agree, this borg set separation will **** up every actual or future starship set combination.
If they want to expand the borg sets, at least leave the original borg set UNTOUCHED make the console to combine with further sets, but not remove it from the original 4 piece set
this is what pisses me of the most of all, aside from a hypotetic future lvl cap increase with equipment MK cap increase.
i assure you if every of that mentioned above upcoming to S7 becomes live, i will leave this game at warp 10
Nerfing the borg set will certainly cause peoples power levels to be adjusted downward.
Inflating the costs in game and in the Zen store for one.
I have to facepalm whenever I see this. I'm going to lay it out in terms as simple as I can.
When the C-store was converted to use ZEN instead of C-points, the actual costs DID NOT go up at all.
$1 = 80 C-points
$1 = 100 ZEN
80 C-points = 100 ZEN
The numerical increase was simply because of the differing amount of ZEN you get for the same amount of money. Those master keys, for example, still cost $1.25 - it just looks more expensive now. The gold/LTS stipends are still $5 a month.
Honestly, I like the ZEN conversion better. It seems more honest about how much something costs in real dollar terms, whereas the cost in C-points seemed to be designed to mislead you.
I guess I dont get the "OMG we're loosing Dil from STF panic". I got tired of grinding IGE for the PSG, still missing that one piece. I am still getting way over the 8k refining quota a day by doing dailies. If I stop playing right now and only log on to refine I have about a 2 week stock pile. Heck you can just get Dil quota just by turning in contraband. 200K.EC=5 contraband=2000dil. You can pop over to Ker'rat and get 8 combo of shields, engines, or deflectors easily to get the 200K ec.
Honestly I dont think anything except those stupid reman data logs are hard to grind.
ask4spock1 was addressing the C-Store prices themselves which did increase an average of 33% across the board about 6 months prior to the CP to ZEN conversion, back when Season 5 launched.
He was not addressing the CP to ZEN conversion itself.
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it! No, seriously! ...Why are you laughing so hard?
This is great to see so many people putting there foot down, the big question is, will it make a difference, it's a good test to see if they really care or not...Great post OP
Since they ARE in fact removing the ability to generate/earn any dilithium from STF's... I for one am probably not going to play them anymore.... since dilithium was the only reason I ever ran them. I have a sneaking suspicion I am not alone in this.
The minute those changes appeared on Tribble it became a virtual lock that these would end up on Holodeck. It's been very rare (almost never) to see Cryptic roll back a change put on Tribble.
Notice that whenever there is mass community rejection of a change it ultimately leads to a "compromise" rather than a roll back. The "compromise" makes the community stop complaining and allows the change Holodeck largely unchanged. Examples include the old VA ship token moved to Vet reward, the last currency reduction and the vet Boff, and the changes to lock boxes rather than their complete removal.
But whatever the outcome, the one thing that is certain is we are going to see a thread from branflakes saying "we've listened to your feedback and ..." with whatever they've decided to do. All we can do is continue to provide our feedback until that moment arrives.
Kobayashi Maru
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
While it does happen (infrequently) that changes are made based on player feedback, more often than not, what exists on Tribble, inevitably ends up going live to Holodeck, despite the outcry from the "vocal minority" that is the forum posters.
It's ridiculous in itself, that we have to pay Dilithium for Fleet "gear" when we have to pay thousands upon thousands of Dilithium just to grind through the Fleet Starbase projects to get there. I'd be fine if they hike the "Fleet Credit" cost up on the gear, as long as they remove the need for Dilithium for said gear.
Pre-F2P, most ships cost Energy Credits. Something which became all but useless post-F2P. Instead, ships now cost Dilithium (like everything else), and the "better" ships are placed in the C-Store for real life currency.
The game IS too grindy as is, and if Season 7 rumors are true, it's about to become MORE grindy. Just what we need, right?
Star Trek has somewhat of a tradition, never lasting longer than 7 Seasons. I wonder if this might ring true for Star Trek Online as well? At this point, i'd be happy either way, since the game is in dire need of REAL fixing, and TRIBBLE around with the costs of everything you need ingame, is NOT the way to go. Well, I guess it is, if your intent is to TRIBBLE off what little customer base you might still have.
