I would like for them to take three months and focus on improving their tools and ramp up for a workflow that will allow them to release 18-24 Episodes that consist of at least one hour of gameplay over the course of nine months. Just like the TV shows did with TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT. Every episode needs to include C-Store cosmetic items seen in the form of NPC character and ship skins, as well as bridges and interiors sets. In other words, every new thing introduced in an episode could be something players can own.
Also implement a large scale system-driven meta-game tied to the efforts of the Alliance exploring the galaxy together. Things discovered in this meta-game during the 3-month hiatus between the episodic content would hint at what the next season will deal with.
It would seem to me that what they need is a small but competent writing team, tools that better facilitate the development and deployment of structured episodic content, and a workflow that is based on that sort of delivery.
There would always be a 3-month hiatus between the episode release cycles. It would be in this period in which the art team would begin producing the content needed for the first three months of episodes, and they would continue six more months, finishing up with the last three months pending deployment. That last period would be where they produce the stuff that the will be needed for the system-driven meta game to occupy the three months between episode cycles.
STO could be perceived as the next Star Trek series taking place in the prime universe, but one where the audience is not just the spectators... but active participants.
That is what I would like to see them do...
Unless they at least double the team, 18-24 episodes per season is impossible. We've been getting 6 - 8 Episodes per year past few years. This isn't enough, but don't forget they have made other content as well.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
I am for the middle ground..Something like the Iconian war NOT Delta Grind..Delta grind was annoying toi say the least but the iconian war was balanced and trek like..So we need something like the Iconian war..This is for story base..BUT that would be going down the RP path completely like the SWTOR mess..
For a AAA MMO we need balance in terms of RP, player interaction and group play sticking to the title, but here I am finding that group play and player interaction is kinda on the stalled side of things..Those two areas need to be refreshed and made a TRIBBLE load more inviting..Note I am not saying its dead but most ques are slow..
I am for the middle ground..Something like the Iconian war NOT Delta Grind..Delta grind was annoying toi say the least but the iconian war was balanced and trek like..So we need something like the Iconian war..This is for story base..BUT that would be going down the RP path completely like the SWTOR mess..
For a AAA MMO we need balance in terms of RP, player interaction and group play sticking to the title, but here I am finding that group play and player interaction is kinda on the stalled side of things..Those two areas need to be refreshed and made a **** load more inviting..Note I am not saying its dead but most ques are slow..
I'm gonna have to dsagree with this, the iconian war arc is exactly what we don't want, writing was all over the place and it had the devs burning out. burned out devs do poor work.
delta I think was the right idea it was the level cap raise that messed things up not the missions, besides the kobali arc.
most mmos have these things called side quests, they are literally filler. sto has them. but there so optional and so few, I think most players don't even know they exist. which is a problem filler no one know about is bad filler. what we need to solve this isn't shorter FEs or more FEs the current one every three monthes is about the best they can do. it's more patrols.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Continue to get high quality content but less frequently.
Game has plenty enough content. What it needs is more reason to play it. Its sad these high-quality episodes don't last more than 3-4 playthroughs before you've got all the rewards.
Game has plenty enough content. What it needs is more reason to play it. Its sad these high-quality episodes don't last more than 3-4 playthroughs before you've got all the rewards.
yeah but I don't thing cryptic can actually do anything about that, it's that old "you can lead a horse to water" problem, the fact you have to bribe the fanbase to have have fun, or at least stop doing the same exact mission over and over again is pretty sad actually.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Cannot vote on this poll because not only is it misleading in description, but i question the quality of current content in more than one way.
Firstly quality does not just mean how good the episodes are in my opinion, amount of content is also a factor. 15- 45 minutes of new content every 2-3 months is not quality. Even if it has trek actor voicing, grade A graphics and excellent storytelling then it is still not good quality content, since the low content releases offsets how good the episode is and makes low quality since there is never much new stuff.
Secondly lets take a look at the new mission, waiting i think it was just over two months and what do we get, a short space battle part with an overpowered ship that can vaporise everything in it's path risk free without using ability's. Follow that with a medium lengh ground battle where it was pew pew everything with two overpowered ground ability's and a couple of fillers, then finally a short part where we just fly around to things and press the interaction popup. Twenty minutes or so after starting it i have played all the new content and got nothing for two months.
All the while the entire storyline for this episode is a defector whining that he hated what he was told to do but did it til he got fed up and switched sides. I really hope this is not what you are classifying as the high quality option, cuz if this is high quality i would hate to see low.
Since a middle ground 3rd option has been suggested i am gonna say none of them and go for option 4. Increase your content creation team so that quality content can be put out without ridiculus wait times. Seems to me a ton more effort is put into lockboxes, cstore stuff, and basically anything that can be made micro transactions, than is put into content.
