Yeah, called it. Kind of obvious: Balance needs to be addressed as PVP is traditionally the end-game of MMOs and is a huge part of the console market. They definitely want to protect their investment of porting to consoles, and if console players decide STO PVP is garbage, they're gone, never to return until it's fixed. Beyond elementary.
the problem is one that Cryptic's beaten before with STO; conventional wisdom in 2010 when t he game was being formulated for PC, was that an MMO had to have a strong PvP component to be successful.
Cryptic beat that assumption and managed to exceed the optimistic projections of the original release hype, by surviving 7 years where most of the "not WoW" games lasted five at the most.
the last THREE years have been an exercise in proving you don't have to have a balanced combat system, and that your game can survive on a mix of celebrity guest spots and unregulated power-creep so long as it's tied to a beloved IP.
It can even Prosper.
which really calls into question the management logic that "now that they're pursuing consoles, they're fixing PvP".
It doesn't really match up, does it? Not with the same managment, anyway. People function on feedback loops-results that profit them they will repeat, results that are not profitable will be abandoned minus some external constraint.
examples might include hitting a "Limit"-the powercreep this time didn't sell as well as the last one, and so on.
but this absolutely is a reversal of Cryptic policy-for a steady six years since release, the developers have been hostile to, and removed relevance from, PvP in the game. upshot is, I don't think the console PvP market is even in consideration here as a primary actuating force.
I suspect it's a contributing factor, but the larger force is coming from hitting that aforementioned 'wall' where power-creep has gotten to the point in terms fo what can be sold, that they've run out of ways to sell it short of giving dev tools to the players themselves.
perhaps even a diminishing returns where it's costing them more to create, than they're pulling in. certainly the time-shift between what they were able to create in 8 months for Legacy of Romulus vs. what they were able to do in 18 months for Agents of Yesterday is something of an indicator.
The PC market and the console market is not the same. The PC market is used to a genre of RPG and adventure games being solo. The console market is no longer the same. It used to be the same way until the advent of Playstation Network and Xbox Online, and the First Person Shooter TRIBBLE-talking PVP market has since become the biggest revenue generator. Look at Call of Duty/Medal of Honor/World at War, where they re-release essentially the same game every year with minor changes/window dressing, and try to tell me I'm wrong. Double-check Twitch and Youtube, whose livestreams are dominated by these genres, if you need more confirmation.
PVE doesn't need a balance pass as it's a cakewalk no matter what you do. PVP (a major component of ANY game's console strategy) needed this desperately.
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The PC market and the console market is not the same. The PC market is used to a genre of RPG and adventure games being solo. The console market is no longer the same. It used to be the same way until the advent of Playstation Network and Xbox Online, and the First Person Shooter TRIBBLE-talking PVP market has since become the biggest revenue generator. Look at Call of Duty/Medal of Honor/World at War, where they re-release essentially the same game every year with minor changes/window dressing, and try to tell me I'm wrong. Double-check Twitch and Youtube, whose livestreams are dominated by these genres, if you need more confirmation.
PVE doesn't need a balance pass as it's a cakewalk no matter what you do. PVP (a major component of ANY game's console strategy) needed this desperately.