Just listening to the Part 2 Priority one interview with Al Rivera - he seems like the guy calling all the shots and making all the decisions at STO - every thing is I, I, I - my team , my decision, I decide - wow I did not know he was the real man behind the throne.
This is what happens when you have a near 100 page thread of legitimate complaints that goes ignored by the devs. Sad thing I'd dstahl started the thread but can't be bothered to respond to the legitimate arguments. It's like he doesn't care about the players.
This is nothing in comparison to the player council debacle and erm....generally every 'bombshell' the devs would drop before going home for the weekend during the first 6 months of the game going live.....
Ahhhhhhh you could almost taste the discontent in the air as the devs prepared to patch the game......still at LEAST they give us patch notes and engineer reports now......back then they just dropped it on us all from the top floor of their building :P
Just listening to the Part 2 Priority one interview with Al Rivera - he seems like the guy calling all the shots and making all the decisions at STO - every thing is I, I, I - my team , my decision, I decide - wow I did not know he was the real man behind the throne.
Hes always been like that. Did the same thing last time he was on STOked as well. Some of the Devs are ok people, but the only one I really had A LOT of respect for was Heretic. He was definitely interactive with the players.
This is what happens when you have a near 100 page thread of legitimate complaints that goes ignored by the devs. Sad thing I'd dstahl started the thread but can't be bothered to respond to the legitimate arguments. It's like he doesn't care about the players.
I am sure a very matter of fact answer would be he doesn't get paid to care about people. he gets paid to deliver results to corporate. If he doesn't, they'll find someone who will. Still, I would hope that they would at least acknowledge that this was a bad move. If you at least admit that you were wrong about something, I can respect that. They responded by saying that this was always part of the game plan, yet we were completely left in the dark about it. How hard is it to toss out a forum post a few weeks in advance and say this here is what is going to happen. Not very hard at all, yet they refuse to do such things.
I know i keep bringing up Blizzard, but it's very true what I say about them. At least they were honest with us. Heck, the very few times they did TRIBBLE up we got an apology and even in one instance a few days of free game time. There is too much pride in that office in California. Humility can be a good thing. Not a single time have I heard "Ok, we screwed up. Let's get this fixed. Our bad." The times they do come back and make a change that helps the players they act like they are doing us a favor.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
Thanks for a reply, my 8cents is only this : Season 8 should be all about fixing the many systems not working in game instead of adding new untested content.
Here we go,
I'm 30's full time job have kids and limited me time.
I get maybe an hour alone to play on the PC a night.
The FM, dill 30 min mission was great I could and did do a farmer for EC. Then do a SFT, or rom mission for marks then do another foundary mission for fun, not dill not fm but fun.
Why because I felt with the dill and FM from these would help my fleet,
I enjoyed playing as although I was grinding I saw progression in my fleet. Now I've lots of dill that I can't convert but no fleet marks for my fleet.
Yes I can repeat the same fleet missions but I play for fun not to repeat the same task all day that's work!...
Simple fact I believe me and my age groups disposable income will vanish from this game because I, we like the fact that in an hour we could make a difference in the game. So I
I've paying to help that.
Now the grind is back, I don't have 2 or even 3 hours each night to play I live in the real adult world whe this game is an escape from MY daily grind. Please revert your changes and give me back me escape from the daily grind.......deaf ears I know!
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
Anet is pretty dang good with communicating with the player base for sure. They are also pretty delicate in making their changes, rarely pulling knee jerk reactions like Cryptic does oh so too often. PWE/Cryptic is more EA esque...milk the cash cow till it dies. Anet seems to really care a lot about GW2 and its players. May have to fire up GW2 and take a whirl again on my Ele, Warrior or Guardian. Isnt there a big update coming in March?
big update on the 28-29th of this month iirc, they're pretty good with updates every60 to 90 days andstarting a world storyline event soon..probably starting a storyline forJormag to the north.
(sudden closing of CoH aside) it seems that even though NCsoft iskorean, they have a very light touch on their western studios. Stark contrast to PWE and Cryptic, unfortunately. Ireally,really want to like STO, but dang Stahl and the chinese moneymen just make me want to scream.
Hes always been like that. Did the same thing last time he was on STOked as well. Some of the Devs are ok people, but the only one I really had A LOT of respect for was Heretic. He was definitely interactive with the players.
big update on the 28-29th of this month iirc, they're pretty good with updates every60 to 90 days andstarting a world storyline event soon..probably starting a storyline forJormag to the north.
