It's so funny that every MMO every released has some idiots rushing through the content in a few days and then start complaining about lack of content .
Sandbox isn't content, its a means of players creating their own.
player made content is always better and longer lived than dev made content. Just look at eve online and the massive year long compains in 0.0 that any other MMO would give its right leg for.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: its not Cryptic's fault that you power-gamed your way through the game. A NORMAL player will take at least a month to reach Admiral, if not several. By that time Cryptic will have added new content, so they wont run out of things to do. But NO Dev team can keep up with people who play like you do. If anyone is to be blamed, it is yourself. Its like stuffing all your food down your throat the minute you get it, and then complaining that everyone else still has theirs but you dont.
My assumption is that Cryptic wanted to get the leveling scale in-place and get everyone in-game to buy themselves time for the the other content (which we will have to pay for, I'd wager)... So they rushed into the live product without paying nearly enough attention to the MMO aspects of the game....
They really screwed-up by doing this...
....and likely did it just to meet a deadline made by some manager(s) who know(s) nothing about this game except how it looks in a calculated spreadsheet, and how good they will look for meeting a lame deadline...
...and who is probably out looking for a new Camaro with their bonus money now... But consider this:
The lack of end-game content was:
1.) BLOODY OBVIOUS ...from beta... you saw this coming... I saw it coming... I heard the dev's glaringly clear-as-mud statements about it...
2.) They have some "ideas" in the FUTURE... for this....If you were looking *at all* you should have KNOWN this well before you started playing... "the future" is not now...btw....
3.) Was not what they were thinking when they decided to go balls-out into power-leveling... They wanted "awesome points"... They *DISREGARDED* that this *ENTIRE* game was focused on episodes, and stories, in the words of it's own designers and *CHOSE* to take the epeen approach that ignores all of the text...all of the stories...all of the episode content that is the *STATED* point of the game...
I want more too....I expect it...even DEMAND it.....but though you make compelling points..
I'm taking it slow and playing the content...Because I knew that was the point months ago...
I feel NO sympathy for people who ignored everything to suit their egos....
EVE online and SWG launched with a massive amount of end game content.
That is a complete load of tosh. EvE doesn't even have an end game. People who have been playing since launch haven't hit the skill cap (which is always expanding). A one day old newbie can be playing EvE "end game".
That is one of the great things about EvE. No "sorry you can't play with us you are too low level". Newbies can always scout or just collect loot for you.
And when EvE launched all you could do was kill people, mine, and build stuff. No sovereignty, no star bases or outposts. PVE "end game" wasn't added until over a year after launch.
EDIT: Over the past few hours of this rivaling a downtime thread, I've looked closer at some info coming from the Devs and listened to some constructive comments from the posters. While a lot of this post may sound discouraging, bear in mind a LOT of these issues will be addressed in the next couple weeks, not just in the 45 day patch. This post was ONLY made because I love the game and want to, at times, be vocal in my feedback and the ways to improve it. While there are still some issues that need to be addressed, I am optimistic as to the upcoming endgame content and do not want players still leveling to feel there is nothing to look forward to. Take your time to level up and enjoy the game. I'm re-rolling to do just that in the meantime.
(original thread edited due to information received or mistakes I made in my research)
Well just hit Admiral 5 and, to my dismay, there is absolutely NO endgame content in place. None. In fact after you rank up to Admiral, the quests just stop coming. There's no "way to go" there's no serious loot. There's nothing. Sure some of you will want to say "well you hit Admiral too fast" but that's not the point. The point is there is NOTHING at all to do at 45. Not a single thing except maybe pvp once the Klingons get Admiral. It's so blatantly neglected that it's almost offensive.
And when I say nothing I mean NOTHING. No more Missons to do. No Fleet actions. No crafting. No PvP yet. No exploration (unless you count the randomly generated generic Genesis missions). Literally nothing at all. And I outfitted my ship in green MK X almost completely in one day. I really have no goals at all anymore.
Might as well just start showing credits once we hit 45 because the game is literally over at that point.
EDIT: Fixed due to the fact that Memory Alpha apparently works now
Now let's talk about the fact that there is NO WAY to form a raid, or get your fleet together and do a fleet action. In fact, there's no fleet actions after the Crystalline Entity. So all of us who are commander and above have nothing at all to do together. And even if we did, we'd have to hopefully all hop into the same instance to work together.
