The real reason it's going is likely that they either don't know, or don;t want to keep maintaining it. As with a great many things in STO they always claim to be improving things by removing things. I'm yet to see that sort of mentality actually lead to any significant improvement for us players tbh and yet they keep peddling that BS.
Personally for me the streamlining and removing things has not only lead to no significant improvements but its made the overall game experience worse from a player point of view. I still find the new streamlined queue UI worse then the old one, new mission journal worse, new repetition UI worse and well there is a long list of streamlined or removed systems with the replacements offering a worse experience then what we had.
Not every revamp was bad, the mine revamp was great but there has been a lot of streamlining that for me has gone to far. Streamlining can be good but I find this over streamlining the devs are doing is creating a worse player experience.
Conspiracy Theorists, consider this:
The removed the Foundry - a huge game feature with a small but strong community supporting it without claiming that it was abused by gold spammers, and outright saying it is because the support has become too time-consuming and expensive.
But for removing the XMPP feature, that some people in this thread apparently don't even know what it's for, they need to come up with a false pretense instead of just saying: "too time-consuming and expensive" just as they did for the Foundry?
What exactly do you think is the real cause then, what "sinister purpose" are they supposed to hide?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I haven't been following this thread, so I won't comment on any previous posts, but I did want to leave my comments here since this change directly affects me and my entire fleet.
I'm part of a fairly small episodic-style roleplay fleet. We have scheduled roleplay sessions that last about three hours, and these sessions meet regularly about five times a week. Since these sessions are regularly scheduled, patch days can occasionally interfere with one or more sessions, especially for players who have to work and don't get a chance to patch earlier in the day. There have been other cases where a player's computer crashed or had other issues that prevented them from getting into the game. In these situations, XMPP has been not only convenient, but incredibly beneficial and critical to allowing these players to stay active even while their games are still patching.
Removing XMPP support will negatively impact our fleet, because we will no longer have that option available to us. Now, when a player cannot get into the game for whatever reason, they will be excluded from fleet activities that they would have been able to participate in previously. Exterior game chat access was one of the few positive and unique aspects that set this game apart from others, and I and my fleet will be very sad to see this feature leave.
Conspiracy Theorists, consider this:
The removed the Foundry - a huge game feature with a small but strong community supporting it without claiming that it was abused by gold spammers, and outright saying it is because the support has become too time-consuming and expensive.
But for removing the XMPP feature, that some people in this thread apparently don't even know what it's for, they need to come up with a false pretense instead of just saying: "too time-consuming and expensive" just as they did for the Foundry?
What exactly do you think is the real cause then, what "sinister purpose" are they supposed to hide?
I keep thinking that Cryptic's goal is to have STO very low maintenance & with more automated scheduling. Somewhat similar to the way Guild Wars 1 is now. Cryptic is enacting this plan by cutting fat off which cannot be monetized & requires more regular maintenance & then culminating sometime next year after the 10th anniversary. Cryptic is progressing the game & making it better but in smaller & smaller doses while doing a lot of "streamlining" (reducing parts of STO). I wouldn't say "sinister" since STO is an older game & can only keep up with the current technology to a certain point given the dated coding it runs. A possible death knell for STO would only happen if an impacting anti-gambling in gaming bill passed, for USA at least, since STO has positioned itself to rely so much upon it. Otherwise, agree or disagree I think a lot of Cryptic's decisions are made with financial reasoning behind it of course & some of the casualties are aspects of STO that players enjoy.
The real reason it's going is likely that they either don't know, or don;t want to keep maintaining it. As with a great many things in STO they always claim to be improving things by removing things. I'm yet to see that sort of mentality actually lead to any significant improvement for us players tbh and yet they keep peddling that BS.
Personally for me the streamlining and removing things has not only lead to no significant improvements but its made the overall game experience worse from a player point of view. I still find the new streamlined queue UI worse then the old one, new mission journal worse, new repetition UI worse and well there is a long list of streamlined or removed systems with the replacements offering a worse experience then what we had.
