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Why Fleet Starbases could keep me playing, but aren't going to.
eatthepath
Member Posts: 8 Arc User
I came back to this game for season 6, having last played at the end of the Season 5 FEs. My freinds and I have played STO on and off together since the beta, and we have a little fleet together. We've spent money on C-Store items in the past, season 6 has gotten us spending a bit more, and could keep us doing so.
But it won't.
I can't speak for our entire group, but I know I'm not alone in having gotten quite excited about the starbase. I never expected to have access to all the goodies right away, but I figured we could steadily play a couple of fights a night and slowly get somewhere. And at first that was the case! We've gotten three starbase upgrades completed and are still pushing for more. We've enjoyed all the new fleet content and have even revisited the STFs here and there. But as we tier up our starbase, the grind is exploding, and looks to continue to do so. Trying to scrape together the resources to do anything is becoming increasingly tedious, and entirely not fun.
The worst of it is the rewards for fleet advancement have so far been lack-luster. The promise that maybe the later gear will be better has thus far kept us going, but taking a look at what we've unlocked so far has really taken the wind out of my sails, and made me very strongly doubt that the designers know enough about what the players want to design a satisfying progression anymore, and looking at the fleet ships only reinforces this feeling. But that's only tangentially related to my main point, which I will get back to now.
One of the problems is the double curving of starbase experience. As you rank up a tier, the experience required to get to the next tier is greater than it was last time. That's not unusual, and it's not a huge problem. At the same time, the projects that yield that experience get more expensive. Either one of these facts alone would be fine, but together they combine to be absurd.
Even this wouldn't be the worst thing, but some of the commodities you have to feed in are insanely hard to grind up. To get to tier 1 in a category requires 179 common duty officers of that type. Getting to tier 2 from there needs 640 duty officers. Going from there to tier 3 takes over 2760 duty officers! How are we supposed to get that many of the guys? To advance even one step along the path we need a total of 120 duty officers. If we're doing all the recruitment missions at our disposal as fast as we can, continually logging in to see if the invisible cooldown timers are finished, I'd say we might get up to 1 duty officer of the right type per day per character. with ten characters that's still over a week before we can take one single step along the road. That's probably our best rate we can manage, unless we're furiously grinding energy credits to buy them off the exchange at every balloning prices. We have to do that 23 times to get to the tier 3 experince threshold. That's over nine months of CONSTANT GRIND. Even if we pay real money the return on investment is going to be so low that we'll have to spend a fortune to put any dent in that number.
I'm okay with the road being a long one, I really am, but this is absurd. From what I've read the enemy types are gated by starbase level, so we're not only cut off from the resources of a higher tier starbase, we're cut off from one of the things that MIGHT make the grind bearable, enemy variety. We are already sick to death of fighting klingons, gorn, and orions in the fleet events, and it's going to take us literally months of grind to unlock the next set?
Putting in item sinks for things that were piling up is great, but the effort to drain the economy of these overabundances has succeeded, and now attempting to continue at the same prices is terrible. And some of the requirements are terrible from the start. Practice Tactical Exercises II takes, if STOwiki is accurate, 100 photon torp MkIIIs. You need to run that mission 23 times if you're going for tier 3 without doing any provisioning. That is going to the vendor and buying the launcher, two clicks per torp, 2300 times. Yes, it's spread out over time and a fleet, but give me a break. My RSI is bad enough from my Pavlovian need to hammer spacebar even with autofire turned on, I don't need this too.
I don't really believe there's a chance of a price revamp here, but I'd be overjoyed to see one. While you're at it, you could make fleet leadership a bit more interesting. Make there be real tradeoffs in the advancement. For example, and I'm just spitballing here:
Lower the prices of all higher level category XP assignments, and if you feel that makes it too possible to ram down them for big fleets, raise the levelup thresholds. Add missions that allow you to advance faster down a track but are less resource efficient, especially in dilithium. Let people keep the progress they have, but change future progression.
The DOff prices are the biggest offenders though. If they're going to remain at their current curves, common DOffs have to be more easily attainable. For god's sake, if you're going to monetize this game to hell and back, just add C-store department themed doff packs that are guaranteed to give commons. I bet they'd sell like hotcakes.