Oh, and the skill distribution. Letting us max out only one at tier 5 and put another 7 points elsewhere? Even if the eventual cap will be 50 this is just so dumb for a release.
EDIT: Fixed due to upcoming content
On a final note, spare me the "It's a new MMO and shouldn't have endgame yet" because those are the words of a blind sheep and have no real bearing in logical discussion. Anyone with any business sense would have noticed from other MMOs how fast people level up and want endgame content. The amount of broken/incomplete content is astounding and really discouraging. I see this and think "even if they follow through with all the hot air they've been spewing, when, if ever, can we expect it?" I just can't believe that they have much in the works for the 45 day patch. No mention yet from anyone on crafting or anything else major. Really finding it harder and harder to believe in this game after seeing all there is to see (literally) in a span of 5 days.
PROVE ME WRONG, CRYPTIC! I really want to play this game for a while but you repeatedly let us down on every point. Show me you actually care and make this game what you claimed it would be in all the interviews and dev chats.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: its not Cryptic's fault that you power-gamed your way through the game. A NORMAL player will take at least a month to reach Admiral, if not several. By that time Cryptic will have added new content, so they wont run out of things to do. But NO Dev team can keep up with people who play like you do. If anyone is to be blamed, it is yourself. Its like stuffing all your food down your throat the minute you get it, and then complaining that everyone else still has theirs but you dont.
the backbone... average... mmo player will definitely not need months to cap. more like 2-3 weeks.
thats about 2-3 hours a day.
2-3 weeks is next to nothing in terms of development time.
i am predicting that cryptic will fall on their asses pretty bad after the end of the free 30 days period, since very few people are going to subscribe another month of waiting for content. those people will be the "hardcore" players that you are bashing on right now.
the ones that play 1 hour a day or less.... ironically that could make this game more "casual" than wow.
It's so funny that every MMO every released has some idiots rushing through the content in a few days and then start complaining about lack of content .
Yup. Why on earth should a game publisher be responsible for putting content into their games for all of the levels that they put into the game, right? All they did was assign experience point values to everything and nerfed the TRIBBLE out of the game's difficulty making leveling insanely (and mind numbingly) easy. Why on earth should we hold them accountable for a game that they developed, right?
the backbone... average... mmo player will definitely not need months to cap. more like 2-3 weeks.
thats about 2-3 hours a day.
2-3 weeks is next to nothing in terms of development time.
The Devs have said that it takes about 80 hours to reach admiral. 80/3 = 26. So if someone plays 3hrs a day, it will take them at least 26 days to reach admiral. Thats 4 days shy of a month.
Yup. Why on earth should a game publisher be responsible for putting content into their games for all of the levels that they put into the game, right? All they did was assign experience point values to everything and nerfed the TRIBBLE out of the game's difficulty making leveling insanely (and mind numbingly) easy. Why on earth should we hold them accountable for a game that they developed, right?
*sigh*
I admit they nerfed down the difficulty, which I disagreed with. But I don't care what a developer does, there is always going to be some group of players (I won't use the term I'd like) that RUSHES PAST CONTENT to get to the end-game.
If they did what other games have done, casual players (which is where a lot of the STO fans will be from since a lot of Trekkies/Trekkers have jobs and families) would quit because they'd feel like they couldn't get anywhere. Americans don't like grinding content... example: Aion.
Its not the Dev's fault this guy RUSHED PAST CONTENT instead of enjoying the CONTENT that was already in the game.
I won't bash anyone for "rushing through the content" and finding that at the end game there is NO play left for the character. That's just a bad design, or as likely, due to bugs. Thanks for the heads up.
I usually stop playing characters in end games because of the lack of content, it's why I canceled my COH subscription after 5 years, but expect that there should be SOME content available.
What I would REALLY like for STO is that when you become an admiral you are not just a 'bigger' single ship captain but actually start to command fleets of ships (e.g. start with one, then get another with level, then increase classes of ships, then more ... WEEEEE!) in much the way you command BO.
Heck, I'd even buy an expansion so I can command a star fleet! (listening Cryptic?)
Otherwise, yawn, time to start a new toon after a few days. And then we'll complain about lack of early content for repeat plays.