(sudden closing of CoH aside) it seems that even though NCsoft iskorean, they have a very light touch on their western studios. Stark contrast to PWE and Cryptic, unfortunately. Ireally,really want to like STO, but dang Stahl and the chinese moneymen just make me want to scream.
The sad truth of it is, is that since online gaming has become a mainstream past time the quality of games has nose dived while the profit making gimicks have risen.
As a 30 something I have witnessed the meteoric rise of gaming from what was an industry of games by gamers for gamers to it's fall into just another way to squeeze money out of the wallets of consumers.
Gone are the days when game developers would try to squeeze as much game play into every kb of memory such as the almighty Elite which to this day STILL astounds me as to HOW they managed to get a 360 space combat game with THOUSANDS of solar systems..........*has a JD scrubs moment*
...........sorry where was I.....oh yes....I was lamenting the fall of gaming. Look sad truth is gaming will NEVER be for gamers again.....the fact that Dollar Bill Roper is considered a successful game producer simply reinforces my belief that games for gamers is six foot under he was all about teh monies.
Anyway......still.....at least STO is F2P now and the choice to pay Cryptic any money is ours....if they make changes i don't like....they don't get my money.....and if they make changes I like then they get my money. It's that simple.
I have to say this, because im spent, burnt out, and at a point i just wanna throw my hands in the air and say whatever. STO is constantley being nerfed, with ships, dilithium, fleet marks, you name it.
I logged in today and saw officer reports was removed yet again..REALLY? im gone a week, and this sneeks in? When officer reports was removed the first time, i understood. This time..NOT at all.
I swear, every couple weeks, its like trying to play a new game because everything changes. Players set goals for themselves in game you know. I do, and im sure others do as well. When the game is nerfed every 2 weeks, those goals become unrealistic, because now a player has to figure out a new way to reach those goals..
I also have to say, i have never been a part of a game before where something has been given, then taken away, then given again, and taken away yet again! It's rediculous!
This game needs stability! This aint BETA for cryin outloud, it's been 3 years since launch! Quit treating this game like it is beta, and everything can be completely nerfed, or turned around!
Just think how far this game might be, if all those man hours were spent on new content instead of nerfing, changing the content we already have!
Something to think about. Please just set this game on a clear path for the future, and quit changing content we already have.
Thankyou..
A concerned STO player.
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.
My opinion is that while losing the 50 Fleet Marks a day from the foundary missions is annoying, it's hardly catastrophic, and I *DO* see the issue of awarding them for what amounts to solo play.
That said while demanding new content would be a bit more than Cryptic/PWE could do "on the fly" especially with a big update hinted for May (which might just be the Playable Romulan faction people have wanted going by the teaser 'coming soon' page), it would be nifty if perhaps the fleet mark rewards for some of the existing fleet content were improved.
One CONSTRUCTIVE idea might be to take the fleet "officers of the watch" and increase their fleet mark awards. As things are I hardly seem to see anyone bothering to go and do those simple escort missions because it isn't worth the headache to change zones multiple times to go there. On the other hand if they changed those assignments to 50 marks a day once a day, it would encourage people to do them (and visit their starbase daily instead of just pumping stuff into it by remote, and simply going once in a while to visit the stores). It woudn't be as huge as being able to grind out 50 marks per pop on a spammable foundary mission, but it might be a decent good will gesture, helping with marks, without creating the level of inflation mentioned.
I'll also say that if this "Territory Control Game" I've heard about ever gets moving there is going to be some need to work on catching up the smaller fleets, if for no other reason than the fact that it seems most people play Fed, and KDF is a sideline, as a result it seems most KDF fleets fall into the "small" catagory, at least in terms of progression, but that could just be my own experiences and observations. If you want everyone to participate when that's finally done... game balance is going to be an issue.
It might also be possible to work out a system where there are fleet mark missions that award marks on a "curve". Estimating fleet mark contribution accross the board (however Cryptic charges it) and awarding bonus marks depending on how far a fleet falls behind the average. Perhaps combined with that suggestion of boosting the duty officers. It would have to be capped of course to be reasonable to prevent some fleet with 1 guy from getting 1000 marks or more a day, but it's something that might help a bit, and would again be a decent good will gesture. If it say varied from 50-200 marks a day depending on relative performance, that would be a big help, without creating the same problem of spammable foundary missions, especially at the high end.