TL;DR the explosive DOff grind is starting to kill my small fleet, and I expect it to do so for large fleets sooner or later.
But it won't.
I can't speak for our entire group, but I know I'm not alone in having gotten quite excited about the starbase. I never expected to have access to all the goodies right away, but I figured we could steadily play a couple of fights a night and slowly get somewhere. And at first that was the case! We've gotten three starbase upgrades completed and are still pushing for more. We've enjoyed all the new fleet content and have even revisited the STFs here and there. But as we tier up our starbase, the grind is exploding, and looks to continue to do so. Trying to scrape together the resources to do anything is becoming increasingly tedious, and entirely not fun.
The worst of it is the rewards for fleet advancement have so far been lack-luster. The promise that maybe the later gear will be better has thus far kept us going, but taking a look at what we've unlocked so far has really taken the wind out of my sails, and made me very strongly doubt that the designers know enough about what the players want to design a satisfying progression anymore, and looking at the fleet ships only reinforces this feeling. But that's only tangentially related to my main point, which I will get back to now.
One of the problems is the double curving of starbase experience. As you rank up a tier, the experience required to get to the next tier is greater than it was last time. That's not unusual, and it's not a huge problem. At the same time, the projects that yield that experience get more expensive. Either one of these facts alone would be fine, but together they combine to be absurd.
Even this wouldn't be the worst thing, but some of the commodities you have to feed in are insanely hard to grind up. To get to tier 1 in a category requires 179 common duty officers of that type. Getting to tier 2 from there needs 640 duty officers. Going from there to tier 3 takes over 2760 duty officers! How are we supposed to get that many of the guys? To advance even one step along the path we need a total of 120 duty officers. If we're doing all the recruitment missions at our disposal as fast as we can, continually logging in to see if the invisible cooldown timers are finished, I'd say we might get up to 1 duty officer of the right type per day per character. with ten characters that's still over a week before we can take one single step along the road. That's probably our best rate we can manage, unless we're furiously grinding energy credits to buy them off the exchange at every balloning prices. We have to do that 23 times to get to the tier 3 experince threshold. That's over nine months of CONSTANT GRIND. Even if we pay real money the return on investment is going to be so low that we'll have to spend a fortune to put any dent in that number.
I'm okay with the road being a long one, I really am, but this is absurd. From what I've read the enemy types are gated by starbase level, so we're not only cut off from the resources of a higher tier starbase, we're cut off from one of the things that MIGHT make the grind bearable, enemy variety. We are already sick to death of fighting klingons, gorn, and orions in the fleet events, and it's going to take us literally months of grind to unlock the next set?
Putting in item sinks for things that were piling up is great, but the effort to drain the economy of these overabundances has succeeded, and now attempting to continue at the same prices is terrible. And some of the requirements are terrible from the start. Practice Tactical Exercises II takes, if STOwiki is accurate, 100 photon torp MkIIIs. You need to run that mission 23 times if you're going for tier 3 without doing any provisioning. That is going to the vendor and buying the launcher, two clicks per torp, 2300 times. Yes, it's spread out over time and a fleet, but give me a break. My RSI is bad enough from my Pavlovian need to hammer spacebar even with autofire turned on, I don't need this too.
I don't really believe there's a chance of a price revamp here, but I'd be overjoyed to see one. While you're at it, you could make fleet leadership a bit more interesting. Make there be real tradeoffs in the advancement. For example, and I'm just spitballing here:
Lower the prices of all higher level category XP assignments, and if you feel that makes it too possible to ram down them for big fleets, raise the levelup thresholds. Add missions that allow you to advance faster down a track but are less resource efficient, especially in dilithium. Let people keep the progress they have, but change future progression.
The DOff prices are the biggest offenders though. If they're going to remain at their current curves, common DOffs have to be more easily attainable. For god's sake, if you're going to monetize this game to hell and back, just add C-store department themed doff packs that are guaranteed to give commons. I bet they'd sell like hotcakes.
TL;DR the explosive DOff grind is starting to kill my small fleet, and I expect it to do so for large fleets sooner or later.