The Devs have said that it takes about 80 hours to reach admiral. 80/3 = 26. So if someone plays 3hrs a day, it will take them at least 26 days to reach admiral. Thats 4 days shy of a month.
well i hit admiral in open beta and now in headstart in less than 50 hours played time.
not skipping dialogue the first time, just going straight for missions, few pvp, some fleet action. "normal" gameplay if you will. played all through with a friend.
the main thing is that there is just.... literally NOTHING new to do , not even quests or anything , even at admiral 1 ! you just do the exploration and deep encounter and thats it.
and the next thing is as i said before.... think ahead 2-3 weeks... you think that small time will change much ? the players will just hit a wall there, the game was released way too early.
its mostly BUGfixing they are doing right now, dont even want to think about the bugfixing for the new content they put out.
2-3 weeks or even a month is not much in terms of game development.
the backbone... average... mmo player will definitely not need months to cap. more like 2-3 weeks.
thats about 2-3 hours a day.
2-3 weeks is next to nothing in terms of development time.
i am predicting that cryptic will fall on their asses pretty bad after the end of the free 30 days period, since very few people are going to subscribe another month of waiting for content. those people will be the "hardcore" players that you are bashing on right now.
the ones that play 1 hour a day or less.... ironically that could make this game more "casual" than wow.
Yep.. most of my fleet (clan) are in the 20s only one or 2 still in the teens. Thats just in 5-6 days.. so an average gamer (not care bear) will cap in 2 weeks or less. Then again with an IP name this big there will be a lot of "casual" gamers (care bears). If there is not content in less that 2 weeks there are going to be a lot of unhappy people.. just MHO.
WTF are ppl talking about... even if you dont rush, the game becomes repetitive at commander and above.
i am 2levels away from 41 and except for pvp ther eis nothing new for me to do.
there are no instances with endboss drops... there are no raids... there are no fleet actions after crystaline which is a joke anyways.. i consider the last real fleet action to be the klingon scout force - join there with a defiant and aboe and you steamroll everything
The Devs have said that it takes about 80 hours to reach admiral. 80/3 = 26. So if someone plays 3hrs a day, it will take them at least 26 days to reach admiral. Thats 4 days shy of a month.
That was before they made the difficulty easier. Now its more like 50 to 60 hours max. That would make it about 20 days or... a day less then 3 weeks.
Ok look, it's my choice as to which pace I choose to level...
You do have a choice but you have to own up to the consequence of that choice.
Last I checked most MMOs don't even START till you max level.... these games aren't meant to just be a leveling fest. They're meant to be played for a LONG time.
Most MMO's have vast worlds to explore, why would anyone delvelop a game were you are suppose to rush through the first 98% of their work just to complain about the last 2%? There is an old saying that the journey is greater than the destination. By viewing leveling as 'work' you missed the point of the game. Which is... 'To explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.' With a firm grasp of this premise I would delete the Admiral, create a new recuit and read the quest, learn the motivations behind your character... otherwise you'll probably be happier cancelling your account because you are whinning about a non-issue for 90%+ of the server population.
I cannot believe you think its his fault that he has reached max level this quickly, it just goes to show how little content there is not just in the endgame but in the game as a whole.
Aion and WoW have lots of levels and it takes quite a while to get through them i know for a fact to get from level 42-43 in Aion you need to gather tens of millions of XP just for 1 level, and EVE doesn't even need Endgame content because PVP and alliance warfare is so well set up that there is literally an eternal pvp playerdriven war going on and not to mention that after god knows how many years you can count on one hand the number of people who are even remotely close to having max sp chars :cool:
show me any other decent mainstream MMO where you can max level a character in a week?
and if you can max level a character in a week then you need to have the endgame content in the game before release?
The problem with your post is the fact that you are comparing STO to a game (WoW) which has been around for nearly 6 years. If you compare applies to apples (i.e. Vanilla WoW with no patches), you didn't even have a PvP reward system in WoW. 3 instances of *relatively* high level content, and no raids. If you're comparing the "takes a long time to get through them" for WoW, there is no claim for this until you reach level 60. Before any expansions were released for WoW, the most experience you EVER got for completing a quest was about 10,000 (at level 60 which required 209,000 XP for 59 to 60). It took no time at all to get to level 60 if you rushed through it. As soon as expansions hit though, that number nearly doubled. I think you needed around 750,000 XP for 79 to 80. Point being, in the *initial* stage of WoW, XP gain was still not as slow as you think. The content at end-game was next to nothing, and people are complaining about that with STO? C'mon people. No MMO *should* ship with endgame content. I personally would rather play through a fun-filled in depth experience for leveling than have a rushed through experience to get to the end game.
