my medium sized fleet rolled through tier 1 pretty good but half way to tier 2 we have stalled due do duty officers. its really bursting our bubble and starting to deflate our commitment
Biggest problem with the star bases as i see it is that what should be the main attraction - the fleet ships - Is just..well more of the same, In my fleet which is a large one one 1 person have bought a fleet ship, Most of the others don't feel like they get a return of investment on the fleet ships and who can blame them.
This was the opportunity for cryptic to do something exiting with their ships and basically all they gave was more of the same and in some cases something really bad (seriously look at the stats of the Aquarius and tell me it is worth investing in).
I do however think that not much is needed to change this, What players want is something new to play around in, Something different and that could be done really simple - Make all the boff stations on Fleet ships universal (or perhaps all boff stations except the commander station) - a good part of the players could get months of excitement out of trying different combinations and it would set the fleet ships apart from most of the rest of the ships.
I'm in a very small fleet. We never expected to go beyond Tier 1. We're not buying the doffs at those crazy prices and I figure the prices will drop after a bit anyway.
My only complaint is tying services like bank and mail to tier number. I'd prefer to see all bases have all amenities that, say, Academy does. What should differentiate tiers should be non-amenities like customization and defense/offense capabilities. I don't expect a Tier 1 to have the capabilities of ESD but basic terminals? Yes...
But they need to be obtainable. And if you're stalling in Tier 1, how will you ever get to Tier 5?
Cryptic's solution: Buy more Zen! That's their endgame.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
Cryptic's solution: Buy more Zen! That's their endgame.
For my (tiny) fleet size, T1 is very obtainable. I can see us being in T3 by next year, but honestly if we don't have the numbers to defend it what would be the point. And we're all in agreement T5 is silly for us. That is for the truly huge fleets.
Frankly I think that is as it should be. Liechtenstein might want to be the USA, but fortunately Liechtenstein is completely happy to be smaller than any of the states in the USA.
But they need to be obtainable. And if you're stalling in Tier 1, how will you ever get to Tier 5?
I agree... we are a small fleet and we are already stalling out due to DOFF requirements. Folks are already losing interest. I think there are some good suggestions in this thread:
1. Provide a way to buy White DOFF's with dil
2. Downgrade green/blue/purple DOFF's to multiples of white DOFF's
3. Provide Fleet Marks as a choice of reward on all missions or just include them with any mission completion. The Fleet missions are fun, but the grind is getting old.
4. Need some variety in new fleet ships that are worth pursing. The current release of ships are rather plain and just a slightly better version of an existing Tier 5 ship.
But my five person fleet is about three days away from tier 1. In the end players need to break from the addiction mentality. Throw some stuff into projects then go do some fleet events.
No one says we have to grind. We're not, and we're close to tier 1. We'll have occasionalt fleet events for the base and maybe in a year we'll be at tier 3. Or not.
As of earlier this afternoon I have basically abandoned the base system.
There is simply far too much grind required for far too little benefit.
I'll probably keep up with the vanity projects if resources allow, but unless/until the Devs get their heads out of their asses and totally overhaul the construction costs they will be all I do.
Cryptic, for the love of Q make it more accessible and cheaper, much much cheaper, or your flagship season six will soon be floundering on the rocks just before it inevitably sinks.
Wait for it ...
They will probably "collect data" and "figure out what to do" by S.7 -- just like they did with taking off the timegate from S.5 Defara , now , when no one cares anymore .
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...
That is an interesting perspective , but not truly realistic .
I think that the "Starbase Effort" in fleets is spearheaded by two types of players : the "go get-ers / let's do this" types and the ones who do think that Starbases offer "uber loot" .
Once those two types get frustrated by the lack of visible progress -- after they gave all they had to give , I think that the whole Starbase thing will start to fizzle .
Not right now , as right now we're only seeing the initial signs , but wait a month or two and I think you'll see a massive apathy towards Starbases and "the grind" .
There are also Fleets out there for whom it's a "matter of pride" to do the Starbase thing faster & better then all the rest .
To them , I think that your "small doses over the long haul" theory does not apply .
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.
That's what she said ... --- errr , I mean that was the plan for time gated events as well .
I've found that there is a difference between what Cryptic aims for and what they eventually deliver .
Wait for it ...
They will probably "collect data" and "figure out what to do" by S.7 -- just like they did with taking off the timegate from S.5 Defara , now , when no one cares anymore .
That's the key part of that phrase, now isn't it? When no one cares. I've found that they've done this numerous times with things where they introduce it and either it's too expensive, way too poorly implemented, or they just end up not doing any thing with it ever again. Even in Champions this happens. I was happy to hear that they would be doing fleet leveling based on the size of the fleet, because while my fleet is decent sized, not all of my characters are in it, or if they ever translate the mechanic to CO my team there is small. But obviously this isn't the case. i'm actually a little sad to hear that they've done nothing in the way of helping small fleets like they kept mentioning. Overall, i LIKE the possibilities of what fleet bases offer, but in regards to what you have to contribute to get what you want on top of what you have to pay once it's available, then yeah, it's just another worthless sink like a lot of the other unpopular changes they've made to STO.