/\ /\ This /\ /\
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And:
Without Dilitium for the STF's, there will be no reason to play them (got already 12 mk xii sets and the only reason i play STF's is for the dilitium).
STF's and Star-base construction is almost 95% of my gameplay in STO, and that will end with the change.
Maby I will play some PVP (MWO is for PVP I hear)
Like I said they are testing the waters - this is not just a test of game mechanics going on on tribble, it is also a test of player reactions - so the dilth nerf " rumor" could currently be "working as intended" - to see how the player base reacts.
OR they're just not dropping dilithium until they drop everything else.
They COULD be seeing how we react... they also COULD all be lemurs. Quit with the weasel words, friend.
And the rep system is not fully understood by the players yet so the rewards are not comparable to anything that we now have to judge by.
This. So much this. If the Rep system comes online and still no DL, we'll have something to talk about. Seriously, there's enough stuff actually wrong to talk about without inventing more.
Since they ARE in fact removing the ability to generate/earn any dilithium from STF's... I for one am probably not going to play them anymore.... since dilithium was the only reason I ever ran them. I have a sneaking suspicion I am not alone in this.
Well at current all we know is that this is a potential "option" that they are planning along with the neverwinter type of rewards for foundry missions - which could remove the console clickers who have multiple alts that run the investgate officer daily mission in just 2 min or less.
I have to facepalm whenever I see this. I'm going to lay it out in terms as simple as I can.
When the C-store was converted to use ZEN instead of C-points, the actual costs DID NOT go up at all.
$1 = 80 C-points
$1 = 100 ZEN
80 C-points = 100 ZEN
The numerical increase was simply because of the differing amount of ZEN you get for the same amount of money. Those master keys, for example, still cost $1.25 - it just looks more expensive now. The gold/LTS stipends are still $5 a month.
Honestly, I like the ZEN conversion better. It seems more honest about how much something costs in real dollar terms, whereas the cost in C-points seemed to be designed to mislead you.
Refer to sekritagent quoted post below
Truth is there was a drastic increase in prices at the CStore prior to zen conversion as well as after.
An example of a Drastic Price increase:
Aenar and Caitian Bridge Officers = 100 Cryptic Points
After Conversion the Aenar and Caitian Bridge Officers = 500 Zen Points
ask4spock1 was addressing the C-Store prices themselves which did increase an average of 33% across the board about 6 months prior to the CP to ZEN conversion, back when Season 5 launched.
He was not addressing the CP to ZEN conversion itself.
It's possible that Boxes of Dil ore are one of the things that can be purchaed with STF marks... so you have a choice, get dil or some other reward that is more suited to what you want. A better implementation of Box of Dil or random item at the end of some missions now.
That would be a reason to take Dil reward out of the mission, and not put anything in until they unveil the new rep system.
It's possible that Boxes of Dil ore are one of the things that can be purchaed with STF marks... so you have a choice, get dil or some other reward that is more suited to what you want. A better implementation of Box of Dil or random item at the end of some missions now.
That would be a reason to take Dil reward out of the mission, and not put anything in until they unveil the new rep system.
I love me my speculatin'...
I think the point of this thread now is to comment on your reactions if they remove dilth, free duty officers. higher dilth cost to upgrind the doffs and changing the stf sets around.
I've played only games for over 20 years and if people like it as much as hardcore star trek fans do the love of the franchise most of the time makes us adapt to it. As long as dilithium exchange doesn't go away and we keep getting adequate venues to get dilithium across our characters each day for those of us who invested a lot before f2p came that we can still get what we want that is coming out the changes being proposed arent too bad. As far as skyrocketing costs its part of a design so you dont play 20 hours when it first comes out and then say okay guys i did that whens next stuff coming out?
I might not get to see what I want in the game all the time but when they can they do add a lot of stuff I did/do want to see in the game. My biggest campaign right now isn't soley KDF stuff but to get more things to do on each side for dilithium and fleet marks as well as making transphasics, the intrepid, and the b'rel be more of what they should be.