One of the main problems I have with WoW is that it is ALL about the endgame. It does not matter if you are leveling an alt or your main, you do the same quests (lethargically after a while) just so you can get to the high end content. This makes it boring to level additional characters, and WoW has actually gotten to be so tedious when leveling alts that I simply hate doing it. STO's leveling system seems to be a little more *random*. The Genesis system that generates content for leveling players and adapts to groups of players. This says to me the game will always be different, challenging and not like WoW which is always the same old grind.
Another lesson is don't underestimate your player base and put out enough content to last only a week.
Let me just speak for a second about the industry and content development.
When designing a game there is a balance of budget versus content. More content equals more budget. Less content equals less budget. More budget equals less players since prices rise. Less budget equals more players since prices drop. More content equals more players, but content is not universal. For example in the average MMO PvP, crafting, raid, and RP content are of interest to around 15% of the population each, and not the same 15%. Concentrating all of your efforts in any one of these area assures 85% of the player base will not be served.
At the same time, there is a range of play speeds. The average player spends 8 hours per week or so on a MMO. Three standard deviations up is you, probably playing 60 hours or more per week.
All of this gets balanced out BUT, a smart Dev starts out making low end content for PvE since that is going to make 80% of the players happy for months. The tendency of DEVs is to want to work on end game, it is more exciting, but they have to, at least to start, concentrate on the 80% and not the 20%. Once the 90% is ready for war, the 10% can get more love and attention. Like WoW, endgame comes slowly, and picks up pace after 6 months or a year as more of the starting cohort have characters that come into range of the end game.
EDIT: Over the past few hours of this rivaling a downtime thread, I've looked closer at some info coming from the Devs and listened to some constructive comments from the posters. While a lot of this post may sound discouraging, bear in mind a LOT of these issues will be addressed in the next couple weeks, not just in the 45 day patch. This post was ONLY made because I love the game and want to, at times, be vocal in my feedback and the ways to improve it. While there are still some issues that need to be addressed, I am optimistic as to the upcoming endgame content and do not want players still leveling to feel there is nothing to look forward to. Take your time to level up and enjoy the game. I'm re-rolling to do just that in the meantime.
(original thread edited due to information received or mistakes I made in my research)
Well just hit Admiral 5 and, to my dismay, there is absolutely NO endgame content in place. None. In fact after you rank up to Admiral, the quests just stop coming. There's no "way to go" there's no serious loot. There's nothing. Sure some of you will want to say "well you hit Admiral too fast" but that's not the point. The point is there is NOTHING at all to do at 45. Not a single thing except maybe pvp once the Klingons get Admiral. It's so blatantly neglected that it's almost offensive.
And when I say nothing I mean NOTHING. No more Missons to do. No Fleet actions. No crafting. No PvP yet. No exploration (unless you count the randomly generated generic Genesis missions). Literally nothing at all. And I outfitted my ship in green MK X almost completely in one day. I really have no goals at all anymore.
Might as well just start showing credits once we hit 45 because the game is literally over at that point.
EDIT: Fixed due to the fact that Memory Alpha apparently works now
Now let's talk about the fact that there is NO WAY to form a raid, or get your fleet together and do a fleet action. In fact, there's no fleet actions after the Crystalline Entity. So all of us who are commander and above have nothing at all to do together. And even if we did, we'd have to hopefully all hop into the same instance to work together.
Oh, and the skill distribution. Letting us max out only one at tier 5 and put another 7 points elsewhere? Even if the eventual cap will be 50 this is just so dumb for a release.
EDIT: Fixed due to upcoming content
On a final note, spare me the "It's a new MMO and shouldn't have endgame yet" because those are the words of a blind sheep and have no real bearing in logical discussion. Anyone with any business sense would have noticed from other MMOs how fast people level up and want endgame content. The amount of broken/incomplete content is astounding and really discouraging. I see this and think "even if they follow through with all the hot air they've been spewing, when, if ever, can we expect it?" I just can't believe that they have much in the works for the 45 day patch. No mention yet from anyone on crafting or anything else major. Really finding it harder and harder to believe in this game after seeing all there is to see (literally) in a span of 5 days.