I've been away for a few days, I don't play as often anymore after you ruined the game in Season 7.
I see however that yet again you've managed to earn the ire of a great many players through your frankly amateur communication policy that seems to assume that when one ****s their pants it's best to wait before telling the rest of the room you've done so. At least give others the courtesy to leave the room or hold their noses by pre-warning them, I mean it's basic etiquette.
Before you reel off more useless numbers, I'd just like to say I don't believe a word you say about "how great" the game is doing. Maybe if you published your figures and the sources from which they were calculated I might be willing accept them. You see statistics should never be trusted if their is no accompanying source, this is something elementary to anyone who has the capability of critical thought.
I do find it funny though how you wheel out the same statements every time you mess up like this. This is why I find it so hard to believe your statements. You see I only started playing in August of last year and since then I've lost count of how many things you've meddled in, however I've noticed a clear decline in my enjoyment of the game.
I've not been here as long as some so I won't make any phony statement about how if only you produced more content I'd be happy and that I'm a long suffering player (I feel for you guys that are, it must be soul-wrenching). The truth is your content sucks, your systems suck and at the moment the lack of creativity is making this game go stale real quick.
You see your own statements really are all I need to confirm to me just how poorly run this game is. Firstly your explanation of why you chose the design options you did for the Fleet system smacks of a group of developers who are either to lazy or too uncreative to look beyond two poor choices for fleet development and try a more out of the box approach.
Then there is all this talk about players getting more dilithium than ever before. This is another statement I don't believe at all especially when you go on to say that the average max player isn't hitting their refining cap. The reality was most of us "max" players were hitting the refining cap consistently in Season 6, now very few of us are.
Season 7 was already the end for small fleets this was just the final nail. You see Dan, you may or may not be aware of this but most of your playerbase are time-limited. We have limitations as to how much time we can play. So when you meddle with the game and introduce new ever more boring time wasting grind content and make it more difficult to amass currency we have to shift our playing habits within the time-limitations we have. Let me spell this out for you personal reputation systems and the sinks involved meant many people either left the game (as did 6 of my 8 fleet members) or made a choice to focus on one irritating grind course to take either fleet or personal rep.
If the idea was to get me to play more, it failed. You want to know why it failed? in a nutshell it's boring. In detail, your fleet missions suck and give out bugger all in rewards, not only that but the 20 man Starbase Defence is a lag-happy mess. The reason why people look for exploits is becuase the grind sucks, they want to do fun things like play with friends on cool new episode missions, oh but wait that's never going to happen, or play PVP, oh wait it's terrible in this game... maybe we could play group mission on foundry content, oh wait it's bugged to hell.
You see Dan I could sit here and write a whole book on how badly handled this game and it's playerbase is... if there is any loyalty from us players it's to the franchise not the game or Cryptic. If a proper Star Trek MMO came out tomorrow with real team based story adventure, fully realized PVP and Factions... you would be closing up shop it is as simple as that. As it stands it's the only place to get my Star Trek fix though I log in less and less as many of my old friends are gone.
However I'm not going to write too much more.
I will break it down for you though in a kind of executive summary.
Increasing the demand for currencies by in-game inputs and stagnating the supply or reducing the supply of said currencies has ruined the game
People do not want to grind your poorly designed fleet missions over and over for a pitiful amount of currency
The entire game feels like a fun fair filled with the broken dreams of players and the half finished half arsed pet projects of the developers
Legacy bugs, there are so many it's not even funny
You have no in-house QA and treat a weekend test on tribble as a benchmark for "fit to release", also totally ignoring the feedback and concerns of said tribble testers who get paid nothing to QA your game
The story content you have is about as deep as pool of urine in my pants when I forget to wear my incontinence nappy.
Apparently it's been 3 years since you failed to keep your promise on the KDF
In line with your policy on pet projects you will no doubt leave the KDF in a half finished state and move onto a Romulan mini-faction
The point of games is that they are fun Dan... fun, not an exercise that feels like work but where I actually pay to do it.
In closing I was hooked in August and I'm pretty much want-a-way by February, I'm an average player, not hardcore just average I have a life, a job, family, friends... other hobbies and wheres STO was winning out against my other hobbies in August, it is now way down on the pecking order.
Carry on TRIBBLE your players and meddling in things endlessly whilst throwing a few ships about and come May the Romulan mini-faction and "Search for Sela" episodes will be too little too late for most of us.