Not every revamp was bad, the mine revamp was great but there has been a lot of streamlining that for me has gone to far. Streamlining can be good but I find this over streamlining the devs are doing is creating a worse player experience.
Agreed.
Too much has been removed in the name of "improvements" to the player experience and very little actually added back really.
The new PVE UI is just a copy of the console version from what I gather, an easy way to just copy & paste without thinking of the consequences or caring if people like it or not.
The new mission system is a maze of lost missions that most people will never play now.
The exploration clusters were removed because of a myriad of silly reasons (people getting lost....geez come on, even the Russians can make up better excuses than that one). Nothing has replaced them.
Mine Trap, a much loved PVE map was removed for "improvements" and nothing replaced it.
SB24 was removed.....only shortly after losing its ability to be run solo.....nothing replaced it.
The Foundry was removed....
Many things lost, not much gained.
About the only thing we seem to get added regularly is copy & paste reputations which are starting to get seriously dull and repetitive now.
Since I have no idea what this is about, I doubt I'll miss it.
Good decision if it helps fighting spam though, that much I know. If that means the decision is less convenient to people when they're outside of the game, so be it. Convenience (and hence, lack of spam) within the game should be a priority.
Yeah man, its not like game scammers spend 100+ dollars to put their scam games on Steam... ohh wait, they do, in mass, which is why Valve upped the cost awhile back.
Lol, you actually believe it. Pathetic.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
“PVE UI? You mean the TFO menu which is 100% easier to get through then the old one since its better organized?”
I assume we are not talking about the very original one. For me the best version was the last version as with the very latest revamp I find it harder to get through and it now takes longer to get into the missions I want to play; the team forming chat feature in the revamp is in a worse state having lost functionally along with requiring extra clicking to use over the previous version. The extra UI information I used a lot is missing in the new revamp which makes it harder to get into queues. Overall the interface is chunkier now, less functional and often requires extra clicking over the previous version.
“Starbase 24 was replaced with Defence of Starbase One, just like Federation/Gorn Minefield was replaced with Romulan Minefield,”
They are hardly replacements and no where near as good as what they replaced and you can add the latest NWS and latest version CE into that list of TFO’s that got revamped to be worse. In the case of Minefield and SB24 we would have been better off keeping the originals and getting the new ones alongside the old ones. I found SB24 far more tactical and fun compared to Defence of Starbase One which is just sit AFK stationary bored watching everything blow up. It was fun competing in the score and points system for SB24.
Same for the original NWS I considered that some of the top content in game and it was lots of fun and very tactical and group focused. For me the new one is a massive downgrade.
I don’t want to see the very original CE back as the first few CE revamps made it better but the very latest revamp is worse.
Pahvo Dissension and Peril over Pahvo revamp is an improvement, I much prefer Peril over Pahvo. I know there was a lot of complaints when that came out but it is an improvement.
“Starbase 24 was replaced with Defence of Starbase One, just like Federation/Gorn Minefield was replaced with Romulan Minefield,”
They are hardly replacements and no where near as good as what they replaced and you can add the latest NWS and latest version CE into that list of TFO’s that got revamped to be worse. In the case of Minefield and SB24 we would have been better off keeping the originals and getting the new ones alongside the old ones. I found SB24 far more tactical and fun compared to Defence of Starbase One which is just sit AFK stationary bored watching everything blow up. Same for the original NWS I considered that some of the top content in game and it was lots of fun and very tactile. For me the new one is a massive downgrade.
I don’t want to see the very original CE back as the first few CE revamps made it better but the very latest revamp is worse.
Pahvo Dissension and Peril over Pahvo revamp is an improvement, I much prefer Peril over Pahvo. I know there was a lot of complaints when that came out but it is an improvement.