PROVE ME WRONG, CRYPTIC! I really want to play this game for a while but you repeatedly let us down on every point. Show me you actually care and make this game what you claimed it would be in all the interviews and dev chats.
perhaps getting away from the computer is a good idea, 45 levels in 6 day?!?!?:eek:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: its not Cryptic's fault that you power-gamed your way through the game. A NORMAL player will take at least a month to reach Admiral, if not several. By that time Cryptic will have added new content, so they wont run out of things to do. But NO Dev team can keep up with people who play like you do. If anyone is to be blamed, it is yourself. Its like stuffing all your food down your throat the minute you get it, and then complaining that everyone else still has theirs but you dont.
Ah, so no dev team can make a game right off the bat with endgame content eh? Not even, say, a non-MMO dev team? Or does joining an MMO dev team automatically make you unable to do endgame?
Here's a really simply method they could have used to make endgame content for STO...make Captain 5 the endgame. Ta-da, now you have a game with endgame content. Adding more levels without having anything to do at those levels is not the best way to handle this sort of thing.
And plenty of MMOs have launched with endgame content. Even CoH (which was made by Cryptic mind you) had something to do at the levelcap, Hamidon and Rikti warzone. Was it great? No, not really, but it was there at least. Not having ANY endgame content at all is kind of sad, I honestly don't know of a single MMO that has launched without at least one levelcap raid of some kind.
That is a complete load of tosh. EvE doesn't even have an end game.
Okay, so one of the two examples is kind of false (I disagree with your assessment that a game without a levelcap can't have an endgame, but we'll ignore that for now). What about the other one? Just because you've 'disproven' half an argument doesn't mean it's wrong.
I also made admiral hell i did it still in head start.
What people dont understand is that even WoW you had NPC at your own level so you could farm gear.
I am more then happy to farm mindless for gear.
The problem is that this game introduced a weird way of level on the gear. At admiral you can use Tier IX and Tier X. So there is no need to have tier IX gear as you can buy the tier X from badges. Now i would be happy to farm for my Blue tier X stuff and tier X drops but here is where it goes wrong.
At the current level you can only fight L45 NPC, these NPC drop IX stuff which can be sold to the vendor.
Just think of your own levelling, do you use MK III while you can use MK IV? Hell i am sure people dont cause i sold an enormus amount of MK VIII stuff on the AH which i just got from getting all the admiral ships.
Thats the whole issue of the OP and more of the people in this tread.
Anyway flame away, i love my job and my life, i love this game so much i took 2 weeks of work
@ cacti4-6 : Yeah, I think someone needs a break. He pretty much played six days straight. Is it just me or would that actually mean that there is a lot of content, he's just complaining about how the end of the game has none.
I'm not used to MMOs, but really, the end of the game usually doesn't have content. Also, you obviously didn't take your time. What's it about ? The Prestige or the fun? Cuz it seems to me that stondbokken plays games for virtual prestige.
So you're admiral! Did you have fun getting there? No? You wasted your time! Yes? Well then the game has succeeded.
And again, once they add the Romulans and the Cardassians there might be huge wars between players and that would be sweet.
The sad thing is, if there was an "end game," the only thing that would have changed is that this thread would have shown up a week later after the OP blew through that content, collected all the rewards it had to offer, and came back here complaining either that there was nothing else to do at end game or that the only thing he could do at end game is repeat the same content over and over even though he got no further rewards.
End game is a myth, especially at release. There is only x amount of content that can be developed in an initial development cycle. That content has to be spread out over all available levels. The more time you devote to the mythical end-game, the less you can devote to making the leveling experience full, especially when you have limited development time as Cryptic apparently did. And shifting more of that time to developing content at the level cap is pointless because all you do is thin out the content it takes to get there, and people who blow through that content will blow through your capped content as well.
As others have said, this happens in every game. Someone sets as their goal reaching the level cap as quickly as possible, then complains that, once they have blown through all the content to achieve that goal, there is nothing left to do. It is as predictable as the sunrise. LotRO had the smoothest release of any game I have played, and even there, people were complaining about capped content availability within a week or so of launch. It never ends.
Ah, so no dev team can make a game right off the bat with endgame content eh?
Actually, here is what I said:
"But NO Dev team can keep up with people who play like you do."
People who play like the OP are always going to "run out of things to do" because their playtime is faster than the development time. Thats not the Devs fault, because the game is not designed for powergamers.
