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Are Starbases "the end" for STF's ?
aelfwin1
Member Posts: 2,896 Arc User
It has occurred to me that the already dwindling STF playerbase may be hit pretty hard by the "mad" rush to grind the materials and Marks needed for Starbases .
From the future plans (hinted at by Al Rivera) , the 6-8 month Starbase grind is just the beginning (double that if your fleet plans on having a KDF Starbase as well) , as future non-Starbase holdings are being planned as well .
All in all it seems to me that the "focus" is being shifted away from STF's to a more complicated collecting / crafting / grind mechanic , next to which , the STF award system seems simplistic in comparison .
While I know that some ppl are glad to finally have something else to do , others are still struggling to get a Borg Tech piece -- a struggle that will become a lot harder , as the majority of players will wonder off (in the short term at least) to check out the new hawtness .
Your thoughts ?
From the future plans (hinted at by Al Rivera) , the 6-8 month Starbase grind is just the beginning (double that if your fleet plans on having a KDF Starbase as well) , as future non-Starbase holdings are being planned as well .
All in all it seems to me that the "focus" is being shifted away from STF's to a more complicated collecting / crafting / grind mechanic , next to which , the STF award system seems simplistic in comparison .
While I know that some ppl are glad to finally have something else to do , others are still struggling to get a Borg Tech piece -- a struggle that will become a lot harder , as the majority of players will wonder off (in the short term at least) to check out the new hawtness .
Your thoughts ?
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Yes, Starbases will be the new grind. But I'm not too sure that STF population will drop too significantly, since there will be people who still need Prototypes and completing those accolades. Also, with Starbases costing a ton in Dilithium, there will be people playing STFs just for that.
The thing that troubles me is that Cryptic is artifically changing STO into more of a fleet dynamic all of a sudden, when STO been mainly a single-player game, or PuG teams with the STFs.
I realize this goes against Cryptic's internal desire to specifically categorize things for the sake of production... But I'd like more content like the Vault (albeit not time gated, even if rewards ARE time gated) and I'd like them to label these things STFs.
From Cryptic's perspective, the Vault is NOT an STF. Terrordome is NO LONGER an STF. I get why they do this. On a team of 40 people, you need specificity.
But the specificity is splitting hairs for players.
Personally, I think they need different labels internally and externally.
More 5 man content marketed as STFs, yes. I think they should leverage some good multiplayer maps for this like Facility 4028, Gre'thor, and Fire Caves on the ground. Maps like an improved Bajoran Wormhole, Hobus, and the Deferi Comet map in space.
Now... Whether that meets Cryptic's internal definition of an STF? I don't know we need more of what they internally call STFs.
I think we need some dramatically easier 5 mans and some dramatically harder 5 man content.
My feeling is that the best money spent on easy content would be on creating easy, dumb fun narrative "funhouse"/"house of horrors"/"tunnel of love" ride content (typically called dungeons) for players who enjoy story. You've got 15 rooms. You've got action. The story progresses through those five rooms with each room telling a chapter. You get more bang for your buck than FEs and this kind of content is more social and replayable.
For the challenge-oriented players, I'd focus almost solely on boss fights. That's where the money is. These people will always gripe about trash mobs anyway. So get to the meat of things. Give them a bracketed set of boss fights. Like 12 boss fights in a series, on a tournament ladder, with options at various points. They queue for a boss fight. If they win, they move onto the next one. If they fail, they get a 30 minute cooldown before they can queue again. Success is not guaranteed. These are hard. Progress resets every week so you're trying to get through the tournament ladder of boss encounters before the week ends. This is raiding distilled to the core that raiders care about. Not saying there's no story (there would be one, with an emphasis on charismatic villains with a personality that ties into the encounter strategy) but you're getting RIGHT TO the boss fights. (Space STFs already do this in large measure but the ground ones tend to focus on trash fights and enemy spam.)
So... EASY 5 man dungeons for the lore nerds, I say (we haven't had one of these yet in STO, really, and the closest we got were the ones Gozer worked on less), and pure boss fight progression for the challenge seekers.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
While this is also true (and STO has had serious anti-social issues), there's actually some great scholarship out there suggesting that people like INDIRECT interaction in MMOs more than DIRECT.
Jane McGonigal discusses this in her book "Reality is Broken" and there have been a number of scholarly gaming presentations on the subject, ranging from combat to cosmetics to economics.
By and large, what MMO players crave is a degree of socialization but largely to have an audience. Your mileage may vary but it's a common observation by designers and academics.
I think Fleet progress seems well designed to this on the surface but I also think Cryptic has a history of misreading this. And this is become the bulk of their knowledge and experience is pre-WoW and pre-EvE.
Things like PvP are anti-social socialization. In PvE and PuG PvP and MMO economies, the emergent trend is people showboating and jockeying for status to impress other people. People value vanity items highly. I think Cryptic has been circling around this idea for awhile but it remains to be seen if they totally "get it" or they're still clinging to provisos and "that's great but..."-type statements.
So far, this is what I believe to be the case.
PvP is definitely Anti-social where players are aiming to be known as a dominant force and instill fear on to others. And to me, this is a main factor why PvP in STO died, because PuGs didn't have a chance against Premades. (Of course other factors like lack of balance and the same maps didn't help either). So basically they chased off new blood.
And right now, TOR is suffering from this same exact phenomenon.
But when it comes to STFs, it's basically the opposite with the social interaction. People grouped with one another enough that they developed friendships. Some people even formed fleets around this unity.