Hopefully they read these forums threads and start adjusting the prices of either the fleet items themselves, or the cost of fleet leveling. Or knowing cryptic they'll just make another useless currency to grind for to "help alleviate" the costs of fleets.
1) Lack of purpose. I will not get to T5 anytime soon, nor T3 and that is where all the usable for me gear is right now.
2) Insane costs. For me its both the doffs, but mostly fleet marks.
And to all those who are ok with it taking 2 years to complete, will they even be relevent in two years? Do I really need to list all the systems/content that are pretty much abandonware at the moment?
Patrols, DSEs, Crafting, Mission Scaling Gear, etc.
And when was the last time they added something to the STF store? Oh thats right, they have not. In a year when S8 launches with the 'fleet colony' system starbases will be in the same exact place crafting is right now. So simply put, whats the point? Ill just wait until a fleet is selling use of their shipyards and get my stuff then.
Really team, stop and think about it. Very few dev's play this game, that means they really have no concept or idea of what the average player goes through. Still understand the Dev's are creative folks, it is not really their fault either.
Their idea of content is to give all these things asap, while managements idea is to slow the process down. Which in truth needs to be done, but the problem is, PLAYABLE content is what we are referring too. We have enough of that, now we are fussing about how much things cost.
Well, scratching my chin here some, but did we not ask for content? well we got it, and a good amount of it. Understand a few things...
if you go at breakneck speed and burn through all the content while not enjoying it, that is not a Dev's fault. That is on us the players.
We asked for and got content. May not be what we wanted, but even Heretic warned us and I quote ..."Even if the fleets had everything before hand to put in all the missions for the starbases, it will still take them seven months to reach tier 5..."
Understand something the Developers submit their ideas to their leads, and to the Executive producer. Who in turn discusses this with VP and the CEO, along with CFO, HR etc. Perfect World has given them quite a bit of leeway, save for this group has a hefty price tag on their heads. $50 million is nothing to sneeze at.
So let us get to heart of the matter, all the expenditures, extra costs, etc.
It is all about the Money.
Flat and simple. Everything they are doing is taking advantage of as much as they can get their hands on. And we as a community happily oblige them. Be it the star bases, ships, new outfits, etc. They have a plan of what they want to get out, of course they do, those dev's are just as big of geeks as we are over STO.
Bottom line is, they have bosses who answer to bosses, who answer to a management/exec group who remind them of that $50 million price tag that they were bought for.
Knowing this, they have to maximize all the money they can. While I and the fleet I am in, feel the pain as well. Is it realistic to say, wow, that is too expensive?
Its a personal question more then a statement.
Myself, while I raise my eyebrows at some of the requirements of the star base missions, I can understand where and why they have it set for these things. yet understand to what motivates them. Our money does, and as long as we as a community spend it so readily for those little pixels and trinkets and new toys...
well, they will not stop, nor should they. They want to be successful, and profitable. Now wheither I agree with how they are doing it...
well a man, DSTAHL, once said... "If you do not like the direction we are taking the game, then Vote with your billfold."
Meaning till they money stops flowing in, they are pretty much going to do what makes them money. I myself already have stopped this as no more money flows from me to Cryptic or Perfect World.
Until the community as a whole realize they do control this, then this trend they have will not stop.
well a man, DSTAHL, once said... "If you do not like the direction we are taking the game, then Vote with your billfold."
Meaning till they money stops flowing in, they are pretty much going to do what makes them money. I myself already have stopped this as no more money flows from me to Cryptic or Perfect World.
Until the community as a whole realize they do control this, then this trend they have will not stop.
Turning off the flow of money also harms the good things in the game.
Starbases are just poorly implemented and the developers need some sort of guidance in making it a system like the community wants. The problem is this is such a long term issue for project and the rewards for completing them seem to be very inconsequential. The starbase issue is really a matter of ROI. You simply get zilch except a very nice "guild hall" for your fleet. Any other benefits you do receive are simply not worth the investment especially with the current method to the madness.
That being said, even though I feel everything involving starbases isn't worth the effort. If the investment wasn't such a chore I wouldn't mind doing it, not for me, but even for the fleeties. That's why I have so much disdain for this, it's simply asking for too much currently.
I will say cryptic is working on methods to convert CXP or whatever to fleet marks. Now if they got the doff mess sorted out maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have 16 threads going on about the bad system design.
Look I'm not expecting constant swishes from them, but this is the most giant Air ball they could have pulled off.
This thread is exactly what the devs need to read.
