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How did we go from over 30 episodes for an expansion to 6?
archer01
Member Posts: 99 Arc User
I realize that Legacy of Romulus was a few years ago and that there have been expansions since but I wish Victory is Life came with as many episodes as Legacy of Romulus. Six episodes seems like too few to be considered an expansion. Even Delta Rising has quite a few more episodes than Victory Is Life, although a lot of them were filler episodes. This post is mainly to vent because I realize it's not likely that the number of episodes being put out will increase.
Post edited by archer01#0741 on
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This was the initial launch, there is more coming. At the end of the 6th mission, it ended with 'To Be Continued..'
Plus lets not forget, with VIL we also got the Playable Jem'Hadar and Cardassians, level cap, new Queue, new ships and the Battlezone as well as the revamp of Deep Space 9 and the addition of the Gama Quadrant. It was more then just the 6 episodes.
Even comparing only launch missions ViL is pitiful compared to every other expansion this game has had.
Fair enough, everyone is welcome to their opinion.
To me, the quality of the VIL episodes is far superior to things like Delta Rising where we got a ton of missions but I didn't really like any of them. DR is a good example of a release bloated with filler disquised as content. Silly patrol missions hampering story line progression to make things take longer to finish. VIL had only 6 episodes so far, but I am ok with that if the quality of the episodes remains consistent.
Again, it will all be a matter of opinion, but as @meimeitoo said.. 'quality over quantity.'
The truth is that LOR is a high bar that the game may never achieve again. It was truly the 'golden era' of STO. I am happy overall with the content of VIL, I think the episodes are far better then larger releases like Delta Rising that I mostly disliked.
^^ Well said! DR was an episode nightmare, really, with Gecko behind the wheel, trying to frustrate player progress at every corner, annoyingly dragging things out for you, to pad his stats. Shockingly, almost, it seems they learned their lesson, and didn't make ViL about the grind (in fact, leveling up to 65, using Admiralty mainly, went so absurdly fast, it was reportedly a bug, but I'm now thinking maybe they did that on purpose). Overall, I really enjoy ViL -- against my expectations, really.
Each of those expacs when they were said and done had a fair amount of episodes and content to them. Each one brought in a respectable amount of episodes and new queues to them. As another already pointed out, quality over quantity. I would rather have 10 good episodes over the course of an expansion vs 30 half baked ones. Keep in mind this is only the start of ViL and they've more than made clear more stuff is going to be coming. ViL will only be 2 weeks old on Tuesday the 19th, which isn't much time gone by at all. If these launch episodes are any indication as to how the rest of the expansion will be, especially Quark's Lucky Seven, then I'm not worried about how many episodes we get if they're all of that quality.
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Iverall i love this release and am happy with the 6 missions and the to be continued line. I hope they ard all of this quality.
And yes quarks seven is genius.
i would do at least,quandrat specific j'hadar
Totally agree! That mission alone makes ViL the best expansion STO ever had.
True but you're going to have a hell of a time establishing that point RE. Victory is Life.
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What is the minimum number of missions you would accept for an "expansion"?
From LOR until now, STO's expansions are shrinking at an exponential rate. If the trend continues, the next expansion would have even less than 6 missions. Again, what is the absolute minimum amount of missions an "expansion" could have before "quality over quantity" just doesn't work anymore?
It really depends on what else is in the expansion. I think this one feels "lighter" than DR or LOR, but kinda similar to AOY.
Yeah, you aren't going to get any "honest" answers to your question. The previous poster just tried to side-step it with their "zero" answer. But the truth is, we all know calling 6 episodes(great or not) an "expansion" is getting ridiculous. The white knights would defend a 1 episode expansion and still shout "quality over quantity!".
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As I only started playing just before DR, I can't really speak as to frequency of expansions etc, others who have been playing forever have already covered that. I'll speak of what I do know...
When DR hit, I had only one toon and that was a KDF, I deleted him and started one each Fed/KDF/ROM, I found them all good, with KDF and then ROM being much better story lines than the Fed, and all of them finding the Delta arc a mostly boring waste of time, with way too much doing nothing but flying all over the sector compared to actual story to immerse myself in. (Kind of like the KDF starting missions, flying from one side of the sector to the other in a T1 ship to do a mission that takes half as much time as flying there took).