Yeah, starbase 24 rocked. I get that it's subjective but it was one of my favorite queues in the game. It was also really useful for testing out builds back when they allowed you to solo play it. I really miss it. It's probably the single thing that I miss the most in this game.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
You know you both can sue arc for not following with the Americans with disabilities act.
That is a law all companies must follow to operate in the untied states. I will say that if anything happens to my account, anyone that agrees with me, or god forbid our disabled people . I will be making sure Arc Cryptic or any other company that is in evolved will not like what will happen you might want to have your legal look it up it is call the whistle blower act.
> @razar2380 said:
> blindprincess wrote: »
>
> well I use it to access chat due to the reason I am visually impaired and this is the only way I can read chat. your chat is not screen reader friendly
>
>
>
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> This is so true. I have trouble with the chat window as well. Last week I had someone helping me to set up this service when they had to go. I guess now it is pointless.
>
> Razar.
You know, I'm not sure. Are there any games that are screen reader friendly?
Games aren't disability friendly just based on how they're designed.
Due to how they're rendered, most "text" in games are just images which look like text. The chat window could even be emulated to support highlighting and copy/paste, but are still not regular UI controls screen readers can identify.
You could make the case to Cryptic to keep it around for that reason, but suing them will go nowhere. But IANAL.
Your best hope is to disable transparency in the chat window, so at least OCR tools have a consistent background color, then try to train it to read STO's specific font.
>There is demonstrable evidence that this occurs in other places
>LOL YOU BELIEVE EASILY DEMONSTRABLE FACTS!
And people wonder why the Devs never come here.
It defies logic that someone would pay $200-$300 to access an LTS to spam a miniscule minority of the player base when they can already spam them and everyone else for free. If you believe this then you simply can't be helped. I've decided to take a bit of a step back though as I've had time to think about this. I'll give the devs the benefit of the doubt and assume that they mean there is some programming shenanigans going on by the spammers. So with that said, I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions. Cryptic's wording leads me to believe that they don't want to mention these programming shenanigans, as I'll refer to them. Because there's simply no chance that spammers would pay hundreds of dollars simply to spam other players when they can already spam them for free.
Ironic you would say this when SB24 was literately the "park in one spot and AFK fire everything mission", since everything just spawned in one giant blob-like horde. Whereas in Defense of Starbase One you are actually encouraged to move around from one side of the station to the other to protect the fleeing transports.
Why make this an "either or" thing? I like SB1 and I really loved SB24. There's enough room for both in the game but, unfortunately, the decision was made to scrap SB24.
Post edited by salazarraze on
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
“Ironic you would say this when SB24 was literately the "park in one spot and AFK fire everything mission", since everything just spawned in one giant blob-like horde.”
There was far more to SB24 then that. Different ships had different values and just sitting in one spot shooting blobs didn’t earn you a top score. There was so many choices like do you use speed and go for the hidden dreadnought kill which is worth a lot of points but then lose out on the mass low value small ships or do you focus on the medium targets/medium points ships. It was all about the tactics and getting the most points. It was even better when the scoreboard was active so you could see how you where doing against everyone else. Star base One has nothing like above, all the skill and tactics got stripped way for Star base One. In Starbase One it doesn’t matter what you engage or what you do. Plus SB24 was a great testing ground. It was fun to take a tank and see how many ships you can survive against or test new weapons in solo.
You also had to move around and engage different groups in SB24 and you go far enough back beam inside the station.
“The only UI information they removed was the # of people queues counter, which was always wrong in the first place.”
It was never wrong and removing it has done nothing but cause problems and make it harder for me to get into active queues. There has been zero good from it being removed only lots of harm. Removing it has also stopped people like me from joining and causing some queues to start so other people are now left waiting longer before getting to play. Which is bad for all involved.
You seem to be forgetting about team forming chat functionally which is a lot worse in the new version being both less functional and required more clicks to use. While the new chat works, its a massive downgrade over the pre revamp queue system.