Regards,
Signed
Mr. STO made damn sure I'm never moving from DDO to Neverwinter.:cool:
What that dude said.
the FUN is no more in this game. It is all about holy grind.
The so called reducing currency is a lie. there are too many different currencies needed for everything.
Who wants to grind over and over the same boring events everyday for such a low ridiculous amount of mark rewarding?
Here a tip for a start : remove Fleet mark? Merge Omega and Romulan marks?
I have to say this, because im spent, burnt out, and at a point i just wanna throw my hands in the air and say whatever. STO is constantley being nerfed, with ships, dilithium, fleet marks, you name it.
I logged in today and saw officer reports was removed yet again..REALLY? im gone a week, and this sneeks in? When officer reports was removed the first time, i understood. This time..NOT at all.
I swear, every couple weeks, its like trying to play a new game because everything changes. Players set goals for themselves in game you know. I do, and im sure others do as well. When the game is nerfed every 2 weeks, those goals become unrealistic, because now a player has to figure out a new way to reach those goals..
I also have to say, i have never been a part of a game before where something has been given, then taken away, then given again, and taken away yet again! It's rediculous!
This game needs stability! This aint BETA for cryin outloud, it's been 3 years since launch! Quit treating this game like it is beta, and everything can be completely nerfed, or turned around!
Just think how far this game might be, if all those man hours were spent on new content instead of nerfing, changing the content we already have!
Something to think about. Please just set this game on a clear path for the future, and quit changing content we already have.
Thankyou..
A concerned STO player.
It's getting harder and harder to not go full on Rage mode whenever I log on to the STO forums these days.
Cryptic gives us Fleet Marks for running Foundry missions, the foundry gets more popular, Cryptic states that the new rewards have brought more players into the foundry, Cryptic then takes the rewards away
I'm just adding this in with the Bug Gate.
It would be nice if Cryptic would stop taking away things that the players like and that we've gotten use to having.
the FUN is no more in this game. It is all about holy grind.
The so called reducing currency is a lie. there are too many different currencies needed for everything.
Who wants to grind over and over the same boring events everyday for such a low ridiculous amount of mark rewarding?
Here a tip for a start : remove Fleet mark? Merge Omega and Romulan marks?
They did its called Dilithium.
Oh wait....then they went and repeated what they called a mistake.
And if only Cryptic could afford to hire you stoleviathan99. You see the person you just described in your post is what I believe is the OP's job description. Shame he isn't very good at it.
I'm sure they could afford to and I'd move for it but I can't say for sure they would after some of the back and forth here.
However, if they wanted to look at a marketing team, here's how I'd handle it, starting out...
Introduce a new position:
Junior Marketing Designer
This position spends 50% of its time as a QA tester, 25% in design meetings, and 25% coordinating with Brandon/PWE's outside Marketing and Cryptic's Chief Marketing Officer.
The Junior Marketing Designer compiles issues with community response and exploits/bugs and acts to anticipate them while analyzing the player needs that drive them.
JMDs answer to the QA lead then Dan Stahl and then the CMO in that order.
JMDs compile regular reports directly to the CMO, utilizing the information they gather, that Brandon gathers, and that they discover in the QA process. They have an observational role at high end design meetings (effectively, no vote) but Stahl may recognize them for feedback. They're expected to bring ideas from behavioral psychology and marketing into the mix.
Pluses would include degrees in psychology, marketing, organizational behavior, or communications. Strong oral and written competency required and a knowledge of the game they're assigned to is a plus, with activity in the community given strong consideration.
Try it out for 12 months. If it flops, cut the program and shift these folks to fulltime QA positions. If it succeeds, create Marketing Leads for each game and give the Marketing Lead a co-equal role in the design process with veto power, answering directly to the Executive Producer and CMO in such a way that the EP and CMO would need to agree to override a Marketing Lead's idea veto or to fire or reassign the Marketing Lead.
I'm sure they could afford to and I'd move for it but I can't say for sure they would after some of the back and forth here.
However, if they wanted to look at a marketing team, here's how I'd handle it, starting out...
Introduce a new position:
Junior Marketing Designer
This position spends 50% of its time as a QA tester, 25% in design meetings, and 25% coordinating with Brandon/PWE's outside Marketing and Cryptic's Chief Marketing Officer.
The Junior Marketing Designer compiles issues with community response and exploits/bugs and acts to anticipate them while analyzing the player needs that drive them.