Now true you gotta make money in a ftp game that means micro transactions. Not saying cut back on that stuff at all,just saying put more effort into content alongside micro's as well. I used to play this game regular now just come on 2-3 times a year to play the small ammount of new content. Even then i have usually played through it within an hour or two.
I am for the middle ground..Something like the Iconian war NOT Delta Grind..Delta grind was annoying toi say the least but the iconian war was balanced and trek like..So we need something like the Iconian war..
The Iconian War was so short that if you blinked you missed it. The DR story, on the other hand, was much more fleshed out thanks to it's greater length and the balance between long story missions and small patrol missions. Sure, the grind part of DR was horrible but the devs have admitted and fixed the mistake, and promised to not do it again in the future.
The Iconian War was the biggest let down this game has ever had from a story perspective, because after all the build up we had starting all the way back at launch, all we got was a handful of missions and it was over. We never had a chance to appreciate how dire the situation was supposed to be because they just rushed to the ending. We should have had patrols to evacuate colonies or protect disabled vessels, defend ship yards, etc, with most ending in defeat for the Alliance. The Delta Arc may not have been the best story, but it did a much, MUCH better job of actually telling it's story than the Iconian War did. That's what happens when devs get tunnel vision and only focus on the big missions and nothing else.
Mark Twain once said, "There are lies. There are damnable lies. Then there are statistics." I think the same thing can be said about polls. Polls offer an illusion of to people that their input counts for something. When any choice they make is structured prior to anyone ever, ahem, 'voting'. Next, the results are touted loudly and publicly as some sort of group consensus or voice of the people.
I don't trust polls because they are too easy to manipulate to achieve the intended result determined beforehand.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
When you remove something from the game that no time or money is being spent on anyway, I honestly doubt it would enable greater achievements in other areas. It would be nice to see a staffing and dev budget increase though.
I think that less than a half hour's content and a new spec is a wee bit lacking for a half season, regardless of any upcoming expansion. Please don't take this as a criticism of the folks that make the game, they take their orders from above. Am very much in agreement with a couple other posts:
There should be no compromise on quality, even though this is a free game. And I do think that they are sandbagging it a little in the time taken in releasing an episode, have a hard time believing that it took 9 weeks to create some the most recent episodes.
Cannot vote on this poll because not only is it misleading in description, but i question the quality of current content in more than one way.
Firstly quality does not just mean how good the episodes are in my opinion, amount of content is also a factor. 15- 45 minutes of new content every 2-3 months is not quality. Even if it has trek actor voicing, grade A graphics and excellent storytelling then it is still not good quality content, since the low content releases offsets how good the episode is and makes low quality since there is never much new stuff.
Secondly lets take a look at the new mission, waiting i think it was just over two months and what do we get, a short space battle part with an overpowered ship that can vaporise everything in it's path risk free without using ability's. Follow that with a medium lengh ground battle where it was pew pew everything with two overpowered ground ability's and a couple of fillers, then finally a short part where we just fly around to things and press the interaction popup. Twenty minutes or so after starting it i have played all the new content and got nothing for two months.
All the while the entire storyline for this episode is a defector whining that he hated what he was told to do but did it til he got fed up and switched sides. I really hope this is not what you are classifying as the high quality option, cuz if this is high quality i would hate to see low.
Since a middle ground 3rd option has been suggested i am gonna say none of them and go for option 4. Increase your content creation team so that quality content can be put out without ridiculus wait times. Seems to me a ton more effort is put into lockboxes, cstore stuff, and basically anything that can be made micro transactions, than is put into content.
Now true you gotta make money in a ftp game that means micro transactions. Not saying cut back on that stuff at all,just saying put more effort into content alongside micro's as well. I used to play this game regular now just come on 2-3 times a year to play the small ammount of new content. Even then i have usually played through it within an hour or two.
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
It's removal would do nothing except make the game smaller yet as there isn't any time or resources being allocated to it anyways. Make the game narrow enough and you might end up with the equivalent of a Star Trek chat room with weekly special events with a guaranteed reward (participation optional). A larger budget so they could get more done would be great.
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
It's removal would do nothing except make the game smaller yet as there isn't any time or resources being allocated to it anyways. Make the game narrow enough and you might end up with the equivalent of a Star Trek chat room with weekly special events with a guaranteed reward (participation optional). A larger budget so they could get more done would be great.
A question to be asked: Will Cryptic devs ever showcase a new or upgraded PvP experience and shaft PvE for a bit to do this?
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
It's removal would do nothing except make the game smaller yet as there isn't any time or resources being allocated to it anyways. Make the game narrow enough and you might end up with the equivalent of a Star Trek chat room with weekly special events with a guaranteed reward (participation optional). A larger budget so they could get more done would be great.