Post edited by eatthepath on
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also the problem is, that many stuff that is needed for the leveling of the starbase was not even that common before S6. while there are many things that we had a load of, and we still have, because we still cant spend it on starbases (for example the boff skillpoints -I dunno the new name-, all of us have millions of it, yet one lvl requires around 12000, maybe double of it...).
imo the prices should change, or at least should be tradeable (uncommon doffs should worth 2-3 common ones).
10k DPS Vesta threads: 1; 2
We're told there are doff down-trading assignments coming. I think this is a band-aid, it'll help us for a little while and then our ships will be entirely abandoned and we'll be almost back where we started, except without anyone to do Doff assignments with, or only the barest skeleton crew.
I think what is worse in all of this is that the items that you recieve from the fleet starbase system have been purposely designed NOT to be as good as STF loot. I persoanlly don't really enjoy the STF's (I've done them far too much with no luck getting gear) and thought that the fleet system would finally allow players to get decent gear that was comparable to STF's via the huge contributions we have to donate. To find out this is simply not the case has really put o huge downer on me, also the fact that you have to buy the items with fleet credits 'and' dilithium after all the donations to unlock them does not sit well with me either. I've basically emptied alot of my huge stockpile I've ammased since I started playing STO into the fleet starbase system and to be honest, the rewards just feel like a kick in the face for what players are expected to do. I want my Fleet Defiant (got the modules off the exchange for EC), but to be honest, I have no idea what I'll do with it once I have it, because I really can't be bothered with the current fleet mark grind events anymore. :-/
Ah well, SWTOR is going F2P soon, I might just head back over there :-/
I can live with the increasing number of marks required and the increasing amount of experience required to get to higher tiers, but from what i see on Wiki and in my own fleet,
the amount of stuff that must be invested to get to the next tier quadruples with each tier.
so the trend 12(0)-30(1)-60(2) doffs per assignment will continue into up to 240 doffs per assignment at tier 5 and will require about 150 of those to get to tier 5. And doing the 500 XP missions that require more dilithium and less doffs also scales badly from what I see.
As a result it looks like that getting to tier 5 will be impossible for small fleets despite what the devs said. And in the end most bases will be developed up to tier 3 at most and then abandoned with the majority of players will join a few uber fleets so that about 500 players working together may be able to fully develop few bases into tier 5.
FIXED immutable permanent prices payable in dilith or EC
and the doffs on the exchange pattern mapped to it (max price 1000 dilith 30,000 ec per doff)
Costs are spiralling out of control,I can see many starbases being ghost towns sooner rather than later.My fleet has around 140 peeps,if yours has 100 more I forsee doom on the horizon.
Cryptic,get a grip before it becomes a huge white elephant...
We saw this with DOffs as well. We have been so starved for new content in this game that when something really entertaining gets added we throw all of our effort into doing it because, let's face it, we've done everything else already.
This is not surprising of course, because as stated, the content droughts of the past have been long and grueling periods of "Hurry up and wait" for the next big thing.
The problem with this approach is that it leads to burnout.
The Starbase system (as well as the DOffs for that matter) need to be taken as pieces, awesome pieces, of a much larger whole that has not been entirely realized yet. In other words one more thing to do in the game rather than "The" thing to do in the game.
That's asking a lot of us as players, frankly, and especially as long as we have had to wait for compelling new features and game-play options in the not so distant past.
However, we have seen Cryptic step-up their game since F2P has launched. Some of that has been hard to swallow because of the focus on micro-transactions, lock boxes, time-gating, and so on, but we have also seen an awful lot of work go into revamping almost every aspect of the game, and continued discussion on plans to revamp the rest.
If Cryptic can keep up the pace for another 3-4 seasons, that will mean a truly expansive game with many different types of game-play to rotate through.
Coming from that longer-view perspective, maxing out DOffs, fully kitting out with STF gear, or unlocking Tier 5 of a Starbase, can be seen as a range of different ways to play the game over an extended period of time.
I interact with new (and returning) players frequently, and those that are just coming into the game for the first time (or have not played in a year or more) are often floored and even a little overwhelmed by the magnitude of optional things to do.
So yes, grinding any single aspect of STO will get tedious and expensive, and, as mentioned, can lead to burn out and frustration, but each one of us has the choice to throw ourselves into that cycle--or not to.