JMDs answer to the QA lead then Dan Stahl and then the CMO in that order.
JMDs compile regular reports directly to the CMO, utilizing the information they gather, that Brandon gathers, and that they discover in the QA process. They have an observational role at high end design meetings (effectively, no vote) but Stahl may recognize them for feedback. They're expected to bring ideas from behavioral psychology and marketing into the mix.
Pluses would include degrees in psychology, marketing, organizational behavior, or communications. Strong oral and written competency required and a knowledge of the game they're assigned to is a plus, with activity in the community given strong consideration.
Try it out for 12 months. If it flops, cut the program and shift these folks to fulltime QA positions. If it succeeds, create Marketing Leads for each game and give the Marketing Lead a co-equal role in the design process with veto power, answering directly to the Executive Producer and CMO in such a way that the EP and CMO would need to agree to override a Marketing Lead's idea veto or to fire or reassign the Marketing Lead.
That would mean letting the customer desires influence the decisions of the all mighty dev team. Blaspheme!
On that note I always found it interesting that Riot Games had such a large number of employees with psychology degrees. Wonder if that fact and their number one status are related in anyway.
Nah.
Although the answer to the question of the next exploit. I just hope they don't make a Military Offensive and try to Reclaim the Artifact rewards to a lower level preventing my alts from generating a large quantity of Fleet Marks for little time investment. Although that does take a bit more to get going than the previous foundry wrapper.
I also hope that with the precedent of Fleets selling store access for energy credits that doesn't expand to any form of RMT. Although it most likely will sadly.
Completely broken - noone in fleet is interested of running 20x day the boring low payout fleet missions - 15-20 fm for over 30 minutes of pve, no dilithium, no gearm no reputation marks.
As if the godly dilithium requirement havent forced the fleet to a crawl, now all FM contributions have stopped also. Even dilithium payins, since half the people cant even hit the cap anymroe with their limited playtime. The daililes and such are extremely timeconsuming, flyign acrossthe galaxyy, sitting in loading screens and dialogs and flying after groups of enemies that are 50 lightyears apart.
ATLEAST make the fleet PVE worth the time, 50 fleet marks with some extra dilithium.
All this talk about " you can get sooo much dilithium" yet you forget the 8k/day refine limit.
Iv spent today 8 hours to reach 8k dil limit, get enough omega marks to continue projects, farm FM for fleet - yet i have had no time to farm EC or romulan marks or gear. Even the last 10 borg STF elites gave max 1 processor.
This is too much grind and when weekend is over, i have to start choosing - ether dilithium, reputation, marks or gear/money.
Or ill just find another game and avoid all this stress.
Option A was that Fleet size would determine the maximum tier for Fleet Holdings. The larger the Fleet, the higher the Fleet Holding Tiers could achieve. This is how many other MMOs gate Guild progression, but we felt that it is artificially limiting to the many active small Fleets in STO.
Option B was to allow Fleets of any size to achieve all tiers of Fleet Holdings. The drawback is that because Fleet sizes range so much, we had to find a balance so that Large Fleets had some challenge, while still allowing small Fleets to achieve all tiers, albeit at a much slower pace. If you are in a Fleet less than 25 players, then it is expected to be more challenging than the norm.
Option C: Scale fleet project costs with fleet sizes. Large fleets have proportionally large requirements, small fleets have proportionally small requirements. Do not touch project rewards... so projects will still reward the same XP no matter what fleet sieze fleet you are in. Do not mess with project time limits. Projects will still take 20 hours-7 days to complete. Minimum fleet size set at 5 accounts. Can not scale below that. Based on accounts within the fleet, not characters.
I came up with that in 2 minutes... so you guys didnt think that hard now did you?
Completely broken - noone in fleet is interested of running 20x day the boring low payout fleet missions - 15-20 fm for over 30 minutes of pve, no dilithium, no gearm no reputation marks.
As if the godly dilithium requirement havent forced the fleet to a crawl, now all FM contributions have stopped also. Even dilithium payins, since half the people cant even hit the cap anymroe with their limited playtime. The daililes and such are extremely timeconsuming, flyign acrossthe galaxyy, sitting in loading screens and dialogs and flying after groups of enemies that are 50 lightyears apart.
ATLEAST make the fleet PVE worth the time, 50 fleet marks with some extra dilithium.
All this talk about " you can get sooo much dilithium" yet you forget the 8k/day refine limit.
