and new.
Yeah, I can agree that having one more row for space abilities.
No, not true. Each faction has something like 35 to 40 unique missions at the start of the game. True, there are some shared missions common to all 3 factions up to the beginning of the Cardassian Struggle. However, starting with the Cardassian Struggle all factions do the same missions.
TV series and MMOs have different goals and caters to different types of audience. Not all Star Trek fans plays STO. Not STO players watch all Star Trek episodes / movies. There is usually more story depth in one TV episode compared to the story depth in one season of most F2P MMOs.
The Federation and KDF ended their war and formed an alliance to face a superior foe. There is a saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". If you bothered to play "Surface Tension", then you should have realized the point of the mission was that the Federation and the KDF needed to join forces to defeat Iconian forces in Earth's and Qo'noS' orbit.
In the end, if you no longer like playing STO, then just leave and play something else. A game is only worth playing if a player thinks it is fun.
If you set your standards so low that everything meets them, nothing ever improves. Human civilization would be nowhere if everyone had low standards.
The important question though is: Are you having fun?
If yes then keep playing. If no then stop.
Since I do not see a button for it
+1 on this being spot on.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
But that's just the beginning. For instance, I for one think Colony Invasion is long overdue for a remaster, and have dropped some proverbial science on the subject.
Also, while recognizing that battlezones and STFs are entirely different beasts, I would also propose that they remove all limitations on the use of zone pause in missions - so that players can better direct not only their own weapons fire and abilities, but those of their away teams (think along the lines of the planning mode from the old-school Rainbow Six games). In tandem with this should come a better tutorial on how zone pause and other tools useful for this purpose work. For example, did you know you can toggle boffs' abilities between at-will and on-command-only?
somtaawkhar stated that skills, crafting, kits were improved and the crew mechanic was removed. That is true, but is it enough 7 years on?
They introduced fleets yet barely did anything to involve fleet groups. Where's the fleet battles? Where's the massive fleet only groups where you spend 2-3 hours doing raids? Why put the fleet starbase in a vacant corner? Many new players we have had didn't even know where to find the starbase. It should be next door to Sol/Quonos and provide a reason for players to go there. Look at K-13, could they have put it in a more obscure place?
PvP could be improved by having CP type matches. Each team has a starbase to protect. Way more fun than "Lets meet in the middle and see who dies first."
With regards to the "classes are meaningless" comment and to those that disagree saying it's not about dps. Well how many missions need an engineer to keep aggro off the tactical while the scientist heals the engineer. That would be 0. Aside from keeping yourself alive what is the point in having a character that can heal?
jaguarskx suggested I don't know how the economy works. I'm afraid I know all too well how it works. "Zen seller deem 500 refined Dil for 1 Zen is not a good value, then fewer players will be willing to sell Zen." As opposed to selling 1 zen for 300?? I think you mean buy zen. If the refine limit goes up then there is more dil around to buy Zen with. I guarantee there are more people using dil for other things than just buying zen with.
I have stupid amounts of unrefined ore going to waste because of the refine limit. One of the things I hear our members complain about the most is the refine limit.
Maybe I'm just an old gamer who expects too much
Most of the STO player base does not want this. The core audience wants to be Jim Kirk not Leroy Jenkins. Same with PVP, same with forcing players into healer, tank, DPS. Same with other WoW staples.
"STO players" aren't in general "MMO players." Cryptic has the metrics, surveys, C-Store sales to prove it to their satisfaction that the majority wants a mostly single-player game.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
Maybe it is time for you to move on from STO.
Oh so you want the cluster f#ck of WOW raiding here? Where you need huge numbers of guild members to ruin a raid and the whole mess of getting the raid set up when you have players in a fleet living in every time zone around the planet? My own fleet and it's sister fleets have members in Australia, Every time zone in the U.S. and Canada and in Europe as well. Yeah your ideas all well and good if your fleet all lives in one time zone. Plus look at how dead the large pve's are in STO. Agian the time zone thing even for pugging. The game is different now then it was 2-3-5 years ago and large player requirement PVE's with few exceptions are dead for all intents. Instead of big 24 member raids I rather see some of the PVE's made solo or 2 player. The reason for this some are a lot of fun for some players but rarely have the minimum 5 players to run. The vault ones in particular.
I used to play WOW way back when. Had a lot of fun with it, other than the quests that absolutely required a group to complete, other than the time that raids was really the only thing left to do while waiting for the next expansion (that had to be bought) to get some new content.
If I wanted to play a game that required 10-15-20 players to team up, and meant that I was tied to my keyboard for 1-2 or more hours, I would still be playing WOW. Oh wait, no I wouldn't, because besides paying a monthly fee just to be able to play, I would also have to pay a decent chunk of change to be able to play any new content they came up with.
Nope, I play STO. I can have hours upon hours of fun running totally solo, I can play everything in the game and never, ever, spend a penny. I can complete every bit of story line and never once be forced to team up to have a snowballs chance of completing a mission. And if I do feel like teaming, between Fleet, Armada, friends, and even zone chat, I can always find at least five people willing to run an STF, which can be completed quickly enough that things like bathroom, dogs needing to go out, or in my case, going outside to smoke never interferes with my ability to join a team function.
As for other things mentioned, maybe in PUGs group content is a DPS race/who can do the most DPS....
The next lock box or ship is what keeps the lights on and the servers up, allowing this game to be F2P.
It is only pay to win for someone who thinks that winning is having high DPS, for those who feel that winning means they had fun playing (which is what games are for) high DPS is not a concern beyond getting it high enough to do missions without dying too much.
If you think the reward for a special event is mediocre, and the event itself is boring, then don't do it. This game gets new players all the time for whom those rewards are absolutely fantastic.
Way too many logical and valid explanations as to how and why the daily limit helps this game, not hinders it already out there.
This is not a PvP focused game. Lots and lots of other games out there that are all about PvP if you are desperate for PvP.
Is there an MMO in existence that isn't all about go here, do that other than the PvP games ?
I agree with you about the HUD, mine gets quite full also.
Every MMO I have ever played, and I have played a lot of them, have limited "unique" mission content per class/race before everyone basically gets the same stuff. STO actually has way more faction (race) specific content beyond the tutorial than just about any other MMO I have played.
Lots of "uniting against a common foe" within the story lines. Of course the "uniting" is a bunch of NPCs joining up with the player, which is why a single player can solo every story line mission the game has.
As someone else already stated, STO has been around for 7 years now, more "seasons" than most TV series have ever made it to, and more than a lot of the TV series the game is based on to begin with.
Cannot be stressed enough.
Despite some poor attempts at optimism here, the game is now literally a tactical-based cashgrab dps grind fest of the worst kind with a completely dead pvp.
We get some new story episodes every now and then in an attempt to keep the game true to name of "Star Trek". For some that's a big deal, but I'm "meh" about it, considering doing STF's is still the main aspect of the game. Might I also add that the new story material isn't all that great either. When I find myself doing an episode these days, I don't feel compelled anymore to care what's happening, and just skip the dialog and rush through it purely to get a piece of gear I might want.
Since the game wants you to grind for power in the form of spec trees, gear and ships, you'll find yourself you have nothing really to try all this stuff on you worked/paid so hard for, but for the same boring ISA/NTTE run to get a few more parse points. So again, forget about pvp or some other form of end-game content.
A good mmo should have everything for everyone, but STO has become clearly bankrupt in certain key areas. Though in truth, many mmo's are dying right now, and very few companies know how to keep everything together, so none of this probably matters much in the long run.
What I decided to do is become a casual STO player, while seeking entertainment mainly elsewhere. I am certainly not the first to do so.