To help them out (and remove an excuse for doing nothing) here's a summary of the main points of this thread. It's really late so if I missed something, my apologies.
Concerns 1. Cost: Starbase projects cost far too much, especially the Duty Officer requirements.
2. Grinding: Flat-out, starbases are too grindy. Too much repetition, too much focus on too few fleet missions. Related to #3, below.
3. Limited Resources: Fleet Marks and common Duty Officers can only be obtained in limited ways that create resource bottlenecks or player burnout due to excessive grinding.
4. Rewards: Both the long and short-term rewards for starbases are lacking. The short-term rewards (at the completion of each project) are nonexistent save for vanity projects, while long-term rewards (fleet gear/ships) are not good enough to justify the time/material investment in the starbase.
Suggested Possible Fixes 1. Cost: Reduce project costs at mid-high tiers across the board or scale project costs according to fleet size.
2. Grinding: Increase variety of missions/activities that give usable fleet materials to lessen the sense of 'oh-god-not-colony-invasion-again'. This goes hand-in-hand with #3, below.
3. Limited Resources:A) Doffs for Dil. Allow common (or even uncommon) Duty Officers to be purchased with Dilithium to help increase availability for ironically hard-to-find common Doffs. Replay Fleet Pay. Add Fleet Marks as a reward choice to all replay missions, like the lock boxes are currently.
[I was thinking that they should be leaning heavily on the Doff system for starbases. Most of the projects are similar in "feel" to Doff assignments, but starship Captains/Admirals/Generals aren't going to be out mining Dilithium personally so their starbase can be built - they'll delegate. I'm thinking there should be a new Doff category called 'Fleet' that rewards Fleet Marks, turrets, starbase-required Doffs, etc. Then we could just Doff our way to T5 (eventually), do what we're doing now, or a combination of the two. Or, at worst, add dedicated Doff recruitment assignments that can take the place of us having to sacrifice our Doffs to the starbase gods. So we can add Doffs either through contributions (faster) or Doff assignments (slower and vastly cheaper). Just a thought.]
4. Rewards:A) Make completing starbase projects have an actual effect on the starbase. Allow players to see what their hard work is accomplishing. Perhaps allow some important functional features, like Bank access or transwarp, be unlocked fairly early. Maybe allow fleets to focus on specific aspects of their starbase over others (say, interior decor over a shipyard, for instance). Variety in project choice would be huge for starbases. Make fleet items as good as, but different from, STF loot. Give players a choice (and a reason) to spend months getting their starbase to T3+. Maybe let players choose from a limited list of upgrades for fleet ships (one Lt universal Boff station, an additional X console, a better shield modifier and improved hull points, or two universal Boff stations [En & Lt] and the beefier shield and hull), etc. Make fleet items worth the grind.
5. Handle With Care: The excitement generated by the starbase system is a perishable commodity. Don't take too long deciding what to do or you'll discover that many players have stopped caring.
Star Trek: Online - Now with 100% more dinosaurs!!
Starbases are big, expensive things that should take a long time to build. That much we can agree on.
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.
City of Heroes' supergroup bases, that's a great example to run both casual playing and putting effort into your own group!
The Fleet events are fine if you want to get a rather large chunk of Fleet Marks, but this game would improve if there's an option to turn on, let's call it "Fleet mode", that gives you only half of your expertise points, energy credits, skill points, dilithium reward, but on the other side gives you some Fleet marks! By doing so we'd all enjoy the Foundry content/STFs/other events than constantly doing the same Fleet events over and over again.
My idea is supposed to add more variety in gaining Fleet Marks and this would ease up the frustration of gaining inhuman amounts of Fleet Marks in later starbase tier progressing.
City of Heroes' supergroup bases, that's a great example to run both casual playing and putting effort into your own group!
The Fleet events are fine if you want to get a rather large chunk of Fleet Marks, but this game would improve if there's an option to turn on, let's call it "Fleet mode", that gives you only half of your expertise points, energy credits, skill points, dilithium reward, but on the other side gives you some Fleet marks! By doing so we'd all enjoy the Foundry content/STFs/other events than constantly doing the same Fleet events over and over again.
My idea is supposed to add more variety in gaining Fleet Marks and this would ease up the frustration of gaining inhuman amounts of Fleet Marks in later starbase tier progressing.
Funny how they managed to miss the mark so badly this time after getting it nearly perfect once before isn't it?
all this goes with my fleet module agruement. I can't even gett a teir 1 fleet ship without some how getting 2k in zen, and yes i know it can be both for EC but that's in the millions and out of reach for me. Everything is just to darn expensive. I dream od getting a fleet armitage and Galaxy reto but those are a long way of but look here's a cheyenne, but wait it's cost as much as the big hummers. great idea, poorly implemented, maybe the Devs should actually play it with no cheats for once.