.... I have to be honest and say that the Op is actually right IMO.
If a software company launches a game with XX numbers of levels, I honestly think that they should have content in place for that amount of levels as well. Sure... if you run out of missions and direct content when you reach that level.. I suppose that could be defended... but running out of content 5 levels too early.. that isn't acceptable IMO.
what i found funny about the whole wow comparison:
what about experience and learning from a successful model, NOT doing the mistakes devs made before in wow and bringing the positive things right at the start. you dont have to go through that process of development of ideas again. adapt, hell even COPY the great things and add new creative stuff... but dont bring a half assed completely new thing that tries to become something else.
every new mmo HAS to look at WoW and what it made right and what it did wrong.
they HAVE to adapt to those high standards, even if it means a longer time of development. thats the only way a modern mmo can compete in the market... look at all the games.... warhammer, age of conan... they all failed big time.
i could make a huge post about this, but just look at the skilltrees... its ALL boring passive stuff... and now take a look at the actual wow talents... they are interesting , you unlock special ACTIVE abilities, are able to reset them.
and the list goes on
conclusion: every new mmo on the market gets eaten up by wow if it fails to keep people busy and interested from the start, because there is always the no-brainer WoW in the backround ready for your subscription. why wait for a game to get content if you can play right now.
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player made content is always better and longer lived than dev made content. Just look at eve online and the massive year long compains in 0.0 that any other MMO would give its right leg for.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: its not Cryptic's fault that you power-gamed your way through the game. A NORMAL player will take at least a month to reach Admiral, if not several. By that time Cryptic will have added new content, so they wont run out of things to do. But NO Dev team can keep up with people who play like you do. If anyone is to be blamed, it is yourself. Its like stuffing all your food down your throat the minute you get it, and then complaining that everyone else still has theirs but you dont.
It's about the journey, not the destination.
That is a complete load of tosh. EvE doesn't even have an end game. People who have been playing since launch haven't hit the skill cap (which is always expanding). A one day old newbie can be playing EvE "end game".
That is one of the great things about EvE. No "sorry you can't play with us you are too low level". Newbies can always scout or just collect loot for you.
And when EvE launched all you could do was kill people, mine, and build stuff. No sovereignty, no star bases or outposts. PVE "end game" wasn't added until over a year after launch.
Must be lonely at the top!
the backbone... average... mmo player will definitely not need months to cap. more like 2-3 weeks.
thats about 2-3 hours a day.
2-3 weeks is next to nothing in terms of development time.
i am predicting that cryptic will fall on their asses pretty bad after the end of the free 30 days period, since very few people are going to subscribe another month of waiting for content. those people will be the "hardcore" players that you are bashing on right now.
the ones that play 1 hour a day or less.... ironically that could make this game more "casual" than wow.
Yup. Why on earth should a game publisher be responsible for putting content into their games for all of the levels that they put into the game, right? All they did was assign experience point values to everything and nerfed the TRIBBLE out of the game's difficulty making leveling insanely (and mind numbingly) easy. Why on earth should we hold them accountable for a game that they developed, right?
*sigh*
The Devs have said that it takes about 80 hours to reach admiral. 80/3 = 26. So if someone plays 3hrs a day, it will take them at least 26 days to reach admiral. Thats 4 days shy of a month.
I admit they nerfed down the difficulty, which I disagreed with. But I don't care what a developer does, there is always going to be some group of players (I won't use the term I'd like) that RUSHES PAST CONTENT to get to the end-game.
If they did what other games have done, casual players (which is where a lot of the STO fans will be from since a lot of Trekkies/Trekkers have jobs and families) would quit because they'd feel like they couldn't get anywhere. Americans don't like grinding content... example: Aion.
Its not the Dev's fault this guy RUSHED PAST CONTENT instead of enjoying the CONTENT that was already in the game.
I usually stop playing characters in end games because of the lack of content, it's why I canceled my COH subscription after 5 years, but expect that there should be SOME content available.
What I would REALLY like for STO is that when you become an admiral you are not just a 'bigger' single ship captain but actually start to command fleets of ships (e.g. start with one, then get another with level, then increase classes of ships, then more ... WEEEEE!) in much the way you command BO.
Heck, I'd even buy an expansion so I can command a star fleet! (listening Cryptic?)
