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Blizzard has recently launched a massively successful classic version of their MMO and there are other MMOs that did something similar. I'd love to see such a classic version of STO (maybe S1.2?) - something similar to STO:Rebirth which I enjoyed tremendously. And even though I have a lifetime membership, I wouldn't mind paying an additional monthly fee for such a server to offset the lack of F2P monetisation.
The open-map fleet actions, the original STFs, the significantly slower paced PVP, the old Great Hall on Qo'nos and heck, even hunting down the mortal enemy of the Klingon Empire in exploration clusters... there is so much that I miss in modern day STO.
Am I alone in being intrigued by the concept of classic servers, or do you also have a longing for things in the game that have since been removed?
The open-map fleet actions, the original STFs, the significantly slower paced PVP, the old Great Hall on Qo'nos and heck, even hunting down the mortal enemy of the Klingon Empire in exploration clusters... there is so much that I miss in modern day STO.
Am I alone in being intrigued by the concept of classic servers, or do you also have a longing for things in the game that have since been removed?
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Sto at the start basically didn't have the dominion or the Romulan Republic factions. Unless they start the classic with Legacy of Romulus. Game has gotten better over time. It isn't like Wow. And well I don't think they need to do that. Possibly this thread will be closed since its kinda like sto 2.0. It would basically be a waste of money for them to do a classic server for a game that is doing very well. Maybe twenty to thirty years maybe down the line if Sto keeps running as long as Wow has maybe they could. But till then I don't think its needed.
Foundry yeah will be missed also wished they did keep in the exploration system. But they had reasons for shutting both of those down I don't think we will ever see them return. I'd like exploration to be a bigger theme thne it is. A 5 year mission maybe. Get back to the concept of exploration and meeting new species. The exploration system though not perfect by any means gave that at least. I'm hoping maybe they could add in some type of mini exploration missions kinda like in the form of Patrols that we can do and can be simple to put together that give commendation experience. Allowing us to do Diplomacy, trading, piracy, colonization and other stuff. In a more physical form. Including stuff like FIrst contact missions.
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Personally, I think the game sucked when it first dropped.. I wouldn't want to play that version. Seems like it would be cool for nostalgia and then after about 10 minutes you would be ready to log out and never go back.
In the timeline where STO has enough players to support this, I'd be happy for you having the choice but would never play it myself.
* I don't PVP in any RPGs and the last FPSs I played against others were Quake II and UT2K4.
* I enjoyed finding relics of the Fourth Borg Dynasty back in 2012 but the cluster missions were sometimes horribly buggy and were more repetitive than any modern TFO
* Endless sector map loads and almost no free transwarps, yay!
* Crafting was much worse - zen for some mats, fixed mark level and rarity for the gear you created (no upgrades for you!), and I think everything was character bound on equip?
* Models and lighting were worse
* Some of the voice acting was Guardian of Forever quality before LoR, other than the original cast voices of course
* KDF was missing the level up story episodes we get now, which are great if playing with a Klingon mindset (vs. Orion or other)
...
I just don't have nostalgia glasses strong enough to enjoy it for more than a day or two of going "yep, they've really improved things since 2012!"
LOL! It's been 7 years, my memory's gotten fuzzy.
There were nice things about ye olden days:
Having loot drops and doff crafting assignments actually matter. Getting Mark X - XII VR from a loot drop or a console doff assignment was something to be excited about. Having people's spare VR gear in the fleet bank was useful not a waste of space. Now loot drops are just for the salvage and I give new characters crafted Mark II VR gear with tech upgrades pre-applied.
Lack of all the visual spam from powers.
Borg and later Tholian Red Alerts being a challenge, not a 1-minute sleepwalk. In 2014 or -15 it was a fun moment when I was good enough to solo a Borg RA.
Not having all the 'good stuff' shoved into lockboxes was nice.
Borg were scary back then.
C-store was cosmetic only.
Away Team AI really really sucked.
I kinda miss exploration clusters.
Hated the RNG of the tokens in STFs to get (what is now) borg rep gear.
Anti-borg AP weapons!
Sometimes miss Memory Alpha crafting and actually needing commodities for things.
Hated the grid-ified sector space.
Liked that the players of original STO had to pay to be there. Kept out the riff-raff!
All Cryptic needs to do is repurpose the Redshirt server and a little bit of work on their part to have STO Classic for a week. The problem with the April Fools one-day event is that it was on April Fools and only one day so some people didn't think it was real until it was too late.
Yes, it would be reasonably easy to have a limited-time event without making any promises about persistence of your characters. Either everyone must create new characters, or they try to offer a one-way copy like to Tribble, and all of your good gear and most of your skills and traits evaporate in the copy. You might end up half-naked if you use any newer costume pieces. All newer ships disappear too of course, possibly leaving you ship out of luck.