I agree that higher tiers should be harder...but the curve seems exponential! It; jut silly.
All of this grind so far for what? DMGx3 weapons? A place where we can't even get mail (T1) ? Perhaps a "skin" for our ship that has a different hue of grey? Another console slot and s smidge more hull points?
Seriously people it's a group effort not a solo one so why would you expect it to be quick and easy, and if it was you would be screaming for more Fleet content the next day.
I think they did it right, hard at first then maybe easy it up a bit if needed, that being said i do think it should scale with fleet numbers how ever a 20 man fleet should not be required to do the same as a 500 one...
I would imagine it is not easy being a developer when faced with this "Community List of Demands" --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2KLyBapfTc every day, all day, (offended by bad language dont watch..)
crow that's what we're asking for is proper scaling based on fleet size. My main fleet maybe 20 members. we like to have a shpt of completeing the starbase
My fleet is so small (and most members are both casual and new to the game) that it is proving pretty much impossible to make anywhere near enough Fleet Marks. There's only about two or three of us who can accomplish anything in the Fleet missions, simply because our other friends are flying Tier 2 and 3 ships and the missions are designed for top level players. We'd love to get even the most basic starbase, but at this rate we won't even be able to start building one before Christmas.
At this point I'd happily take an option to buy Fleet Marks with Zen. And that's pretty much heresy from me. >_<
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
I agree that there is clearly a problem. My fleet is mid-sized with a core of very advanced players and we powered our way through tier 1 but now seem to be mostly stalled part way to tier 2. And interest in fleet events has dropped way off. Nobody in my fleet bothers with Nukara any more- they find it boring now, and after seeing the rewards for reaching tier 1 few people in the fleet seem especially interested in tier 2.
One thing is that the difficulty of fleet projects has increased significantly. I don't think this makes sense; there should simply be more projects to complete.
Part of the problem seems to be a poor distribution of rewards in terms of fleet credits. Recently we had a project that required three purple doffs. I provided them all and they only gave me 2000 fleet credits each. Really? That's it? I run "starbase incursion" twice and I earn more credits than I get for doffs that took me weeks to earn?
There is also an issue of poorly thought out mission requirements. While I understand that many people had a surplus of certain resources that were just piling up, the current system drains only some of those resources while leaving others still occupying big piles. I myself had a lot of doffs that were doing nothing and the fact is I still do; only a few narrow categories have been thinned out. I still have piles of advisors and bartenders and geologists sitting around waiting for something to do but the doff requirements never seem to need them.
Not only does there need to be more variety, there needs to be more flexibility. A project that requires white sensors officers should instead require white or better sensors officers.
Because of these two factors the market for duty officers has become horribly distorted.
Meanwhile, where are the fleet projects that are going to soak up the huge surplus of bridge officers we all have sitting around? What about the piles of more common lore chips? There are lots of things that need to be soaked up from the game economy that are not currently a factor in fleet projects.
It occurs to me that there needs to be some way that fleet leaders can tinker with the Fleet Credit rewards of projects to encourage people to contribute specific things. Currently there is no way for a fleet leader to offer rewards to people for assisting in projects or even for a leader to know who has contributed what, aside from in-person offers.
Here's a proposal for the system I'd like to see:
What if when a fleet project opens, instead of requiring 5 of item A and 20 of item B, it instead requires N number of fleet credits worth of items, with the different items providing different amounts of credits based on a formula, and have it that no category can fall below less than 10% of total contributions, or more than 50%.
Currently a white non-specific doff gives Fleet Credits at a ratio of 150:1. Fleet Marks give 50:1. Dilithium gives 1:1. Common commodities give 1:1. Expertise gives 1:25.
What if the fleet leader could tweak the mission to double the rewards for Boffs while halving the rewards for Expertise? So he could make white boffs into 300:1 but only by dropping Expertise to 1:50?
Or perhaps he could reduce the number of boffs needed for a project but increase the number of data samples, etc.
There are a number of ways this could be done, really, but the idea is to allow market forces influence the project assignments so that ones that are difficult become either easier or more rewarding while the ones that are easy become less rewarding or more difficult.
I agree with most everything expressed here, this is a feature update......this is not supposed to be a money sink. The flip side is the grind is so horrible it eliminates anything resembling fun .....throw paying for fleet modules on top and light up the torches and gather the pitch forks.........
Season 6- nickel and diming you to death for fleet star base you will be lucky to complete before STO shuts its severs down.....with a horrible grind fest. Cryptic is making us chase the carrot on a stick....removing most of the in game currency and replacing them with real world counter parts is not only deceptive, but totally against the underlining purpose of eliminating currencies.
Cryptic you can end this charade. I am not chasing the carrot any longer, and worse yet I am not paying anything toward feature updates that we were assured that would always be free of charge.