It's possible that Boxes of Dil ore are one of the things that can be purchaed with STF marks... so you have a choice, get dil or some other reward that is more suited to what you want. A better implementation of Box of Dil or random item at the end of some missions now.
That would be a reason to take Dil reward out of the mission, and not put anything in until they unveil the new rep system.
I love me my speculatin'...
The way some of us understand the new system is, that Omega marks won't have any buying power at all. They are more liek XP similar to fleet marks that you can invest into specific projects.
It is likely those produce provisions you need to buy the new gear with... I don't know... dilithium maybe? Why would i want to buy dilithium with dilithium?
keep in mind this is speculation, but it fits the facts.
Wow, the post was edited? What did they take OUT of it?
Free Academy recruitment Duty Officer packs eliminated and replaced with one that costs dilithium
That is worst part of all...They are worth 100K or so each, u can do them 2-3 times a week per toon, and it is pretty messed up that now it will cost something besides a doof slot for 20 hours. THAT is just cheating us further.
I see that EVERY spot we find to make a few ec is turning into NONONO PAY US for the privelege and right to do it, even though you have been doing it all along. It is miserly, and worthy of Scrooge McDuck.
I am a lifer. I paid three years ago, am at about 1000 days, and really love Star Trek. The game is nice, soemwhat easy to follow (what with all the changes seemingly every week but not to actual MISSIONS or anything important to TREK FANS...REMEMBER, WE are what made this game viable,) but becoming more costly every day. I log in EVERY day, run my dailies, and help my fleetmates level and donate a LOT to sb. A couple million in FC, second in the fleet.
I feel that I am always playing catch-up in STO. There's always a new ship that I can't afford yet, the stupid datalogs I am not online the right time to do or i am with ******* or whatever, I STILL haven't cleared Crystalline Entity, the last Dabo accolade is 70% away, I can never get the optionals to get my MK12 gear on ground stfs I need, I REALLY want that ship for 300mil EC on the exchange, etc. I got issues with STO.
But the rising cost of getting some of these things is insane. It is bad enough that the game crashes or is off for maintenance (oh, a freaking DAY after a patch btw and ironically at EXACTLY 10AM, when a patch WOULD be if it was scheduled for today Friday EST) but I actually expect that every time I log in there is something new I can't buy yet or can;t afford.
And WHY do we crash? Is it because of too many people on a server or something?
Doesn't matter. I just feel silly for paying to play a game that I can't even log into now. Anyone besides me remember UBO?
If they wanted to see players reactions to these rumored overhauls and changes, they are sure getting a reaction - a very negative, negative reaction.
Season 7 is indeed the biggest TEST for the playerbase, this is getting so old I am growing weary of all the constant roller coaster style changes that is being done to Star Trek Online.
They celebrate and supposely introduce us to some NEW Content, guess what? It's wrapped up in a constant Grindfest, tagging along in its wake a virtual wrecking ball that destabilizes the community via major hidden changes etc... - with the excuse "It NOW works as it's intended."
The face of STO is one of a chameleon, it gives us hope of upcoming awesome changes only to destroy those hopes with some kind of Grind or money making scheme, along with trying to fix things that did not need to be fix from the beginning.
What exactly is NEW Content in STO? That in and of itself is a blur.
New Content? A ship?
New Content? A Starbase
New Content? Romulan STF? etc...
BUT Wait! How much for this new content? An arm and a leg Via Grinding and other Pony Tricks. It can't even be looked at as content, it's more of a monopoly.
We'll penalize the playerbase by eliminating small perks that were in game for awhile, and can now tell them our famous quote, "It NOW works as it was intended" - What benefits a player, even for a small amount is punished in any new upcoming season.
How long are we going to give them the excuse that they need the revenue to supply us with new content and maintain the game. The new content part is getting old, its just old content rehashed to look more polished to increase revenue.
Agree with OP completely. I only put my ?10 quid a month in cause I don't notice it, but apart from that STO get's no more money from me :P Plus a 500 Zen STipen. Get a grip.
As far as skyrocketing costs its part of a design so you dont play 20 hours when it first comes out and then say okay guys i did that whens next stuff coming out?