Another problem is people will battle to the death over which retro version to pick: paid launch, initial F2P, or after LoR and its first few patches?
Possibly nothing from the C-Store will be available since the purchases would evaporate with your characters once the week is up. I suppose if this is a paid event it could include unlimited free C-Store use while making clear nothing transfers back to the real servers.
a)even with the losses to the playerbase WoW is still the most popular MMO IIRC B)Blizzard can afford at least 4 seperate regional servers (NA, EU, China and Brasil) for the current version of WoW and the classic server, while Cryptic can afford only 1 server (I'm excluding beta and test servers).
Cryptic has several mmos they run . Plus they also have console versions with their own servers of Sto and Neverwinter and maybe CO too so they do operate more then one server. They run several of them in fact that so I doubt they don't have the means to do it. Given they are making another mmo right now. I doubt that is true that they couldn't do a classic Sto. But yeah its basically pointless in making a classic server. It would just be a waste of Money. Star Trek Online isn't wow it hasn't changed as much as wow it hasn't even passed twenty years of operating. The changes are much more intense so such a successful company such as blizzard does have a reason for making classic wow a thing since that was the good old days where they made lots of money and it was a popular success till they messed up later on and drove people away. They don't have this problem with Sto even if players have been driven away they still make a lot of money with their lockbox key thing and zen store ship prices. So there is major differences between the two to the point Sto can't be compared to Wow. Its not Wow nor will it ever be Wow. Will it last as long as wow I hope so. But will it change all that much like Wow has it probably will not.
The problem here is that most of the original Dev's have gone. The investment of time to learn the old code is too great, that's why the foundry was shut down.
That too, that is another big thing I do agree about the dev power being an important factor as to why even if they wanted too it woudn't be totally classic. They would need to have a dedicated team like they did and a lot more people to work on things then they do to make a sto classic to work and even then. People who know the code so well like Scotty does with his engine room to be able to fix any problems that come up. That basically it would just divert man power even further then it already is down at Cryptic. So a classic server is just like Sto 2.0 only this is like going from Sto 1.0 to Sto 0.0 It just ain't happening. Because of the size and the manpower they have now and besides it would divert from whatever cool things they have in store for Sto 1.0 they don't need to be distracted by a Sto 0.0 server.
In Season 1.2, there was no DOFFing. And loot still didn't matter much, because you could buy gear from various Marks you got doing PvP or Exploration.
But that was great for PvP. It meant there wasn't really gear to grind, you could jump into PvP without needing to optimize your gear first. You still needed to optimize your bridge officer loadout and teamwork was crucial, though.
The gameplay in PvP was also a bit slower than today.
I can totally see why mancom would want a classic server.
But I don't expect anything like that to happen for STO. WoW is still way bigger than any other MMO, STO included. They can afford doing something like that.
Those places have been un-touched since release, on Andoria you even get warnings about the Ushan.. Which was suppose to be a PVP area... Still not finished.
I hardly believe that anyone is EVER "the only one" with ANYTHING, but I find the idea of "STO-classic" unappealing.
WOW started out as a complete game. STO felt completely unfinished, unrefined and was diminished by the massive changes it went through during early development. WOW didn't have that problem as Blizzard was fully in charge at all times. Cryptic basically got the scraps from Perpetual and had to rush it out very quickly. Also, Atari in their dying years. If it weren't for the Star Trek IP, STO would have been shut down within a year or less even. Not Cryptic's fault. They did a fine Job, given the circumstances.
Thus, by comparison, you have one product that was very complete from the get-go and over the course of like 15 years has seen massive changes to how the game feels and plays. Like the leveling-experience and the social aspects and the endgame-content.
Then, you have the other product that started out in admittedly incomplete form as it was rushed and was given to an entirely different developer at the last minute, after it was already being worked on for a while. Leveling-experience in STO was really no Focus at all, because it was always rather short, due to the low max-level cap (compared to other MMO's) and the social experience did not really change at all aside from player-attitude.
Also, the content was expanded upon and tweaked here and there, but the little details aside, pretty much all the content from early STO is still in the game. Exploration-clusters being missing is unfortunate, one or two missions have been removed but will probably get back in later so I don't mind, and some gear previously available through random drop have been shifted to the first Reputation when that System was introduced, so it's been improved.
Conclusion:
WOW changed so many fundamental things up over time that classic actually is worthwile for the veteran-players who miss those.
STO only introduced additional stuff or better ways to get things. Classic would not even be great for long-time players. I could see it offering a more balanced PVP-experience though, but... PVP and STO, c'm'on.
Newer players who would be "curious" about a classic STO-experience would just be incredibly underwhelmed.