Even now, a semi-regular player (say six or so hours a week), can log in and find a variety of different types of content to play with. If all six of those hours are spent doing exactly the same thing, then the challenges of maxing out that one focus will be painful. On the other hand, spending that time doing a range of activities may mean slower progress in each, but in the long run may prove more satisfying.
I freely admit that I have, at times, been caught up in the excitement and expectation of having something new to do as additional content gets rolled out, but I have typically had to pace myself because of real-world responsibilities and obligations as well. The result is that I am NOT a master of any one particular aspect of STO (believe me you don't want me on your PvP or elite STF team), but I have also been continuously playing since open Beta and have yet to burn out.
I see Starbases in the same light. I am a member of a large, well organized Fleet (12th Fleet), so some of our progress-related pains get spread out over a large number of members. But I also have alts in a private fleet, as well as in our Alt-fleets, and I know that progress there is going to be very slow.
If the pay-out for achieving the maximum Tier of a Starbase seems to be underwhelming (and currently it is), perhaps it is worth simply stepping back and looking at it from another perspective. STO is not about Starbases. Starbases just happen to be one of the various things to do within the larger scope of the game.
I think Cryptic knows this, and is banking on players consuming it in small doses over the long haul, rather than racing through it all at once... In fact various Devs have been saying as much from the earliest mention of Season 6.
Are Starbases a cool new toy? Yup. Are they going to be ridiculously challenging to max out? Yup. Are they meant to be the pinnacle and final piece of the puzzle which makes STO complete... I don't think so. I'd go even further, and say that two years down the road, many of us will be continuing to plug away at building our homes in STO, while focusing on many other aspects of the game.
Some of those other aspects will, hopefully, be entertaining in their own rights.
When viewed in this light, I feel that, in time; Starbases, STFs, DOffs, and any number of other (as yet unimplemented) types of content, will ultimately serve to make the overall Star Trek Online gaming experience very diverse and engaging... We simply are not quite there yet. However, to be fair, we have never before seen this level of development-related momentum happening in STO either.
cha' DarSeqwij (My two Darseks)...
Operations Team, 12th Fleet
same here. my fleet of about 150 +/- has had that one as well for a while. cant scare up anymore doffs for those at the moment
we're halfway to tier 2 and assuming the wiki is correct about the increasing resource requirements, i dont think anyone is going to have anything left to advance the base any farther
what was it, 60-80k of just dil to station a single tac, sci, eng officer?:eek:
granted, in the series, a starbase would take some time to build (perhaps a year or 2, just a guess), but years in a game to grind out stuff. just insane
i would like to know who is making a killing from selling doffs on the exchange
** Signed **
My fleet has unlocked the SB, and after all that grind I was completely let down by the experience. Sure its pretty to look at, for all of 5 mins, and then I am left with the feeling - what have I been wasting my money on really???
There is not a single KDF ship that interests me.
From what I have heard the rewards of the SB hardly make up for the effort.
There is no sense of creating a personalised SB experience. No customisation, nothing. Its empty and very much like any other bridge.
I actually feel bad for the developers. I can see that they put in a hell of an effort on the SB concept.
Its failing, because:
The cost issue is huge, especially for small fleets. I get the idea of using the SB projects as just part of a whole; variety is good.
However, when it costs 200,000 dilithium just to unlock a cosmetic upgrade (in addition to the dilithium costs associated with other SB projects, crafting, zen exchange, and so forth), it's too much.
My wife would love for our SB to have the plants, displays, and consoles showing to give the base more atmosphere, but at that cost it'll never happen.
When I see people stating that Fleets of 100-200 are getting discouraged over the associated costs (not time, costs), I know our little Fleet of 5 (with 62 characters overall) is out of luck.
Here is my simple suggestion.
Let us BUY white DoFFs for Dilithium at the DoFF place at Starfleet academy. We can do the green ones currently and above that. Let's say for 400 Dilithium. The proposed trade down system isn't exactly an ideal solution as it will just make purple doffs much more farm friendly. Not to mention this system is pretty much using every single pre-exsisting asset and will not require much if any new UI or system design. Just control the price of the DoFF with Dil as you see fit.
That would simply make the lower tiers much easier to attain for any size fleet. However, I don't know if they really want to have EVERY fleet be Tier 5. However just about any fleet IMHO should at least be able to get to tier 3.