I am not willing to be penalized or made to work harder because the Cryptic team is too slow to create content to keep up with the demands of its own playerbase. I will not work in a labor camp dressed up as entertainment. Not now, not ever. Again, there are too many good games out there now competing for my time and money.
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it! No, seriously! ...Why are you laughing so hard?
The way some of us understand the new system is, that Omega marks won't have any buying power at all. They are more liek XP similar to fleet marks that you can invest into specific projects.
It is likely those produce provisions you need to buy the new gear with... I don't know... dilithium maybe? Why would i want to buy dilithium with dilithium?
keep in mind this is speculation, but it fits the facts.
Yep, That's how I read the Omega marks too.
If they follow the starbase system, we get fleet marks, and fleed cred each time we spend fleet marks or other inputs into the base.
Those fleet marks are like xp that can be spent on "making and provisioning vendors" to spend fleet credits and dilithium in.
Then we use fleet cred to purchase from those stores... For example duty officers from the duty officer guy. I can only get white because my fleet is level 1... (I honestly don't know if that was always unlocked, because I didn't start going there til after level 1)
Now suppose this new Omega system works the same way. Omega marks when spent = Omegacred.
The Omega marks could be spent to open up new levels of gear requisition, but you would still spend Omegacred and possibly Dil to actually get it.
Following the starbase model, you could do "projects" to get an armor or ship weapon or hat vendor... maybe even a better Dil ore vender, and then spend the Omega Cred for Dil ore containers, or omega armor or ship weapons... or hats.
I think it is more likely that IF they follow this model, the Dil box vendor is just a dil box vendor, and can't be improved. Or any projects to get a better Dil vendor will be insanely expensive for very little improvement... like Rank 2 = +1% 3 = 2% but inputs are doubled from the previous rank.
I was gonna say... you again with your whining until I read the following points for Season 7.
WTH Cryptic!
All existing STF grind currencies are eliminated and REPLACED with a different STF grind currency
STF grind currencies no longer able to be converted to dilithium
Existing Reman Datalog grind currency eliminated and REPLACED with a different Romulan grind currency
Developers already indicating we won't come out "whole" in the conversion - conversion details not announced
Borg set broken from 4-piece set to 3-piece and a new set available for the new STF grind currency
Space and ground STF items now cost dilithium in addition to the new STF grind currency
Dilithium rewards eliminated from STFs
Dilithium prices for grinding Duty Officers up from one quality to the next are dramatically increased
Free Academy recruitment Duty Officer packs eliminated and replaced with one that costs dilithium
All of the above are a joke right? They cannot be that hard up for cash can they? CBS charging them too much or something?
There has been nothing decided at this time on how this will affect the "Investigate Officer Report" daily -- feel free to include feedback in this thread on what you would like to see/ not see happen if there were a change.
It's free dilithium and alt leveling with no work. Ultimately it's not very good for the game, but it's likely such a small effect that it doesn't matter much. And it is a bit like welfare and minimum wage in that you make sure everyone gets at least something to keep progressing, but then fake foundry missions is probably the wrong way to accomplish that.
Fundamentally it's a symptom of a problem, not a cause. You should earn as much dilithium as possible, but the best way to do that seems to be to repeat the same 3 STF's over and over. And since the rewards are kinda across characters but kinda not, you really want to earn dilithium on as many characters as possible too. At a minimum it's free zen.
I would probably shift the 'free' dilithium and XP from foundry missions to the Doff system. Dilithium in particular. If you figure a player has 20 slots and you only talk about 'days' as 20 hours, so in a day a player has 400 doff hours upping dilithium rewards from 5 per mission to 5 per hour per doff mission you'd at least make players fly around and work, and progress some story arcs and get some other useful stuff into the game world.
Whomever is responsible for your search technology needs to be either replaced, or to figure out how to actually do searches properly. I realize you're probably working on a distributed clusters and it's hard to do distributed searching and sorting. But the Foundry and the Exchange both suffer enormously because finding things is hard. People don't actually *do* foundry missions most of the time because it's a scattershot of quality and time investment. The Foundry is the same basic problem as mobile apps - I need to be able to find the best thing for the problem I have. You don't even have categories. Although something from Moblie you should take is 'my apps', or in your case 'my foundry favourites' where I could actually see them. Hell, if you have the time/money make the UI for it look like a star trek console with buttons sort of like a W8/droid/ipad.