SB24 was good fun to run solo, or even in a group. It was nothing fancy but could be a decent challenge to new alts or if you went with undergeared ships. Plus it was handy to test builds in. Not ISA difficulty but if you needed a quick area to go to with plenty to shoot to test timings etc. then it was ideal.
SB1 is not terrible, but it's not great either. It's a bit dull as it's literally just a timegated mission with ever increasing difficulty of mobs. You can literally park up and autofire and it'll result in the enemy coming to you.
Both could have been in the game, no reason to cut one that a lot of players enjoyed.
I actually saw people get lost in them. Hell, I go to Starfleet Academy and still sometimes see people asking how to get out of Starfleet Academy because, despite there being a big BEAM OUT button right there, they are trying to click on the normal beam out button on the top right minimap, which doesn't work.
This UI inconsistency should have been fixed 10 years ago. That beam out button near the minimap should always be available, except in sector space. Every click should take you further "out", until you reach sector space. It doesn't matter what I was doing before, if I want to leave, it should let me. The "Beam Out" button is easily obscured by an open inventory, just by default.
Lets ignore all the new systems update we have seen in the last year like
-The random TFO system
-Personal endeavors
-The T6 reputation update
-The upcoming patrol revamp
-An increase in the frequency of story missions
But na man, all they ever add is reps... despite the fact they only add once a year at this rate.
Random TFO system is horrible. I understand why they put it in, but without even so much as a ground filter, it's useless. I'm not getting stuck in Hive ground for an hour (because everyone just plays Borg TFOs), or face a leaver penalty. I mean, it's good for the player that wants to play a specific queue, but not good for the players that join random.
Personal endeavors are just chores. I don't do them. Haven't used the system since it was introduced way back.
T6 is ok, it's 150% more grind than even to T5 though, so it takes a very long time.
I hope for better patrols, but I also like to have some story content, and given what I heard about patrols, I may not like them.
I do like story missions, so yay.
One improvement I'd like to see, is auto-fill Admiralty missions, just like we got First Officer recommendations for DOFFs eventually.
That's a huge gameplay improvement I'd like to see. I'd use the admiralty system more if it had that.
I actually saw people get lost in them. Hell, I go to Starfleet Academy and still sometimes see people asking how to get out of Starfleet Academy because, despite there being a big BEAM OUT button right there, they are trying to click on the normal beam out button on the top right minimap, which doesn't work.
This UI inconsistency should have been fixed 10 years ago. That beam out button near the minimap should always be available, except in sector space. Every click should take you further "out", until you reach sector space. It doesn't matter what I was doing before, if I want to leave, it should let me. The "Beam Out" button is easily obscured by an open inventory, just by default.
Lets ignore all the new systems update we have seen in the last year like
-The random TFO system
-Personal endeavors
-The T6 reputation update
-The upcoming patrol revamp
-An increase in the frequency of story missions
But na man, all they ever add is reps... despite the fact they only add once a year at this rate.
Random TFO system is horrible. I understand why they put it in, but without even so much as a ground filter, it's useless. I'm not getting stuck in Hive ground for an hour (because everyone just plays Borg TFOs), or face a leaver penalty. I mean, it's good for the player that wants to play a specific queue, but not good for the players that join random.
Personal endeavors are just chores. I don't do them. Haven't used the system since it was introduced way back.
T6 is ok, it's 150% more grind than even to T5 though, so it takes a very long time.
I hope for better patrols, but I also like to have some story content, and given what I heard about patrols, I may not like them.
I do like story missions, so yay.
One improvement I'd like to see, is auto-fill Admiralty missions, just like we got First Officer recommendations for DOFFs eventually.
That's a huge gameplay improvement I'd like to see. I'd use the admiralty system more if it had that.
The random TFO system is not horrible. It may not be perfect, but no system is.
The disadvantages you mention are by design and are there because you get more rewards when participating in the system. It's a logical feature.
Personally I am convinced that the endeavours should be more challenging.