A question to be asked: Will Cryptic devs ever showcase a new or upgraded PvP experience and shaft PvE for a bit to do this?
As much as I despise PvP in MMOs, they shouldn't remove it. That would take too many resources. They should just officially announce that that part of the game will receive no further updates outside of bug fixes (ie put PvP in maintenance mode).
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
It's removal would do nothing except make the game smaller yet as there isn't any time or resources being allocated to it anyways. Make the game narrow enough and you might end up with the equivalent of a Star Trek chat room with weekly special events with a guaranteed reward (participation optional). A larger budget so they could get more done would be great.
A question to be asked: Will Cryptic devs ever showcase a new or upgraded PvP experience and shaft PvE for a bit to do this?
Will Cryptic ever showcase a new or upgraded PvE experience?
I would prefer that Cryptic hire additional Devs, increase the Development budget, cut pvp entirely from the game, and bring in Kristen Beyer to do the next year of stories.
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
It's removal would do nothing except make the game smaller yet as there isn't any time or resources being allocated to it anyways. Make the game narrow enough and you might end up with the equivalent of a Star Trek chat room with weekly special events with a guaranteed reward (participation optional). A larger budget so they could get more done would be great.
A question to be asked: Will Cryptic devs ever showcase a new or upgraded PvP experience and shaft PvE for a bit to do this?
Will Cryptic ever showcase a new or upgraded PvE experience?
The proof is already in the game to a yes. it is constantly being upgraded and updated. remember the original STF's, and missions. They were only Starfleet, patrols were a common thing and others could join your group to finish that patrol. exploration dailies, the quadrant was small, the main content was the klingon war with the borg and undine being the end content in Gamma Orionis and beyond.
the game has come on a long way since and it is a showcase of their skills and abilities.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
So in our last interview on Priority One Podcast with STO Lead Designer "Al Rivera" we brought up the issue that content (i.e. story missions) seem to be coming less and less frequently. Al's response is that to this issue is that the team are spending more time on creating story missions compared to say, three years ago. So rather than spending 3 weeks creating a mission they are spending 9 weeks creating them. I would like to see what you guys, the STO community thinks about this and hopefully we can get a good idea what the community wants for the future of STO. Thank you all in advance for your votes and opinions!
(Content=Story Missions)
(Less Frequently=Each Season Release and .5 Release)
-Winters
IMO they are just using the word "quality" to justify the laziness and lack of any content.
Most people in here know that quality is subjective and they would go in extreme cases to defend the so called quality instead of facing the cruel reality that is the direction this MMO is going. From a business perspective STO should have been shut down 2 years ago. However, consoles gave them a small revival and kept going with the fewest resources possible. The least amount of content and we call it due to highest "quality".
Do anyone in the right mind think the scenery of Romulus brought up by LoR's clear quality and additional great content can even compete with any of the last FEs?
Wake up and know this is just an excuse to get you buy more boxes and use quality as a debate point so players think indeed it justifies the wrong direction this MMO is going.
Comments
Unless they at least double the team, 18-24 episodes per season is impossible. We've been getting 6 - 8 Episodes per year past few years. This isn't enough, but don't forget they have made other content as well.
For a AAA MMO we need balance in terms of RP, player interaction and group play sticking to the title, but here I am finding that group play and player interaction is kinda on the stalled side of things..Those two areas need to be refreshed and made a TRIBBLE load more inviting..Note I am not saying its dead but most ques are slow..
Adu-Uss Firefox NCC-93425-F (LVL 65 FED AoY ENG) UR/VR MKXV Fleet Intel Assault Cruiser (July 2016)
Jean-Uss Seratoga Ravenna (LVL 60 FED Delta ENG) UC/R MKVI Bajoran Escort (April 2018)
Dubsa-RRW Mnaudh (LVL 50 FED allied ROM Delta ENG) Warbird (May 2018)
Marop-IKS Orunthi (LVL 50 KNG Delta ENG) BoP (May 2018)
Kanak'lan-TRIBBLE (LVL 65 DOM Gamma ENG) TRIBBLE (June 2018)
I'm gonna have to dsagree with this, the iconian war arc is exactly what we don't want, writing was all over the place and it had the devs burning out. burned out devs do poor work.
delta I think was the right idea it was the level cap raise that messed things up not the missions, besides the kobali arc.
most mmos have these things called side quests, they are literally filler. sto has them. but there so optional and so few, I think most players don't even know they exist. which is a problem filler no one know about is bad filler. what we need to solve this isn't shorter FEs or more FEs the current one every three monthes is about the best they can do. it's more patrols.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
yeah but I don't thing cryptic can actually do anything about that, it's that old "you can lead a horse to water" problem, the fact you have to bribe the fanbase to have have fun, or at least stop doing the same exact mission over and over again is pretty sad actually.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Firstly quality does not just mean how good the episodes are in my opinion, amount of content is also a factor. 15- 45 minutes of new content every 2-3 months is not quality. Even if it has trek actor voicing, grade A graphics and excellent storytelling then it is still not good quality content, since the low content releases offsets how good the episode is and makes low quality since there is never much new stuff.