Otherwise, yawn, time to start a new toon after a few days. And then we'll complain about lack of early content for repeat plays.
well i hit admiral in open beta and now in headstart in less than 50 hours played time.
not skipping dialogue the first time, just going straight for missions, few pvp, some fleet action. "normal" gameplay if you will. played all through with a friend.
the main thing is that there is just.... literally NOTHING new to do , not even quests or anything , even at admiral 1 ! you just do the exploration and deep encounter and thats it.
and the next thing is as i said before.... think ahead 2-3 weeks... you think that small time will change much ? the players will just hit a wall there, the game was released way too early.
its mostly BUGfixing they are doing right now, dont even want to think about the bugfixing for the new content they put out.
2-3 weeks or even a month is not much in terms of game development.
Yep.. most of my fleet (clan) are in the 20s only one or 2 still in the teens. Thats just in 5-6 days.. so an average gamer (not care bear) will cap in 2 weeks or less. Then again with an IP name this big there will be a lot of "casual" gamers (care bears). If there is not content in less that 2 weeks there are going to be a lot of unhappy people.. just MHO.
i am 2levels away from 41 and except for pvp ther eis nothing new for me to do.
there are no instances with endboss drops... there are no raids... there are no fleet actions after crystaline which is a joke anyways.. i consider the last real fleet action to be the klingon scout force - join there with a defiant and aboe and you steamroll everything
That was before they made the difficulty easier. Now its more like 50 to 60 hours max. That would make it about 20 days or... a day less then 3 weeks.
The problem with your post is the fact that you are comparing STO to a game (WoW) which has been around for nearly 6 years. If you compare applies to apples (i.e. Vanilla WoW with no patches), you didn't even have a PvP reward system in WoW. 3 instances of *relatively* high level content, and no raids. If you're comparing the "takes a long time to get through them" for WoW, there is no claim for this until you reach level 60. Before any expansions were released for WoW, the most experience you EVER got for completing a quest was about 10,000 (at level 60 which required 209,000 XP for 59 to 60). It took no time at all to get to level 60 if you rushed through it. As soon as expansions hit though, that number nearly doubled. I think you needed around 750,000 XP for 79 to 80. Point being, in the *initial* stage of WoW, XP gain was still not as slow as you think. The content at end-game was next to nothing, and people are complaining about that with STO? C'mon people. No MMO *should* ship with endgame content. I personally would rather play through a fun-filled in depth experience for leveling than have a rushed through experience to get to the end game.
One of the main problems I have with WoW is that it is ALL about the endgame. It does not matter if you are leveling an alt or your main, you do the same quests (lethargically after a while) just so you can get to the high end content. This makes it boring to level additional characters, and WoW has actually gotten to be so tedious when leveling alts that I simply hate doing it. STO's leveling system seems to be a little more *random*. The Genesis system that generates content for leveling players and adapts to groups of players. This says to me the game will always be different, challenging and not like WoW which is always the same old grind.
Let me just speak for a second about the industry and content development.
When designing a game there is a balance of budget versus content. More content equals more budget. Less content equals less budget. More budget equals less players since prices rise. Less budget equals more players since prices drop. More content equals more players, but content is not universal. For example in the average MMO PvP, crafting, raid, and RP content are of interest to around 15% of the population each, and not the same 15%. Concentrating all of your efforts in any one of these area assures 85% of the player base will not be served.
At the same time, there is a range of play speeds. The average player spends 8 hours per week or so on a MMO. Three standard deviations up is you, probably playing 60 hours or more per week.
All of this gets balanced out BUT, a smart Dev starts out making low end content for PvE since that is going to make 80% of the players happy for months. The tendency of DEVs is to want to work on end game, it is more exciting, but they have to, at least to start, concentrate on the 80% and not the 20%. Once the 90% is ready for war, the 10% can get more love and attention. Like WoW, endgame comes slowly, and picks up pace after 6 months or a year as more of the starting cohort have characters that come into range of the end game.
perhaps getting away from the computer is a good idea, 45 levels in 6 day?!?!?:eek:
Ah, so no dev team can make a game right off the bat with endgame content eh? Not even, say, a non-MMO dev team? Or does joining an MMO dev team automatically make you unable to do endgame?
Here's a really simply method they could have used to make endgame content for STO...make Captain 5 the endgame. Ta-da, now you have a game with endgame content. Adding more levels without having anything to do at those levels is not the best way to handle this sort of thing.