I actually saw people get lost in them. Hell, I go to Starfleet Academy and still sometimes see people asking how to get out of Starfleet Academy because, despite there being a big BEAM OUT button right there, they are trying to click on the normal beam out button on the top right minimap, which doesn't work.
This UI inconsistency should have been fixed 10 years ago. That beam out button near the minimap should always be available, except in sector space. Every click should take you further "out", until you reach sector space. It doesn't matter what I was doing before, if I want to leave, it should let me. The "Beam Out" button is easily obscured by an open inventory, just by default.
Lets ignore all the new systems update we have seen in the last year like
-The random TFO system
-Personal endeavors
-The T6 reputation update
-The upcoming patrol revamp
-An increase in the frequency of story missions
But na man, all they ever add is reps... despite the fact they only add once a year at this rate.
Random TFO system is horrible. I understand why they put it in, but without even so much as a ground filter, it's useless. I'm not getting stuck in Hive ground for an hour (because everyone just plays Borg TFOs), or face a leaver penalty. I mean, it's good for the player that wants to play a specific queue, but not good for the players that join random.
Personal endeavors are just chores. I don't do them. Haven't used the system since it was introduced way back.
T6 is ok, it's 150% more grind than even to T5 though, so it takes a very long time.
I hope for better patrols, but I also like to have some story content, and given what I heard about patrols, I may not like them.
I do like story missions, so yay.
One improvement I'd like to see, is auto-fill Admiralty missions, just like we got First Officer recommendations for DOFFs eventually.
That's a huge gameplay improvement I'd like to see. I'd use the admiralty system more if it had that.
The random TFO system is not horrible. It may not be perfect, but no system is.
The disadvantages you mention are by design and are there because you get more rewards when participating in the system. It's a logical feature.
Personally I am convinced that the endeavours should be more challenging.
When I can do two or more SB1 queues and get more rewards in the time it takes to complete a long and challenging random queue I get stuck in (for only 70 mark bonus, which is about half), that's not a logical reward. The time-cost benefit isn't there.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind challenging queues, the problem is most PUGs don't know how to play it, or just troll. Neither do they listen in chat.
Now, most of the time I tried it, I was stuck into either borg space, or SB1 queues anyway. In that way it is beneficial (at least until I get sick and tired of borg after borg after borg queue).
I did get rando'd into Khitomer ground once, and had to leave after 30 or so minutes because no one would talk and work together. Which also blocked me from another queue for 30 more minutes. I could have done 4x SB1 or borg space queues in that time, and gotten nearly 4x more rewards than if I'd actually been able to finish that ground map even in an hour.
“I;m not even sure what you are talking about. If you need a team for a TFO just queue up and people will be thrown in there, and if you are assembling a pre-made team for something like an elite TFO, why are you not just using your own channel?” ?
It doesn’t work like that people are not thrown into the queues I play and due to the bad UI change no one can see I am queueing and choose to join me. Likewise, I can no longer see other people queueing and no longer choose to join them. Which has a knock on effect we all end up waiting longer and getting to play less queues. They need to bring back the UI numbers to solve all the problems they created.
As for private channels that too is worse now. if I do form a private queue people are thrown in there but the new UI interface in the revamp is less functional and requires more clicking to use. It works but its nowhere near as good as the old system. It’s a classic case of a system the devs revamped in the name of streamlining and making it better for the players but in actual fact made it worse for us. The new system is not unusable its just not as good as what we had.
I don’t want to turn this thread into a big back and fourth about the UI change. What I am trying to say is some streamlining is good but I feel like a lot of what the devs are doing is streamlining too far and making the player experience worse. To much streamlining and making things over simple is just as bad if not worse then no streamlining. I am not a fan of all this super easy, auto handout, auto win no matter what simple content approach the devs have turned to. I wouldn't mind it so much if it was along side the good content so players had a choice of which style they prefer. But the devs have stripped out what I see as the good content that was challenging and rewarding to play with a sense of accomplishment and replaced it with unrewarding content that has no feeling of accomplishment. Why can we not have both styles?