Secondly lets take a look at the new mission, waiting i think it was just over two months and what do we get, a short space battle part with an overpowered ship that can vaporise everything in it's path risk free without using ability's. Follow that with a medium lengh ground battle where it was pew pew everything with two overpowered ground ability's and a couple of fillers, then finally a short part where we just fly around to things and press the interaction popup. Twenty minutes or so after starting it i have played all the new content and got nothing for two months.
All the while the entire storyline for this episode is a defector whining that he hated what he was told to do but did it til he got fed up and switched sides. I really hope this is not what you are classifying as the high quality option, cuz if this is high quality i would hate to see low.
Since a middle ground 3rd option has been suggested i am gonna say none of them and go for option 4. Increase your content creation team so that quality content can be put out without ridiculus wait times. Seems to me a ton more effort is put into lockboxes, cstore stuff, and basically anything that can be made micro transactions, than is put into content.
Now true you gotta make money in a ftp game that means micro transactions. Not saying cut back on that stuff at all,just saying put more effort into content alongside micro's as well. I used to play this game regular now just come on 2-3 times a year to play the small ammount of new content. Even then i have usually played through it within an hour or two.
The Iconian War was so short that if you blinked you missed it. The DR story, on the other hand, was much more fleshed out thanks to it's greater length and the balance between long story missions and small patrol missions. Sure, the grind part of DR was horrible but the devs have admitted and fixed the mistake, and promised to not do it again in the future.
The Iconian War was the biggest let down this game has ever had from a story perspective, because after all the build up we had starting all the way back at launch, all we got was a handful of missions and it was over. We never had a chance to appreciate how dire the situation was supposed to be because they just rushed to the ending. We should have had patrols to evacuate colonies or protect disabled vessels, defend ship yards, etc, with most ending in defeat for the Alliance. The Delta Arc may not have been the best story, but it did a much, MUCH better job of actually telling it's story than the Iconian War did. That's what happens when devs get tunnel vision and only focus on the big missions and nothing else.
I don't trust polls because they are too easy to manipulate to achieve the intended result determined beforehand.
I think that less than a half hour's content and a new spec is a wee bit lacking for a half season, regardless of any upcoming expansion. Please don't take this as a criticism of the folks that make the game, they take their orders from above. Am very much in agreement with a couple other posts:
It would be nice if Cryptic could expand a little amd give the dev team a little more flexibility with a few more staff on the team. Also cutting PVP is something i am agreement of, it has never seen any real attention to it over the years and it will keep all the resources in one location where the quality would be greatest.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
It's removal would do nothing except make the game smaller yet as there isn't any time or resources being allocated to it anyways. Make the game narrow enough and you might end up with the equivalent of a Star Trek chat room with weekly special events with a guaranteed reward (participation optional). A larger budget so they could get more done would be great.
A question to be asked: Will Cryptic devs ever showcase a new or upgraded PvP experience and shaft PvE for a bit to do this?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
As much as I despise PvP in MMOs, they shouldn't remove it. That would take too many resources. They should just officially announce that that part of the game will receive no further updates outside of bug fixes (ie put PvP in maintenance mode).
The proof is already in the game to a yes. it is constantly being upgraded and updated. remember the original STF's, and missions. They were only Starfleet, patrols were a common thing and others could join your group to finish that patrol. exploration dailies, the quadrant was small, the main content was the klingon war with the borg and undine being the end content in Gamma Orionis and beyond.
the game has come on a long way since and it is a showcase of their skills and abilities.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
IMO they are just using the word "quality" to justify the laziness and lack of any content.
Most people in here know that quality is subjective and they would go in extreme cases to defend the so called quality instead of facing the cruel reality that is the direction this MMO is going. From a business perspective STO should have been shut down 2 years ago. However, consoles gave them a small revival and kept going with the fewest resources possible. The least amount of content and we call it due to highest "quality".
Do anyone in the right mind think the scenery of Romulus brought up by LoR's clear quality and additional great content can even compete with any of the last FEs?
Wake up and know this is just an excuse to get you buy more boxes and use quality as a debate point so players think indeed it justifies the wrong direction this MMO is going.
[img][/img]
Original STO beta tester.