And plenty of MMOs have launched with endgame content. Even CoH (which was made by Cryptic mind you) had something to do at the levelcap, Hamidon and Rikti warzone. Was it great? No, not really, but it was there at least. Not having ANY endgame content at all is kind of sad, I honestly don't know of a single MMO that has launched without at least one levelcap raid of some kind.
Okay, so one of the two examples is kind of false (I disagree with your assessment that a game without a levelcap can't have an endgame, but we'll ignore that for now). What about the other one? Just because you've 'disproven' half an argument doesn't mean it's wrong.
I also made admiral hell i did it still in head start.
What people dont understand is that even WoW you had NPC at your own level so you could farm gear.
I am more then happy to farm mindless for gear.
The problem is that this game introduced a weird way of level on the gear. At admiral you can use Tier IX and Tier X. So there is no need to have tier IX gear as you can buy the tier X from badges. Now i would be happy to farm for my Blue tier X stuff and tier X drops but here is where it goes wrong.
At the current level you can only fight L45 NPC, these NPC drop IX stuff which can be sold to the vendor.
Just think of your own levelling, do you use MK III while you can use MK IV? Hell i am sure people dont cause i sold an enormus amount of MK VIII stuff on the AH which i just got from getting all the admiral ships.
Thats the whole issue of the OP and more of the people in this tread.
Anyway flame away, i love my job and my life, i love this game so much i took 2 weeks of work
I'm not used to MMOs, but really, the end of the game usually doesn't have content. Also, you obviously didn't take your time. What's it about ? The Prestige or the fun? Cuz it seems to me that stondbokken plays games for virtual prestige.
So you're admiral! Did you have fun getting there? No? You wasted your time! Yes? Well then the game has succeeded.
And again, once they add the Romulans and the Cardassians there might be huge wars between players and that would be sweet.
Every game has these kinds of guys. Exploit, plevel, etc. to cap and then cry.
I saw a kdf general too in his carrier.
The game should not contort itself to appease this kind of player. No matter how loud they are.
End game is a myth, especially at release. There is only x amount of content that can be developed in an initial development cycle. That content has to be spread out over all available levels. The more time you devote to the mythical end-game, the less you can devote to making the leveling experience full, especially when you have limited development time as Cryptic apparently did. And shifting more of that time to developing content at the level cap is pointless because all you do is thin out the content it takes to get there, and people who blow through that content will blow through your capped content as well.
As others have said, this happens in every game. Someone sets as their goal reaching the level cap as quickly as possible, then complains that, once they have blown through all the content to achieve that goal, there is nothing left to do. It is as predictable as the sunrise. LotRO had the smoothest release of any game I have played, and even there, people were complaining about capped content availability within a week or so of launch. It never ends.
Actually, here is what I said:
"But NO Dev team can keep up with people who play like you do."
People who play like the OP are always going to "run out of things to do" because their playtime is faster than the development time. Thats not the Devs fault, because the game is not designed for powergamers.
I am enjoying the game. If I get to Admiral and there is nothing to do I will find something else to do.
I play to have fun, which I am. If it stops being fun, I will stop playing. Simple as that.
Games are made to enjoy, not to give your life purpose or meaning. That is what real life is for. I suggest he gets one.
If a software company launches a game with XX numbers of levels, I honestly think that they should have content in place for that amount of levels as well. Sure... if you run out of missions and direct content when you reach that level.. I suppose that could be defended... but running out of content 5 levels too early.. that isn't acceptable IMO.
what about experience and learning from a successful model, NOT doing the mistakes devs made before in wow and bringing the positive things right at the start. you dont have to go through that process of development of ideas again. adapt, hell even COPY the great things and add new creative stuff... but dont bring a half assed completely new thing that tries to become something else.
every new mmo HAS to look at WoW and what it made right and what it did wrong.
they HAVE to adapt to those high standards, even if it means a longer time of development. thats the only way a modern mmo can compete in the market... look at all the games.... warhammer, age of conan... they all failed big time.
i could make a huge post about this, but just look at the skilltrees... its ALL boring passive stuff... and now take a look at the actual wow talents... they are interesting , you unlock special ACTIVE abilities, are able to reset them.
and the list goes on
conclusion: every new mmo on the market gets eaten up by wow if it fails to keep people busy and interested from the start, because there is always the no-brainer WoW in the backround ready for your subscription. why wait for a game to get content if you can play right now.