Since then mission have been added quite regularly (to my mind) ranging from mediocre to wonderful. Then came AoY, great story line although quite short, possibly beautiful maps as they looked nice on my old system running graphics at minimum so I'll bet they'll look awesome if I ever replay them now that I can run at max. Most of what has come out since then has been, to me, mostly great work, with good story lines and beautiful maps.
Now we have VIL, that has so far been a fantastic story with beautiful maps, although it does include one "puzzle" and one "maze" that a lot of people find extremely difficult.
Not having been around before then, I'll take others word for the fact that LOR, which to me is the best Faction story line of the bunch, required a year or more of absolutely no new content before release, but was released as a complete package. Then DR, which was also released as a complete package, but which I gather did not have a year or more of no new content before release and was not fondly received by anyone at the time, or very well liked by anyone at all.
So, we have a long time of nothing new and get an awesome expansion, compared to still getting new content followed by a crappy expansion.
Since then we ave gotten regular new, good content, along with new, good expansions, however the expansion, instead of being released as a large, complete package have been released as a smaller, incomplete package followed by regular releases of the rest of the expansion. I'll take the good, regular new content, with good, but partial expansion releases over regular mediocre content followed by a complete but crappy expansion any day. And, although I haven't been through, I would not want to go through a year plus of nothing new to get a complete and good expansion.
Again, this is based strictly on what I have heard (read) but the long drought before LOR drove a lot of players away, and the total crappiness of DR drove even more people away. What I have seen during my actual playing time is a player base that appears to be growing, maybe not fast, but growth is growth, whether it's old players returning or new players joining. Regular good new content with regular good but partial expansions seems to be working.
On a final note, I'll echo others. I'll take 6 episodes of quality content that I enjoy playing over 20 episodes of TRIBBLE that I can't stand playing through even once any day.
Any content, no matter how awesome will get old if repeated enough, but content that you can't stand playing even once is unacceptable.
I prefer quantity, with one or two high quality missions mixed in.
I personally loved all of the patrol missions, my issues with DR were the weak Vaudwar story and the ridiculously slow leveling. The missions themselves were the perfect blend of high and low production values, it was much closer to the traditional MMO experience that i love, where you run a bunch of simple quests before getting one that has a real story to tell.
When I compare expansions I go purely by the content available at launch, not the subsequent patches, and it is irrefutable that every single expansion has launched with fewer missions than the last. As far as im concerned anything that comes in the following months is not part of the actual expansion, but rather a separate content patch that continues the story.
Of course, we can't avoid the part where this is a f2p game, and "Expansion" doesn't necessarily mean anything other than "larger content release". It's not comparable to, say, an expansion in WoW that costs everyone $30-40.
(yes, they make a big deal out of 'expansion' here, and sell those Big Bundles. Still doesn't make it quite the same thing.)
...I do wonder how budgeting goes. How much did having a zillion major/minor character voice actors cost, and how much value do people put on that. (I've got nothing but a feeling, but have the number of show actors they have in each major story arc been increasing? More in Delta than in LoR, more in ViL than in Delta? Eh, could just have a terrible memory.
And once again, let's not forget guys, this game is FREE!
exactly as @coqaunandos117#2576 predicted, no one is brave enough to actually answer this question because they know how ridiculous it will sound to say they would be happy with something called an expansion that has even less than 6 missions.
I'll be happy with a 1-mission-expansion if the mission is really good!
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!!!111ZZ
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Some people are so hardcore about defending this game they would literally say something that insane if it came down to it.
The only reason I really invest some RL cash into this game is to support the team and help ensure a healthy future for STO. I could go completely F2P and still enjoy the vast majority of the game.
So to me, saying the last expansion was a good deal for our money is a grave understatement. The new missions are awesome and really happy with where this game's going. Less missions at first launch but with great new content all around, I'm all for it.
My two cents.