Sample use case: I want to test my DPS. Not really a daily problem, but the question extends well enough. So I want to limit myself to space. And I want NPC's who are comparable in health and damage resistance to STF borg. So I search for the 3 most relevant search stings to any DPS: DPS, target dummy and Patchwerk. The latter two produce no results at all. Fair enough, keyword search after all. But under DPS I have 13 results, so that's a good sign. Now, which one do I want? I don't really want to waste 4 hours trying out ALL of them. And I can eliminate a couple of them from the descriptions, but the foundry should probably generate some basic description of the events involved so I can see how much I'm in for.
Oh and, to reiterate the search thing. One of the DPS missions that showed up under a search for DPS was a DPS ground mission. Doing a search for DPS ground returns no result. That's search problem.
It seems to me that a lot of the people on this forum come from the time of the subscription model and havent understood how free2play works.
I've spend most of my gaming time over the last year playing a successfull f2p tank game (don't know if i'm allowed to name names here), so let me tell you about what i learned there.
A subscription based game model is very easy to understand:
The user pays a fee to the developer, therefore the developer provides content as good and satifying as possible to the user, therefore the user pays a fee to the developer again and so on till all eternity.
A free2play game works completly different.
First the developer provides content to the player, then the player has to enjoy the content so he keeps playing. At some point then the player has to start paying the developer. Usually this is encouraged by the developer by frustrating the player in some way. Wouldn't it be nice to have this? Wouldn't it be easier not to have to do this? From now on the developer has to balance frustrating the player enough so he pays and satisfying him enough so he keeps playing.
I came to STO, because the developers of the other game fustrated me too much and i decided to look for a less frustrating way to spend my time.
I actually liked a lot of what i saw here.
What i do realize now is, that most of the stuff i like here still comes from the subscription times. Now it seems to me that the developers try to more and more push the f2p model, and that seems to come as quite a shock to the old time players.
For players f2p means that they have to be aware of the motives of the developers, and not trust them to have the players best interest in mind.
The starbase system is a great example for how f2p works, as its just a lot less frustrating if you are willing to pay money.
And it doesn't come as a big suprise to me, that this system will be extended to the doff system and to the advancement/loot system ( called Reputation and apparently a awesome new feature).
On a sidenote, i once read an interview with the lead developer of that other game, where he explicitly stated that the transformation from subscription to f2p doesn't work, because you have to train your players from the beginning (carrot and stick), and i think what happens in this thread is exactly what he ment.
If this is what STO should have been from the beginning or what their real ultimate objective is, I can only wish Cryptic good luck finding a new STO player at this point to pay these prices and grind like this.
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it! No, seriously! ...Why are you laughing so hard?
It's getting so that the only really FUN way to play the game now, is to keep creating new Alt's...
Then just dismiss them when ya hit level 50 and start another.
The leveling missions are still the best part of the game.
That's where I am at with this game. Have another three that I am focused on leveling to 50 and then stop and do another. Have over 9 Level 50s now because I am trying to avoid the grind until I HAVE to do it.
Comments
Nerfing the borg set will certainly cause peoples power levels to be adjusted downward.
I have to facepalm whenever I see this. I'm going to lay it out in terms as simple as I can.
When the C-store was converted to use ZEN instead of C-points, the actual costs DID NOT go up at all.
$1 = 80 C-points
$1 = 100 ZEN
80 C-points = 100 ZEN
The numerical increase was simply because of the differing amount of ZEN you get for the same amount of money. Those master keys, for example, still cost $1.25 - it just looks more expensive now. The gold/LTS stipends are still $5 a month.
Honestly, I like the ZEN conversion better. It seems more honest about how much something costs in real dollar terms, whereas the cost in C-points seemed to be designed to mislead you.
Honestly I dont think anything except those stupid reman data logs are hard to grind.
He was not addressing the CP to ZEN conversion itself.
Yeah, that's right.