So I can see Cryptic's intiative to develop Starbases off that unity where you are doing more stuff with those people. HOWEVER, at the same time Cryptic is also unknowingly driving that classic Guild Spike in the center of that by introducing Fleet-only equipment. And many others are seeing this potential problem, for there will be in-fighting over these resources or people not able to earn Fleet credits by contributing (thus not getting new gear). Which will eventually drive friendships apart as the game goes from teamwork, to that of a greed-focus.
Which I predict at least 2 months after the introduction of Starbases, we will begin to see the first negative effects.
STFs and the random number generated drops of trash are a joke. Im looking forward to starbases as a welcome reprieve.
Like I say, I think:
A good dungeon is like a funhouse or a rollercoaster. All three are fundamentally narrative "rides." I think 5 mans should have that "ride a roller coaster with 4+ friends" feel. Not tedium. Not stress. Rollercoaster. You can have a ton of hard to complete optionals, some that contradict eachother. But completing the dungeon shouldn't be a serious question for any PuG in Mk X blues, even with lack of skill.
Meanwhile, boss fights, really challenging ones, are all about skill. But the trash fights inbetween become tedium.
I know some designers would cling to "fiero and flow" to defend the trash->boss->trash->boss design. I think they're at cross purposes though. Each has its own fiero and flow. There's no need to bury one inside the other in a big way. Dungeons can have boss fights but they needn't be all that technical. And technical boss fights suffer from being shoved inside a dungeon.
The fiero of a dungeon is narrative fiero, delving into the fantasy realm; thinking about technique distracts from the magic. The fiero of a highly technical boss fight is technical fiero; thinking about the narrative, beyond broad personality elements and flavor mechanics, detracts from the focus on skill.
One of these celebrates you as the story hero. One celebrates you as the skill hero. You need both but I think they counter eachother unless a raid is perfectly designed.
That's why I think the cure to tedium is to have a boss fight ladder with quick, interesting, technical boss fights and nothing but boss fights... and then to have the funhouse 5-mans that take you through a "Hall of Horrors"/"Tunnel of Love" story presentation that make you and your friends feel like champions.
I haven't done an STF in a year and I'm not ashamed. I could care less about the MACO / OMEGA armor. I think most people got bored of STF's around 2 months after they were implemented.
From the 3 STF channels that I use , only in the last month or so has there been a visible drop off .
Since the "remastered" STF's were released in January , that's a good 6 months run .
This run may have been a bit longer , but now some of the STF players are on Tribble , either for testing or because they just can't wait until S.6 goes to Holodeck .
(ironically some of these ppl will get tired of the actual play S.6 offers sooner , precisely because they have been playing it for longer than the Holodeck population .
In a question presented to DStahl , he was asked if we can expect a new STF this year , and he said yes .
I look to that in hopes to rejuvenate the STF player base -- if that happens .
Right now (w/Gozer leaving among other things) , I'm not sure it will .
I also hope that there will be as little backlash as possible to Starbases from the players , as it has been proven that just because Cryptic decides that it's a "good idea" to "herd" the playerbase into a certain type of play (like timegated events) -- not all will go quietly or meekly to where the sign points to .
I'm saying this because the players who will not pick up the "you have to join a Fleet" banner , and who are tired of STF's -- well , unless they are not a huge Foundry fans , they will have very little left to do in this game .
People still do. And Cryptic dangling those blasted STF sets and watch people waste 8 months grinding and YET to complete a single single set, then tell us to our face that you dont need those MK12 sets. It was like they were spitting on our faces.
Now they tell us the new grind is with Fleet Bases and that the STF revamp to allow us to buy these MK12s won't come til Season 7, which is likely at the end of the year.
So as much as they claim they care about us, they sure don't show it.
I hope not, because every mmorpg needs a wide variety of features, and i can say for myself .. i like the STFs in their current form. It just needs more of them.
So you think they should make all the new stuff inaccessible unless you've gotten the Mark 12 sets? Lock them up and make them too hard for anyone but those who have the gear do it? That's not the way you make MMOs. End game gear should never be needed to experience and enjoy a game. It should make things a little easier for the next things that come out, but that's really it. That's good MMO design.
i can see the line between 5 man event and stf getting blurred. the vault mission is not an stf yet it carries a lot of the similarities of the space ones.
I wouldn worry.
My thoughts exactly. People will still grind them for dilithium. Yeah sure you can grind about half your daily amount with a contraband turn over and a few exploitative Foundry missions, but everything beyond that really isn't any quicker than an STF. With salvage drops, you can quite often get your daily amount in 4-5 STFs. Often less.
That said, they need another bit of love, imo. People are burned out.
I know that we're suppose to get new Mk XII fleet weapons w/ 4x modifiers, but I haven't heard anything about Shields, Deflectors, or Engines.
STFs are a fun game type, we just need more of them and new ones. It would be a shame to change the mechanics of end-game instead of expanding on them.
Yes we need more of them and yes i dont want them left behind by the the fleet starbase system.
In fact why not have one of their rare resources for Projects be EDC?
Another way to keep people playing is to make it worth their while, making the Fleet Marks/ Merits available from the STFs, alongside the Dilithium of course; reward people for playing them rather than making an EDC tax for the Starbase projects.
Personally I'd be happier to see the Fleet Marks (or whatever the base currency is you receive) rewarded for all team based content to encourage teaming.
Truth be told, I wouldn't mind seeing more. Hell, foundry players could make them.