Bottom line I am not paying for what should be free to subscribers, to chase the unattainable grind to the carrot. I would tell you where to shove your zen, f2p, PWE, PAY TO WIN, but I do not think you need any hand holding to reach that conclusion........
Go back and do it again (seems to be a common theme with you guys no visionary thinking) attacth all currencies to all missions (dailies,story,stf, pvp) meaning dilthium, fleet marks, DOFFS, the rewards need to be in addition to the current ones. This will give us incentive to play the game, instead of grind until you make us hate star trek all together. Then drop all sink requirments by 65%, and eliminate all real money cost from fleet modules they will now be mission reward also. Energy credits value will need to be increased to 75 CENTS ON THE CREDIT upon sale, INSTEAD OF THE CURRENT 50. Ferengi characters will then get a boost 90 cents on the credit.
This should make sto fun semi fun since there is really nothing to do except this and a couple of tholian dalies and some other time gated stuff that is annoying, we pay to play, so that means when I log in the mission is available. Release some content that is related to the story and is feature episode fun or your gonna lose us.....soon. It looks as if you need a boss that has the community and sto longterm viability in mind, instead of the short term Ferengi **** and pillage profits mind set currently in place. Now its up to you....to make it so.
One other thing like they say in temporal mechanics.....don't TRIBBLE this up.....again.
I have to agree with most here. I was really excited about S6 and the starbases. I'm in a small fleet but we all put some effort in and powered through T1. Now, about half way to T2 in each category, we've hit a brick wall. We can't get any projects running because we're all out of DOFF's and photon torpedo platform schematics.
The sheer number and specificity of the required doffs is nuts. 30 sensor officers? Really? For 500 xp?
At each tier the xp for missions should go up if the resources contributions go up. Instead, you need to contribute more resources for less xp and need more xp to get the next level. It's a triple slam.
The biggest problem with the high resource requirements is there's no way to GET what you need. It's all random. You can't put a little more effort in or get a few more people helping out and get anywhere. If no one has a particular type of doff, there's no way to ensure you get one.
Comments
join date: Jan. 2012
This was the opportunity for cryptic to do something exiting with their ships and basically all they gave was more of the same and in some cases something really bad (seriously look at the stats of the Aquarius and tell me it is worth investing in).
I do however think that not much is needed to change this, What players want is something new to play around in, Something different and that could be done really simple - Make all the boff stations on Fleet ships universal (or perhaps all boff stations except the commander station) - a good part of the players could get months of excitement out of trying different combinations and it would set the fleet ships apart from most of the rest of the ships.
My only complaint is tying services like bank and mail to tier number. I'd prefer to see all bases have all amenities that, say, Academy does. What should differentiate tiers should be non-amenities like customization and defense/offense capabilities. I don't expect a Tier 1 to have the capabilities of ESD but basic terminals? Yes...
The crazy grind for SBs is in no way fun or rewarding.
If it stays like this it will only hurt the game, it needs to be fixed yesterday.
*points up*
This.
Bases are status symbols earned over time.
But they need to be obtainable. And if you're stalling in Tier 1, how will you ever get to Tier 5?
Lion Heart of Hammer Squadron
Cryptic's solution: Buy more Zen! That's their endgame.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Frankly I think that is as it should be. Liechtenstein might want to be the USA, but fortunately Liechtenstein is completely happy to be smaller than any of the states in the USA.
Our fleet is Liechtenstein.
And McDonald's endgame is to sell more food.
I agree... we are a small fleet and we are already stalling out due to DOFF requirements. Folks are already losing interest. I think there are some good suggestions in this thread:
1. Provide a way to buy White DOFF's with dil
2. Downgrade green/blue/purple DOFF's to multiples of white DOFF's
3. Provide Fleet Marks as a choice of reward on all missions or just include them with any mission completion. The Fleet missions are fun, but the grind is getting old.
4. Need some variety in new fleet ships that are worth pursing. The current release of ships are rather plain and just a slightly better version of an existing Tier 5 ship.
Delirium Tremens
Tier 4 Starbase, Tier 3 Embassy
http://dtfleet.com/
But my five person fleet is about three days away from tier 1. In the end players need to break from the addiction mentality. Throw some stuff into projects then go do some fleet events.
No one says we have to grind. We're not, and we're close to tier 1. We'll have occasionalt fleet events for the base and maybe in a year we'll be at tier 3. Or not.
Grinding is not the point.
There is simply far too much grind required for far too little benefit.
I'll probably keep up with the vanity projects if resources allow, but unless/until the Devs get their heads out of their asses and totally overhaul the construction costs they will be all I do.
Wait for it ...
They will probably "collect data" and "figure out what to do" by S.7 -- just like they did with taking off the timegate from S.5 Defara , now , when no one cares anymore .
That is an interesting perspective , but not truly realistic .