Notice that whenever there is mass community rejection of a change it ultimately leads to a "compromise" rather than a roll back. The "compromise" makes the community stop complaining and allows the change Holodeck largely unchanged. Examples include the old VA ship token moved to Vet reward, the last currency reduction and the vet Boff, and the changes to lock boxes rather than their complete removal.
But whatever the outcome, the one thing that is certain is we are going to see a thread from branflakes saying "we've listened to your feedback and ..." with whatever they've decided to do. All we can do is continue to provide our feedback until that moment arrives.
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
/\ /\ This /\ /\
| | | |
And:
Without Dilitium for the STF's, there will be no reason to play them (got already 12 mk xii sets and the only reason i play STF's is for the dilitium).
STF's and Star-base construction is almost 95% of my gameplay in STO, and that will end with the change.
Maby I will play some PVP (MWO is for PVP I hear)
OR they're just not dropping dilithium until they drop everything else.
They COULD be seeing how we react... they also COULD all be lemurs. Quit with the weasel words, friend.
This. So much this. If the Rep system comes online and still no DL, we'll have something to talk about. Seriously, there's enough stuff actually wrong to talk about without inventing more.
Well at current all we know is that this is a potential "option" that they are planning along with the neverwinter type of rewards for foundry missions - which could remove the console clickers who have multiple alts that run the investgate officer daily mission in just 2 min or less.
Refer to sekritagent quoted post below
Truth is there was a drastic increase in prices at the CStore prior to zen conversion as well as after.
An example of a Drastic Price increase:
Aenar and Caitian Bridge Officers = 100 Cryptic Points
After Conversion the Aenar and Caitian Bridge Officers = 500 Zen Points
It's possible that Boxes of Dil ore are one of the things that can be purchaed with STF marks... so you have a choice, get dil or some other reward that is more suited to what you want. A better implementation of Box of Dil or random item at the end of some missions now.
That would be a reason to take Dil reward out of the mission, and not put anything in until they unveil the new rep system.
I love me my speculatin'...
I guess they have not learned that making too many changes is bad and that your players will move on.
I think the point of this thread now is to comment on your reactions if they remove dilth, free duty officers. higher dilth cost to upgrind the doffs and changing the stf sets around.
I might not get to see what I want in the game all the time but when they can they do add a lot of stuff I did/do want to see in the game. My biggest campaign right now isn't soley KDF stuff but to get more things to do on each side for dilithium and fleet marks as well as making transphasics, the intrepid, and the b'rel be more of what they should be.
The way some of us understand the new system is, that Omega marks won't have any buying power at all. They are more liek XP similar to fleet marks that you can invest into specific projects.
It is likely those produce provisions you need to buy the new gear with... I don't know... dilithium maybe? Why would i want to buy dilithium with dilithium?
keep in mind this is speculation, but it fits the facts.
Just from the C-store ? Or Yen store ,whatever the tribble its called now?
As Scooter puts it.... That's uncool bro, uncool.
Free Academy recruitment Duty Officer packs eliminated and replaced with one that costs dilithium
That is worst part of all...They are worth 100K or so each, u can do them 2-3 times a week per toon, and it is pretty messed up that now it will cost something besides a doof slot for 20 hours. THAT is just cheating us further.
I see that EVERY spot we find to make a few ec is turning into NONONO PAY US for the privelege and right to do it, even though you have been doing it all along. It is miserly, and worthy of Scrooge McDuck.
I am a lifer. I paid three years ago, am at about 1000 days, and really love Star Trek. The game is nice, soemwhat easy to follow (what with all the changes seemingly every week but not to actual MISSIONS or anything important to TREK FANS...REMEMBER, WE are what made this game viable,) but becoming more costly every day. I log in EVERY day, run my dailies, and help my fleetmates level and donate a LOT to sb. A couple million in FC, second in the fleet.
I feel that I am always playing catch-up in STO. There's always a new ship that I can't afford yet, the stupid datalogs I am not online the right time to do or i am with ******* or whatever, I STILL haven't cleared Crystalline Entity, the last Dabo accolade is 70% away, I can never get the optionals to get my MK12 gear on ground stfs I need, I REALLY want that ship for 300mil EC on the exchange, etc. I got issues with STO.