They don't have to be great DOFFs. It doesn't even matter what traits they have.
All that's required is that when we need a Security DO, we can get a Security DO (or whatever).
It doesn't make sense that the game economy is set up so that people can charge ludicrous prices for common duty officers, or so that common duty officers in demand are actually less common than uncommon duty officers.
A common DO vendor would keep prices under control, without necessarily cutting off the DO market on the Exchange. There would still be a need for DO's people can get with EC's instead of Dilithium.
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The problem I see with the current economic system is that it focuses far too much on grinding a very small amount of content over and over when it should be encouraging play/replay of all content.
I don't have a problem with a project like this taking a lot of time. It took me years to get my bases in City of Heroes fitted out the way I wanted them
When I was building those bases I got everything I needed from regular game play of my various characters. I could play when I wanted for as long as I wanted and be guaranteed to get something useful for my base building project. Nothing needed was locked away behind 'exclusive' content.
But in STO, one absolutely essential material (FMs) is locked in a handful of missions and awarded in those missions only grudgingly unless you play them during randomly scheduled events for slightly enhanced rewards.
In CoH players earn Prestige (the main base building currency) simply by being in a super group and playing the game. Prestige, in combination with other salvage items (also earned during regular play), is used to craft and install everything in the base
Why not do FMs the same way here?
Make FMs the primary fleet currency by attaching them to each arc in the game with either a few per mission or a large lump sum at the end and allow them to be converted into other required materials (at a reasonable rate) to allow constant, measurable progress on base building. Materials could also be donated as they are now to allow additional flexibility.
This has the added benefit of making ALL content in the game desireable for replay. Given that the Devs have all but directly stated that 'play-it-once' content is dead, this is a good thing.
Have the current fleet events award larger numbers of FMs than they currently do but increase the cooldown accordingly to maintain balance. This would allow for larger crunches of materials to cover special projects like the interior decorating ones we've already had assuming they use something other than dilithium.
All of this should allow small (even solo) fleets to get more enjoyment, and less frustration, out of what is now the center piece of the game.
The super-high requirements of items that basically _have_ to be purchased to get things done in a reasonable time frame (DOffs) is killing my small fleet's ability to recruit our friends to start playing the game. We've gotten a few to start playing it because it's F2P, but when they realize they're going to have to invest a significant quantity of real-world cash (in the form of either Keys to get DOff packs, or DOff packs directly) to help unlock content, they give up and go away. With fewer of our friends playing, it may end up driving the rest of us away, as well.
I think a problem with the system is that we're all given a Tier 0 Base which is already the size of a COSTCO superstore. It's huge! And, it has 4 floors with (color-coordinated) carpeting and a full crew staffing it. Plus, we get a partially-built Transwarp, Industrial base, weapons satellites, and communications array, all of which need us to "finish" them. The missions we do to "add" features don't really make a big difference to our starting Base in terms of looks.
I wish that, as the beginning, we were told to go to an empty location in space and fight the Orion/Klingon/Gorn/whatever pirates and marauders that are there. After a few waves are defeated, Starfleet would tow a tiny starter Base to the location. Why? Because Starfleet NEEDS our fully-functional eventaul Base to help protect the quadrant (not just because we'd like to have a place to play house). I mean a REALLY tiny Base. Then the Tier 0 missions that we all grind actually add size to the Base. You complete your first Eng & Tac & Sci mission, you get a larger Ops floor. You get 5 Tier 0 Tac projects complete, you get a Tactical floor. That kind of thing. Once you reach Tier 1, you have the Base that we're currently given at the start.
Oh, and until you get an automated defense system (maybe through a series of special missions), you periodically have to fight those pirates/marauders again.
My point is that, by Tier 1, you would have felt like you'd accomplished so much progress in your Base that you'd be willing and eager to keep at it. Also, more and unique special projects could be added occasionally to add to that feeling of progress and growth. Right now, the only physical change we can make with our Bases is plants in the hallways and windows to see out of.
TL:DNR version - I think Bases would be more appreciated and enjoyed if we started with less, had missions that let us add physically to our Bases, and felt like our Base was important in the overall gameplay.