I think that the "Starbase Effort" in fleets is spearheaded by two types of players : the "go get-ers / let's do this" types and the ones who do think that Starbases offer "uber loot" .
Once those two types get frustrated by the lack of visible progress -- after they gave all they had to give , I think that the whole Starbase thing will start to fizzle .
Not right now , as right now we're only seeing the initial signs , but wait a month or two and I think you'll see a massive apathy towards Starbases and "the grind" .
There are also Fleets out there for whom it's a "matter of pride" to do the Starbase thing faster & better then all the rest .
To them , I think that your "small doses over the long haul" theory does not apply .
That's what she said ... --- errr , I mean that was the plan for time gated events as well .
I've found that there is a difference between what Cryptic aims for and what they eventually deliver .
That's the key part of that phrase, now isn't it? When no one cares. I've found that they've done this numerous times with things where they introduce it and either it's too expensive, way too poorly implemented, or they just end up not doing any thing with it ever again. Even in Champions this happens. I was happy to hear that they would be doing fleet leveling based on the size of the fleet, because while my fleet is decent sized, not all of my characters are in it, or if they ever translate the mechanic to CO my team there is small. But obviously this isn't the case. i'm actually a little sad to hear that they've done nothing in the way of helping small fleets like they kept mentioning. Overall, i LIKE the possibilities of what fleet bases offer, but in regards to what you have to contribute to get what you want on top of what you have to pay once it's available, then yeah, it's just another worthless sink like a lot of the other unpopular changes they've made to STO.
Hopefully they read these forums threads and start adjusting the prices of either the fleet items themselves, or the cost of fleet leveling. Or knowing cryptic they'll just make another useless currency to grind for to "help alleviate" the costs of fleets.
oh wait....
1) Lack of purpose. I will not get to T5 anytime soon, nor T3 and that is where all the usable for me gear is right now.
2) Insane costs. For me its both the doffs, but mostly fleet marks.
And to all those who are ok with it taking 2 years to complete, will they even be relevent in two years? Do I really need to list all the systems/content that are pretty much abandonware at the moment?
Patrols, DSEs, Crafting, Mission Scaling Gear, etc.
And when was the last time they added something to the STF store? Oh thats right, they have not. In a year when S8 launches with the 'fleet colony' system starbases will be in the same exact place crafting is right now. So simply put, whats the point? Ill just wait until a fleet is selling use of their shipyards and get my stuff then.
We have just completed T2 in Military, Science and Engineering, but can't start any projects because the upgrade projects takes 4 days each.
For T3 upgrade we will have to attack it at a different angle so that we don't hit the same wall again that halt our progression.
Resources doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment, but the cost of each project is going up allot for each tier.
Our fleet size is 400+ active players (I like how Cryptic said that big fleets will be at a disadvantage compared to smaller fleets)
Fleet Admiral Enterprise-D
3)repeated 1000000000 times a mission is too boring!
Really team, stop and think about it. Very few dev's play this game, that means they really have no concept or idea of what the average player goes through. Still understand the Dev's are creative folks, it is not really their fault either.
Their idea of content is to give all these things asap, while managements idea is to slow the process down. Which in truth needs to be done, but the problem is, PLAYABLE content is what we are referring too. We have enough of that, now we are fussing about how much things cost.
Well, scratching my chin here some, but did we not ask for content? well we got it, and a good amount of it. Understand a few things...
Understand something the Developers submit their ideas to their leads, and to the Executive producer. Who in turn discusses this with VP and the CEO, along with CFO, HR etc. Perfect World has given them quite a bit of leeway, save for this group has a hefty price tag on their heads. $50 million is nothing to sneeze at.
So let us get to heart of the matter, all the expenditures, extra costs, etc.
It is all about the Money.
Flat and simple. Everything they are doing is taking advantage of as much as they can get their hands on. And we as a community happily oblige them. Be it the star bases, ships, new outfits, etc. They have a plan of what they want to get out, of course they do, those dev's are just as big of geeks as we are over STO.
Bottom line is, they have bosses who answer to bosses, who answer to a management/exec group who remind them of that $50 million price tag that they were bought for.
Knowing this, they have to maximize all the money they can. While I and the fleet I am in, feel the pain as well. Is it realistic to say, wow, that is too expensive?
Its a personal question more then a statement.
Myself, while I raise my eyebrows at some of the requirements of the star base missions, I can understand where and why they have it set for these things. yet understand to what motivates them. Our money does, and as long as we as a community spend it so readily for those little pixels and trinkets and new toys...
well, they will not stop, nor should they. They want to be successful, and profitable. Now wheither I agree with how they are doing it...
well a man, DSTAHL, once said... "If you do not like the direction we are taking the game, then Vote with your billfold."
Meaning till they money stops flowing in, they are pretty much going to do what makes them money. I myself already have stopped this as no more money flows from me to Cryptic or Perfect World.