But the rising cost of getting some of these things is insane. It is bad enough that the game crashes or is off for maintenance (oh, a freaking DAY after a patch btw and ironically at EXACTLY 10AM, when a patch WOULD be if it was scheduled for today Friday EST) but I actually expect that every time I log in there is something new I can't buy yet or can;t afford.
And WHY do we crash? Is it because of too many people on a server or something?
Doesn't matter. I just feel silly for paying to play a game that I can't even log into now. Anyone besides me remember UBO?
Season 7 is indeed the biggest TEST for the playerbase, this is getting so old I am growing weary of all the constant roller coaster style changes that is being done to Star Trek Online.
They celebrate and supposely introduce us to some NEW Content, guess what? It's wrapped up in a constant Grindfest, tagging along in its wake a virtual wrecking ball that destabilizes the community via major hidden changes etc... - with the excuse "It NOW works as it's intended."
The face of STO is one of a chameleon, it gives us hope of upcoming awesome changes only to destroy those hopes with some kind of Grind or money making scheme, along with trying to fix things that did not need to be fix from the beginning.
What exactly is NEW Content in STO? That in and of itself is a blur.
New Content? A ship?
New Content? A Starbase
New Content? Romulan STF? etc...
BUT Wait! How much for this new content? An arm and a leg Via Grinding and other Pony Tricks. It can't even be looked at as content, it's more of a monopoly.
We'll penalize the playerbase by eliminating small perks that were in game for awhile, and can now tell them our famous quote, "It NOW works as it was intended" - What benefits a player, even for a small amount is punished in any new upcoming season.
How long are we going to give them the excuse that they need the revenue to supply us with new content and maintain the game. The new content part is getting old, its just old content rehashed to look more polished to increase revenue.
I am not willing to be penalized or made to work harder because the Cryptic team is too slow to create content to keep up with the demands of its own playerbase. I will not work in a labor camp dressed up as entertainment. Not now, not ever. Again, there are too many good games out there now competing for my time and money.
Yep, That's how I read the Omega marks too.
If they follow the starbase system, we get fleet marks, and fleed cred each time we spend fleet marks or other inputs into the base.
Those fleet marks are like xp that can be spent on "making and provisioning vendors" to spend fleet credits and dilithium in.
Then we use fleet cred to purchase from those stores... For example duty officers from the duty officer guy. I can only get white because my fleet is level 1... (I honestly don't know if that was always unlocked, because I didn't start going there til after level 1)
Now suppose this new Omega system works the same way. Omega marks when spent = Omegacred.
The Omega marks could be spent to open up new levels of gear requisition, but you would still spend Omegacred and possibly Dil to actually get it.
Following the starbase model, you could do "projects" to get an armor or ship weapon or hat vendor... maybe even a better Dil ore vender, and then spend the Omega Cred for Dil ore containers, or omega armor or ship weapons... or hats.
I think it is more likely that IF they follow this model, the Dil box vendor is just a dil box vendor, and can't be improved. Or any projects to get a better Dil vendor will be insanely expensive for very little improvement... like Rank 2 = +1% 3 = 2% but inputs are doubled from the previous rank.
- The rampant speculation continues -
WTH Cryptic!
All existing STF grind currencies are eliminated and REPLACED with a different STF grind currency
STF grind currencies no longer able to be converted to dilithium
Existing Reman Datalog grind currency eliminated and REPLACED with a different Romulan grind currency
Developers already indicating we won't come out "whole" in the conversion - conversion details not announced
Borg set broken from 4-piece set to 3-piece and a new set available for the new STF grind currency
Space and ground STF items now cost dilithium in addition to the new STF grind currency
Dilithium rewards eliminated from STFs
Dilithium prices for grinding Duty Officers up from one quality to the next are dramatically increased
Free Academy recruitment Duty Officer packs eliminated and replaced with one that costs dilithium
All of the above are a joke right? They cannot be that hard up for cash can they? CBS charging them too much or something?
It's free dilithium and alt leveling with no work. Ultimately it's not very good for the game, but it's likely such a small effect that it doesn't matter much. And it is a bit like welfare and minimum wage in that you make sure everyone gets at least something to keep progressing, but then fake foundry missions is probably the wrong way to accomplish that.