Starbases are not going to fit in everyone's time box and that is fine, you can't make everyone happy. Adjustments will be made and prices will fluctuate constantly but some of the whining needs to gtfo but otherwise some good ideas here.
You guys get worse and worse every week. At this point you all deserve to be all fired and replaced.
Why do you all derive pleasure from torturing your gamers.
I really believe that this comes back to one element. Dynamic self generating Game play.
When there is Character\Universe Progression in a dynamic interactive universe = long term play.
This is the reason the doff systems are so popular in my opinion. The Doff system is the first step in giving the universe an interactive spontaneous life of its own.
In my opinion when the doff system is tied into mission creation, we will start getting this effect.
Also a planet mod would help, Planets could be destinations for Duty assignments, missions, special\ rare resources , and for generating diplomatic influence ( city states, or minor races Botf
My main example of this gameplay style is Civilization \ Birth of the Federation, that game has been played over and over for years , and could be considered grinding . Building the same units, same research, however the random dynamic choices from the npc's plus random resource and map generation creates a totally new experience, even though I am using the same tools to conquer the challenges.
Star trek could utilize this idea, using the doff system to randomize and generate player content , while the character continues there progression, and is able to interact and effect the world around them.
There is the step of making player interactions effect the universe. ( the players percieved universe ). perhaps starbases could be the key to that.
example
Diplomacy\Trade reward could be as simple as explore a planet that has a minor species This area would have a diplomacy\trade doff assingment to gaining a temporary stream of influence for your starbase. Like a bonus that lasts for a certain amount of time.
Then Starbases would have access to that races Doff assingments \ Bonuses
then if a fleet hasn't visited a minor species in a certain amount of time, or lapses with that species duty assignments the starbase looses access to those duty assignments from that species.
Until a Captain from the fleet goes back to that species home system to re establish diplomatic relations (doff mission), or randomly gets to a map an through exploration mission.
All that could be done with the current Doff system,
The second part is having map relevant doff assignments that generate relevant playable missions,
That is my opinion on this one
I've so far only seen Giant potato boats or kilnks attacking? There are options for others?
Let's be honest, Star Bases are relevant if you wan't the best ships. Just compare the stats of the Patrol Escort, to the Fleet Patrol escort.
Higher Hull
Better shield modifier (.99 which is virtually a cruiser)
+1 eng console
It's simply put a T6 escort in stats, the only difference is the BoFF layout is the same.
The closest thing to dynamic content for this game you can expect is the foundry.
Very well put. I too have been playing continuously since open beta and I must admit that I have burned myself out in the manner you describe on a couple of occasions. However, I've always held out hope that all of these pieces (DOffs, fleet progression) will come together with others in the future (hopefully exploration, crafting, pvp etc.) to create a whole that is engaging, diverse and fun to play. Thanks for the excellent post.
Buy Zen for Fleet Modules. Buy Zen for Doffs packs to open and spend on the Starbase. Buy Zen for lockbox keys for the special ship lottery. Buy Zen for Lobi for the absurdly priced carrier. Buy Zen to sell Zen.
I had said multiple times before Season 6 if they just made a Starbase System then the bases would be relatively useless. We can't place them about the galaxy as they are stuck along a warzone for a war that doesn't matter or change gameplay. We can't customize even the interior of the starbase instance say: X Starbase is near an asteroid field, orbiting a planet, or on the edge of a nebula.
What we got was another DS9 with everyone parked outside in sector that is no different than if you were running Second Wave. You just see more than four of your fleeties at a time. What we got was another DS9 and a giant, blinking billboard that reads: Buy More Zen!
Al Rivera hates Klingons
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All cloaks should be canon.
The icing on the cake for me was finding out just how lame the supposed fleet weapons are after the huge grind.
Exactly the point of this thread. A "decent sized fleet" is HUGE for the requirements. Seriously, if a fleet of (what was it...) around 200 can't muster the will to continue on... what about us with, maybe 20 people?
fun thing is, some people say that starbases are "just something else to do alongside Doff and all." Well, before starbases came out I knew people who were nearly maxed with the doff system XP bars, and had swapped nearly their entire cast to purple-quality ones. So... what are they supposed to do? Buy white ones since they can't contribute to the low level white duty officer requirements?