This UI inconsistency should have been fixed 10 years ago. That beam out button near the minimap should always be available, except in sector space. Every click should take you further "out", until you reach sector space. It doesn't matter what I was doing before, if I want to leave, it should let me. The "Beam Out" button is easily obscured by an open inventory, just by default.
The problem with that argument is that ESD is no more "out" from Starfleet Academy then the SOL system map is. So any pick of going "out" is arbitrary, and would make some users unhappy. Just having a separate menu in that case is easier. Also, not sure what you mean by the inventory obscuring it. The inventory always opens up near the middle of the screen for me, and the beam out button is on the far right edge.
Yeah, that would work too, just something to enable that button all the time.
Random TFO system is horrible. I understand why they put it in, but without even so much as a ground filter, it's useless. I'm not getting stuck in Hive ground for an hour (because everyone just plays Borg TFOs), or face a leaver penalty. I mean, it's good for the player that wants to play a specific queue, but not good for the players that join random.
This is a fairly minority opinion since, according to Cryptic, the number of TFOs played, and the number of different TFOs played, has gone up massively since it was introduced. Also ,there is no ground filter because that would defeat the point of the system in the first place.
Personal endeavors are just chores. I don't do them. Haven't used the system since it was introduced way back.
This is also a fiarly minority opinion it would seem, since, again, Cryptic's data suggests most people are doing them daily. They are really easy, rarely take more then 30 minutes to complete all of them, and the rewards you get add up over time to some pretty worthwhile bonuses.
They also said gold spammers are why XMPP is being shut down. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
T6 is ok, it's 150% more grind than even to T5 though, so it takes a very long time.
Time gating =/= grind. And given that you get auto sponsored for reaching T5, it takes less time then getting from T1 to T5 in the first place.
Except when you already had sponsorship on every character already before T6 even came out.
For every new character on an existing sponsored account, what I said is true.
T1-5 being slower is only true for the very first time a rep is done on an account.
Time gating and grinding are synonymous with controlling player progress. In that sense, they're the same to me. But I don't have much experience with other MMOs.
It doesn’t work like that people are not thrown into the queues I play and due to the bad UI change no one can see I am queueing and choose to join me. Likewise, I can no longer see other people queueing and no longer choose to join them. Which has a knock on effect we all end up waiting longer and getting to play less queues. They need to bring back the UI numbers to solve all the problems they created.
Except the whole point of the random system is that people automatically get put into the TFO you are queuing for, and likewise, you get put into any TFO they are queuing for. You don't NEED to see them do it since the game automatically puts you there in the first place!
It doesn't work for any of the queues I tend to play so I see the new system as a much worse experience. All the new system has achieved is cause me to play massively less public queues as it is way harder to get the queues I want to start to start due to the poorly thought out changes. What's worse is we could have the best of both worlds by bringing the UI numbers back but leaving all the other changes in place. Everyone would win then.
Personally I strongly believe all this so called streamlining along with auto win, auto handout experience is playing a big part in hurting play retention
Comments
Not every revamp was bad, the mine revamp was great but there has been a lot of streamlining that for me has gone to far. Streamlining can be good but I find this over streamlining the devs are doing is creating a worse player experience.
The removed the Foundry - a huge game feature with a small but strong community supporting it without claiming that it was abused by gold spammers, and outright saying it is because the support has become too time-consuming and expensive.
But for removing the XMPP feature, that some people in this thread apparently don't even know what it's for, they need to come up with a false pretense instead of just saying: "too time-consuming and expensive" just as they did for the Foundry?
What exactly do you think is the real cause then, what "sinister purpose" are they supposed to hide?