Until the community as a whole realize they do control this, then this trend they have will not stop.
BTW... week 89 of the Broken Cloak bug... YEAH:(
Turning off the flow of money also harms the good things in the game.
Starbases are just poorly implemented and the developers need some sort of guidance in making it a system like the community wants. The problem is this is such a long term issue for project and the rewards for completing them seem to be very inconsequential. The starbase issue is really a matter of ROI. You simply get zilch except a very nice "guild hall" for your fleet. Any other benefits you do receive are simply not worth the investment especially with the current method to the madness.
That being said, even though I feel everything involving starbases isn't worth the effort. If the investment wasn't such a chore I wouldn't mind doing it, not for me, but even for the fleeties. That's why I have so much disdain for this, it's simply asking for too much currently.
I will say cryptic is working on methods to convert CXP or whatever to fleet marks. Now if they got the doff mess sorted out maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have 16 threads going on about the bad system design.
Look I'm not expecting constant swishes from them, but this is the most giant Air ball they could have pulled off.
To help them out (and remove an excuse for doing nothing) here's a summary of the main points of this thread. It's really late so if I missed something, my apologies.
Concerns
1. Cost: Starbase projects cost far too much, especially the Duty Officer requirements.
2. Grinding: Flat-out, starbases are too grindy. Too much repetition, too much focus on too few fleet missions. Related to #3, below.
3. Limited Resources: Fleet Marks and common Duty Officers can only be obtained in limited ways that create resource bottlenecks or player burnout due to excessive grinding.
4. Rewards: Both the long and short-term rewards for starbases are lacking. The short-term rewards (at the completion of each project) are nonexistent save for vanity projects, while long-term rewards (fleet gear/ships) are not good enough to justify the time/material investment in the starbase.
Suggested Possible Fixes
1. Cost: Reduce project costs at mid-high tiers across the board or scale project costs according to fleet size.
2. Grinding: Increase variety of missions/activities that give usable fleet materials to lessen the sense of 'oh-god-not-colony-invasion-again'. This goes hand-in-hand with #3, below.
3. Limited Resources: A) Doffs for Dil. Allow common (or even uncommon) Duty Officers to be purchased with Dilithium to help increase availability for ironically hard-to-find common Doffs.
[I was thinking that they should be leaning heavily on the Doff system for starbases. Most of the projects are similar in "feel" to Doff assignments, but starship Captains/Admirals/Generals aren't going to be out mining Dilithium personally so their starbase can be built - they'll delegate. I'm thinking there should be a new Doff category called 'Fleet' that rewards Fleet Marks, turrets, starbase-required Doffs, etc. Then we could just Doff our way to T5 (eventually), do what we're doing now, or a combination of the two. Or, at worst, add dedicated Doff recruitment assignments that can take the place of us having to sacrifice our Doffs to the starbase gods. So we can add Doffs either through contributions (faster) or Doff assignments (slower and vastly cheaper). Just a thought.]
4. Rewards: A) Make completing starbase projects have an actual effect on the starbase. Allow players to see what their hard work is accomplishing. Perhaps allow some important functional features, like Bank access or transwarp, be unlocked fairly early. Maybe allow fleets to focus on specific aspects of their starbase over others (say, interior decor over a shipyard, for instance). Variety in project choice would be huge for starbases.
5. Handle With Care: The excitement generated by the starbase system is a perishable commodity. Don't take too long deciding what to do or you'll discover that many players have stopped caring.
City of Heroes' supergroup bases, that's a great example to run both casual playing and putting effort into your own group!
The Fleet events are fine if you want to get a rather large chunk of Fleet Marks, but this game would improve if there's an option to turn on, let's call it "Fleet mode", that gives you only half of your expertise points, energy credits, skill points, dilithium reward, but on the other side gives you some Fleet marks! By doing so we'd all enjoy the Foundry content/STFs/other events than constantly doing the same Fleet events over and over again.
My idea is supposed to add more variety in gaining Fleet Marks and this would ease up the frustration of gaining inhuman amounts of Fleet Marks in later starbase tier progressing.
=Δ= 12th Fleet, Engineering Division, Fleet Captain =Δ=
Funny how they managed to miss the mark so badly this time after getting it nearly perfect once before isn't it?
I agree that higher tiers should be harder...but the curve seems exponential! It; jut silly.
All of this grind so far for what? DMGx3 weapons? A place where we can't even get mail (T1) ? Perhaps a "skin" for our ship that has a different hue of grey? Another console slot and s smidge more hull points?
Nah, not worth it.
I think they did it right, hard at first then maybe easy it up a bit if needed, that being said i do think it should scale with fleet numbers how ever a 20 man fleet should not be required to do the same as a 500 one...
I would imagine it is not easy being a developer when faced with this "Community List of Demands" --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2KLyBapfTc every day, all day, (offended by bad language dont watch..)