Fundamentally it's a symptom of a problem, not a cause. You should earn as much dilithium as possible, but the best way to do that seems to be to repeat the same 3 STF's over and over. And since the rewards are kinda across characters but kinda not, you really want to earn dilithium on as many characters as possible too. At a minimum it's free zen.
I would probably shift the 'free' dilithium and XP from foundry missions to the Doff system. Dilithium in particular. If you figure a player has 20 slots and you only talk about 'days' as 20 hours, so in a day a player has 400 doff hours upping dilithium rewards from 5 per mission to 5 per hour per doff mission you'd at least make players fly around and work, and progress some story arcs and get some other useful stuff into the game world.
Whomever is responsible for your search technology needs to be either replaced, or to figure out how to actually do searches properly. I realize you're probably working on a distributed clusters and it's hard to do distributed searching and sorting. But the Foundry and the Exchange both suffer enormously because finding things is hard. People don't actually *do* foundry missions most of the time because it's a scattershot of quality and time investment. The Foundry is the same basic problem as mobile apps - I need to be able to find the best thing for the problem I have. You don't even have categories. Although something from Moblie you should take is 'my apps', or in your case 'my foundry favourites' where I could actually see them. Hell, if you have the time/money make the UI for it look like a star trek console with buttons sort of like a W8/droid/ipad.
Sample use case: I want to test my DPS. Not really a daily problem, but the question extends well enough. So I want to limit myself to space. And I want NPC's who are comparable in health and damage resistance to STF borg. So I search for the 3 most relevant search stings to any DPS: DPS, target dummy and Patchwerk. The latter two produce no results at all. Fair enough, keyword search after all. But under DPS I have 13 results, so that's a good sign. Now, which one do I want? I don't really want to waste 4 hours trying out ALL of them. And I can eliminate a couple of them from the descriptions, but the foundry should probably generate some basic description of the events involved so I can see how much I'm in for.
Oh and, to reiterate the search thing. One of the DPS missions that showed up under a search for DPS was a DPS ground mission. Doing a search for DPS ground returns no result. That's search problem.
I'll address other topics separately.
I've spend most of my gaming time over the last year playing a successfull f2p tank game (don't know if i'm allowed to name names here), so let me tell you about what i learned there.
A subscription based game model is very easy to understand:
The user pays a fee to the developer, therefore the developer provides content as good and satifying as possible to the user, therefore the user pays a fee to the developer again and so on till all eternity.
A free2play game works completly different.
First the developer provides content to the player, then the player has to enjoy the content so he keeps playing. At some point then the player has to start paying the developer. Usually this is encouraged by the developer by frustrating the player in some way. Wouldn't it be nice to have this? Wouldn't it be easier not to have to do this? From now on the developer has to balance frustrating the player enough so he pays and satisfying him enough so he keeps playing.
I came to STO, because the developers of the other game fustrated me too much and i decided to look for a less frustrating way to spend my time.
I actually liked a lot of what i saw here.
What i do realize now is, that most of the stuff i like here still comes from the subscription times. Now it seems to me that the developers try to more and more push the f2p model, and that seems to come as quite a shock to the old time players.
For players f2p means that they have to be aware of the motives of the developers, and not trust them to have the players best interest in mind.
The starbase system is a great example for how f2p works, as its just a lot less frustrating if you are willing to pay money.
And it doesn't come as a big suprise to me, that this system will be extended to the doff system and to the advancement/loot system ( called Reputation and apparently a awesome new feature).
On a sidenote, i once read an interview with the lead developer of that other game, where he explicitly stated that the transformation from subscription to f2p doesn't work, because you have to train your players from the beginning (carrot and stick), and i think what happens in this thread is exactly what he ment.
Don't purchase C-points, and do not subscribe unless they do something you like.
I used to buy C-points for new outfits and such, but they stopped developing those so I don't need C-points any more.
That's where I am at with this game. Have another three that I am focused on leveling to 50 and then stop and do another. Have over 9 Level 50s now because I am trying to avoid the grind until I HAVE to do it.