I'm part of a fairly small episodic-style roleplay fleet. We have scheduled roleplay sessions that last about three hours, and these sessions meet regularly about five times a week. Since these sessions are regularly scheduled, patch days can occasionally interfere with one or more sessions, especially for players who have to work and don't get a chance to patch earlier in the day. There have been other cases where a player's computer crashed or had other issues that prevented them from getting into the game. In these situations, XMPP has been not only convenient, but incredibly beneficial and critical to allowing these players to stay active even while their games are still patching.
Removing XMPP support will negatively impact our fleet, because we will no longer have that option available to us. Now, when a player cannot get into the game for whatever reason, they will be excluded from fleet activities that they would have been able to participate in previously. Exterior game chat access was one of the few positive and unique aspects that set this game apart from others, and I and my fleet will be very sad to see this feature leave.
I keep thinking that Cryptic's goal is to have STO very low maintenance & with more automated scheduling. Somewhat similar to the way Guild Wars 1 is now. Cryptic is enacting this plan by cutting fat off which cannot be monetized & requires more regular maintenance & then culminating sometime next year after the 10th anniversary. Cryptic is progressing the game & making it better but in smaller & smaller doses while doing a lot of "streamlining" (reducing parts of STO). I wouldn't say "sinister" since STO is an older game & can only keep up with the current technology to a certain point given the dated coding it runs. A possible death knell for STO would only happen if an impacting anti-gambling in gaming bill passed, for USA at least, since STO has positioned itself to rely so much upon it. Otherwise, agree or disagree I think a lot of Cryptic's decisions are made with financial reasoning behind it of course & some of the casualties are aspects of STO that players enjoy.
Agreed.
Too much has been removed in the name of "improvements" to the player experience and very little actually added back really.
The new PVE UI is just a copy of the console version from what I gather, an easy way to just copy & paste without thinking of the consequences or caring if people like it or not.
The new mission system is a maze of lost missions that most people will never play now.
The exploration clusters were removed because of a myriad of silly reasons (people getting lost....geez come on, even the Russians can make up better excuses than that one). Nothing has replaced them.
Mine Trap, a much loved PVE map was removed for "improvements" and nothing replaced it.
SB24 was removed.....only shortly after losing its ability to be run solo.....nothing replaced it.
The Foundry was removed....
Many things lost, not much gained.
About the only thing we seem to get added regularly is copy & paste reputations which are starting to get seriously dull and repetitive now.
Good decision if it helps fighting spam though, that much I know. If that means the decision is less convenient to people when they're outside of the game, so be it. Convenience (and hence, lack of spam) within the game should be a priority.
Those also encourage spamming
They are hardly replacements and no where near as good as what they replaced and you can add the latest NWS and latest version CE into that list of TFO’s that got revamped to be worse. In the case of Minefield and SB24 we would have been better off keeping the originals and getting the new ones alongside the old ones. I found SB24 far more tactical and fun compared to Defence of Starbase One which is just sit AFK stationary bored watching everything blow up. It was fun competing in the score and points system for SB24.
Same for the original NWS I considered that some of the top content in game and it was lots of fun and very tactical and group focused. For me the new one is a massive downgrade.
I don’t want to see the very original CE back as the first few CE revamps made it better but the very latest revamp is worse.
Pahvo Dissension and Peril over Pahvo revamp is an improvement, I much prefer Peril over Pahvo. I know there was a lot of complaints when that came out but it is an improvement.
Yeah, starbase 24 rocked. I get that it's subjective but it was one of my favorite queues in the game. It was also really useful for testing out builds back when they allowed you to solo play it. I really miss it. It's probably the single thing that I miss the most in this game.
You know, I'm not sure. Are there any games that are screen reader friendly?
Games aren't disability friendly just based on how they're designed.
Due to how they're rendered, most "text" in games are just images which look like text. The chat window could even be emulated to support highlighting and copy/paste, but are still not regular UI controls screen readers can identify.
You could make the case to Cryptic to keep it around for that reason, but suing them will go nowhere. But IANAL.
Your best hope is to disable transparency in the chat window, so at least OCR tools have a consistent background color, then try to train it to read STO's specific font.