But if you do fast forward a few versions, the STFs were in, play them once and get your Borg set, but one might take 4 hours. The PVP got significantly better balance a few versions in as well.
Exploration clusters are a missing bit of simple fun that this game just doesn't have now, unless you want to count current STFs.
I'm not sure people would like missing the mission replay, though. I can't recall when that got in, but it was definitely post Klingon missions. I recall farming Breen kills for a title in that era, doing one section of the mission then quitting before completing so I don't lose the only way to get any Breen kills. Then again, if you want PVE missions in this game you really don't want to go back in time.
Overall if it was a PVP server it might be worthwhile, but for the PVE stuff, it really would be meh. The original game's PVP was probably best at tier 3 ships. The pace was great, and you had just enough powers to be able to be good at something, but not everything, so super defenses didn't happen, and offense was good but not at instakill levels.
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IMO, STO didn't get decent until Season 7, when reputations and NR were introduced. LoR was a pretty good effort on improvement as well. "Classic" STO just didn't have much to keep serious interest, and without the strong IP would have just failed instantly.
Yes, I think they did a while back.
Thanks!
I really enjoyed the old style method of collecting Borg salvage, despite some people's dislike of having to grind them. Never a fan of easy-to-earn. It removes the sense of achievement.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Very kind of you.. I think a lot of people let nostalgia creep into their memories to make things seem like they were better then they were. This game wasn't very good when it launched, it ended up going F2P because there were so few subscriptions. Don't get me wrong, the framework was there, but the game was kind of a mis-managed mess. Sure, there were good times that people had, but that didn't mean the game wasn't in desperate need of improvement.
I know personally, I would miss a lot of the optimizations and 'Quality of Life' improvements made over the years. If they had a 'classic' server, I just don't see any reason to play it.
Yeah.. that.
My character Tsin'xing
However, I know where you come from Hilbert. I do not see this as a viable way to revive PvP, as you'd need a lot of support from the current players currently active in STO to begin with, as it will be a lot harder to reach out to all the old folks that left. I think its better to simply fix PvP in the current game which would be way easier. Also a classic server sounds much easier than it really is, the whole backend of the game has been drastically altered, (monthly) payments, old C-store, all have to be reconnected to their 'new' server somehow, which will be a pain in the TRIBBLE. Also, at what point would we want to have the holodeck server in which era? From what I know there has been some major exploits in this game in the first few years that have only been fixed half way through. Finally, I don't see much people currently playing 99% PVE to have any reason to go back to a classic server realistically.. Why would they? Maybe a few niche players that cannot let go of the past perhaps... I doub't it will be very popular..
Anyway back to the matter at hand, as that is what this topic is really about; Our prays have never been heard, Cryptic never came forward and asked the PVP community what really fixes PvP or whatever the cause was that led to 500+ dedicated PvPers to leave this game for good.
They already showed that they can do this with their current engine tech:
Simply add some code that removes all paid/grind consoles, starship traits, and all of the biggest offenders when warping into a PvP map or a Warzone such as Ker'rat, and block any of these consoles/traits from being equipped until leaving the zone.
SIMPLE, AS, THAT.
Would probably take them a few days at best. They get hundreds of players back, which also potentially buy ships and stuff from this game, because yes... PvP'ers also invest(ed) huge money into this game, and not for the reason people think of when they hear the word 'PVP'.
Anyway, I have no hope left of this game ever becoming as solid as it used to be years ago, yet the solution is a few days of developer time... for potential mass gain for us, AND them.
PWE has never been known to look at the long term though, just short term quick buck.
ps. I think until and with Legacy of Romulus, everything was still to be overseen. TRIBBLE really start hitting the fan right after Delta Rising.
"Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it!"
I resent being called riff-raff just because I am a casual free-to-play player.
I have no problem with lockboxes.
I heard about those scary tales about the Borg.
I am sort of in the middle when it comes to the removal of exploration clusters, I did some but then they became so generic, I forgot about the Third Borg Dynasty stuff.
The Away Team AI is better now, still needs to be improved though glad you can now make your BOFFs follow you when they get stuck.
Yes, Memory Alpha was a thing. I also like non-grid-ified sector space as opposed to what it was but that also was with Lighting 1.0 only existing in the game, they would have to revamp the grid, which might also help with those troublesome DOFF missions that are picky about the borders like finding a DOFF mission for the mission chain Ghosts of the Jem'Hadar.
I really do not want a Classic STO server just more improvements, continued bug fixing, fixed and improved in-game bug report system so you can see your tickets in-game like you used to be on Tribble and where I play, Holodeck, for STO now and a revisiting of the planets, starship bridges, and other places that Lighting 2.0 did not cover well as well as fix the places that Lighting 1.0 broke during that transition (Deep Space Nine and others). Thanks.