At this point I'd happily take an option to buy Fleet Marks with Zen. And that's pretty much heresy from me. >_<
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
One thing is that the difficulty of fleet projects has increased significantly. I don't think this makes sense; there should simply be more projects to complete.
Part of the problem seems to be a poor distribution of rewards in terms of fleet credits. Recently we had a project that required three purple doffs. I provided them all and they only gave me 2000 fleet credits each. Really? That's it? I run "starbase incursion" twice and I earn more credits than I get for doffs that took me weeks to earn?
There is also an issue of poorly thought out mission requirements. While I understand that many people had a surplus of certain resources that were just piling up, the current system drains only some of those resources while leaving others still occupying big piles. I myself had a lot of doffs that were doing nothing and the fact is I still do; only a few narrow categories have been thinned out. I still have piles of advisors and bartenders and geologists sitting around waiting for something to do but the doff requirements never seem to need them.
Not only does there need to be more variety, there needs to be more flexibility. A project that requires white sensors officers should instead require white or better sensors officers.
Because of these two factors the market for duty officers has become horribly distorted.
Meanwhile, where are the fleet projects that are going to soak up the huge surplus of bridge officers we all have sitting around? What about the piles of more common lore chips? There are lots of things that need to be soaked up from the game economy that are not currently a factor in fleet projects.
It occurs to me that there needs to be some way that fleet leaders can tinker with the Fleet Credit rewards of projects to encourage people to contribute specific things. Currently there is no way for a fleet leader to offer rewards to people for assisting in projects or even for a leader to know who has contributed what, aside from in-person offers.
Here's a proposal for the system I'd like to see:
What if when a fleet project opens, instead of requiring 5 of item A and 20 of item B, it instead requires N number of fleet credits worth of items, with the different items providing different amounts of credits based on a formula, and have it that no category can fall below less than 10% of total contributions, or more than 50%.
Currently a white non-specific doff gives Fleet Credits at a ratio of 150:1. Fleet Marks give 50:1. Dilithium gives 1:1. Common commodities give 1:1. Expertise gives 1:25.
What if the fleet leader could tweak the mission to double the rewards for Boffs while halving the rewards for Expertise? So he could make white boffs into 300:1 but only by dropping Expertise to 1:50?
Or perhaps he could reduce the number of boffs needed for a project but increase the number of data samples, etc.
There are a number of ways this could be done, really, but the idea is to allow market forces influence the project assignments so that ones that are difficult become either easier or more rewarding while the ones that are easy become less rewarding or more difficult.
Peet
Season 6- nickel and diming you to death for fleet star base you will be lucky to complete before STO shuts its severs down.....with a horrible grind fest. Cryptic is making us chase the carrot on a stick....removing most of the in game currency and replacing them with real world counter parts is not only deceptive, but totally against the underlining purpose of eliminating currencies.
Cryptic you can end this charade. I am not chasing the carrot any longer, and worse yet I am not paying anything toward feature updates that we were assured that would always be free of charge.
Bottom line I am not paying for what should be free to subscribers, to chase the unattainable grind to the carrot. I would tell you where to shove your zen, f2p, PWE, PAY TO WIN, but I do not think you need any hand holding to reach that conclusion........
Go back and do it again (seems to be a common theme with you guys no visionary thinking) attacth all currencies to all missions (dailies,story,stf, pvp) meaning dilthium, fleet marks, DOFFS, the rewards need to be in addition to the current ones. This will give us incentive to play the game, instead of grind until you make us hate star trek all together. Then drop all sink requirments by 65%, and eliminate all real money cost from fleet modules they will now be mission reward also. Energy credits value will need to be increased to 75 CENTS ON THE CREDIT upon sale, INSTEAD OF THE CURRENT 50. Ferengi characters will then get a boost 90 cents on the credit.
This should make sto fun semi fun since there is really nothing to do except this and a couple of tholian dalies and some other time gated stuff that is annoying, we pay to play, so that means when I log in the mission is available. Release some content that is related to the story and is feature episode fun or your gonna lose us.....soon. It looks as if you need a boss that has the community and sto longterm viability in mind, instead of the short term Ferengi **** and pillage profits mind set currently in place. Now its up to you....to make it so.
One other thing like they say in temporal mechanics.....don't TRIBBLE this up.....again.
Thank you.
The sheer number and specificity of the required doffs is nuts. 30 sensor officers? Really? For 500 xp?
At each tier the xp for missions should go up if the resources contributions go up. Instead, you need to contribute more resources for less xp and need more xp to get the next level. It's a triple slam.
The biggest problem with the high resource requirements is there's no way to GET what you need. It's all random. You can't put a little more effort in or get a few more people helping out and get anywhere. If no one has a particular type of doff, there's no way to ensure you get one.