Why make this an "either or" thing? I like SB1 and I really loved SB24. There's enough room for both in the game but, unfortunately, the decision was made to scrap SB24.
You also had to move around and engage different groups in SB24 and you go far enough back beam inside the station.
It was never wrong and removing it has done nothing but cause problems and make it harder for me to get into active queues. There has been zero good from it being removed only lots of harm. Removing it has also stopped people like me from joining and causing some queues to start so other people are now left waiting longer before getting to play. Which is bad for all involved.
You seem to be forgetting about team forming chat functionally which is a lot worse in the new version being both less functional and required more clicks to use. While the new chat works, its a massive downgrade over the pre revamp queue system.
SB1 is not terrible, but it's not great either. It's a bit dull as it's literally just a timegated mission with ever increasing difficulty of mobs. You can literally park up and autofire and it'll result in the enemy coming to you.
Both could have been in the game, no reason to cut one that a lot of players enjoyed.
One improvement I'd like to see, is auto-fill Admiralty missions, just like we got First Officer recommendations for DOFFs eventually.
That's a huge gameplay improvement I'd like to see. I'd use the admiralty system more if it had that.
The random TFO system is not horrible. It may not be perfect, but no system is.
The disadvantages you mention are by design and are there because you get more rewards when participating in the system. It's a logical feature.
Personally I am convinced that the endeavours should be more challenging.
If it was added as a replacement for that, Starbase One is not living up to its purpose.
When I can do two or more SB1 queues and get more rewards in the time it takes to complete a long and challenging random queue I get stuck in (for only 70 mark bonus, which is about half), that's not a logical reward. The time-cost benefit isn't there.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind challenging queues, the problem is most PUGs don't know how to play it, or just troll. Neither do they listen in chat.
Now, most of the time I tried it, I was stuck into either borg space, or SB1 queues anyway. In that way it is beneficial (at least until I get sick and tired of borg after borg after borg queue).
I did get rando'd into Khitomer ground once, and had to leave after 30 or so minutes because no one would talk and work together. Which also blocked me from another queue for 30 more minutes. I could have done 4x SB1 or borg space queues in that time, and gotten nearly 4x more rewards than if I'd actually been able to finish that ground map even in an hour.
If I could just solo queues, I'd be happier.
EDIT: I see this has gone a bit off topic.
As for private channels that too is worse now. if I do form a private queue people are thrown in there but the new UI interface in the revamp is less functional and requires more clicking to use. It works but its nowhere near as good as the old system. It’s a classic case of a system the devs revamped in the name of streamlining and making it better for the players but in actual fact made it worse for us. The new system is not unusable its just not as good as what we had.
I don’t want to turn this thread into a big back and fourth about the UI change. What I am trying to say is some streamlining is good but I feel like a lot of what the devs are doing is streamlining too far and making the player experience worse. To much streamlining and making things over simple is just as bad if not worse then no streamlining. I am not a fan of all this super easy, auto handout, auto win no matter what simple content approach the devs have turned to. I wouldn't mind it so much if it was along side the good content so players had a choice of which style they prefer. But the devs have stripped out what I see as the good content that was challenging and rewarding to play with a sense of accomplishment and replaced it with unrewarding content that has no feeling of accomplishment. Why can we not have both styles?
This is a fairly minority opinion since, according to Cryptic, the number of TFOs played, and the number of different TFOs played, has gone up massively since it was introduced. Also ,there is no ground filter because that would defeat the point of the system in the first place.
They also said gold spammers are why XMPP is being shut down. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Except when you already had sponsorship on every character already before T6 even came out.
For every new character on an existing sponsored account, what I said is true.
T1-5 being slower is only true for the very first time a rep is done on an account.
Time gating and grinding are synonymous with controlling player progress. In that sense, they're the same to me. But I don't have much experience with other MMOs.
Personally I strongly believe all this so called streamlining along with auto win, auto handout experience is playing a big part in hurting play retention