Iv spent today 8 hours to reach 8k dil limit, get enough omega marks to continue projects, farm FM for fleet - yet i have had no time to farm EC or romulan marks or gear. Even the last 10 borg STF elites gave max 1 processor.
This is too much grind and when weekend is over, i have to start choosing - ether dilithium, reputation, marks or gear/money.
Or ill just find another game and avoid all this stress.
And see this is part of the problem. I can grind out 6k-8k dil in an hour easily because I know what/how to do it. And it has nothing to do with me being a good player just that I know where to go and use the right ships to bash threw the content.
Klingon 1v1 Foundry: 2 runs, 10 minutes, 1k+
Gorn Minefield if Daily is up: 10-15 min, 1.5k & 50 marks
Contraband Turn + Misc Doffing: 5 min, 0-3k
ISE or CSE: 15 min, 2k
Breen Dailies twice: 15 min per run, 5k total
Those are just a few and it depends on what is available. You will only rarely see me run stuff with terribad rewards mainly Azure Nebula because I love it and Nukara cause I enjoy killing spiders. I also only use Tac heavy DHC wielding warships.
Option C: Scale fleet project costs with fleet sizes. Large fleets have proportionally large requirements, small fleets have proportionally small requirements. Do not touch project rewards... so projects will still reward the same XP no matter what fleet sieze fleet you are in. Do not mess with project time limits. Projects will still take 20 hours-7 days to complete. Minimum fleet size set at 5 accounts. Can not scale below that. Based on accounts within the fleet, not characters.
I came up with that in 2 minutes... so you guys didnt think that hard now did you?
And it's an option that been discussed before ad naseum, and is so ridiculously easy to exploit:
1) Create Fleet
2) Find minimum amount of members needed to get the lowest cost on Fleet Projects.
3) Round Robin players in and out of the Fleet (keeping it at the required Fleet member number) and get Fleet to T5/Embassy to T3.
4) Once complete invite everyone back
For a system to work, it can't be so easily exploitable.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Option C: Scale fleet project costs with fleet sizes. Large fleets have proportionally large requirements, small fleets have proportionally small requirements. Do not touch project rewards... so projects will still reward the same XP no matter what fleet sieze fleet you are in. Do not mess with project time limits. Projects will still take 20 hours-7 days to complete. Minimum fleet size set at 5 accounts. Can not scale below that. Based on accounts within the fleet, not characters.
I came up with that in 2 minutes... so you guys didnt think that hard now did you?
That only encourages to create a million of mini fleets, which is stupid.
So I spent the majority of my day reading this entire thread, only lightly scanning a handful of posts. General consensus of issues people have that I have gleaned are as follows:
1) Lack of communication on Cryptic/PWE.
2) Stale content.
3) Poor rewards for said content.
4) Loopholes will always be 'exploited'
When people are forced to do stale/repetitive missions they will be more likely to find and use said 'exploits', which is why they become exploits. Like stoleviathan99 stated there is a reason these people are using the exploitative nature of your game mechanics. Pull your head out of the sand/metrics and figure the reasons out. The current state of star bases favor the mega fleets and are being exploited.
Exploit 1)
Step 1: Join small fleet
Step 2: Dump resources in and get tons of easy fleet credits
Step 3: Leave the fleet when the desired amount of credits has been attained
Step 4: Pay to join Mega Fleet X
Step 5: Buy what you want
Step 6: Leave and rejoin small fleet
Exploit 2)
Step 1: Create Mega Fleet X
Step 2: Spam recruitment and fleet invites
Step 3: Attain Tier 5
Step 4: Kick everyone out claiming either a) They aren't contributing enough or b) Make up some other baseless excuse if not too lazy.
Both of these exploits ARE being used. I realized after reading this thread that I really shouldn't care if my SB ever progresses. I will always be able to save up enough EC to buy my way into a T5 fleet and use their facilities so-to-speak. The ONLY thing you are doing with this nerf is creating more incentive to use these exploits. SB have zero function other than these stores and with these exploits they have even less purpose. Anyway </soapbox>
Good luck and fly safe.
(I just remembered I still have a PLEX sitting in my bank on EvE! Guess what I'm playing for the next month?)
I'm sure they could afford to and I'd move for it but I can't say for sure they would after some of the back and forth here.
However, if they wanted to look at a marketing team, here's how I'd handle it, starting out...
Introduce a new position:
Junior Marketing Designer
This position spends 50% of its time as a QA tester, 25% in design meetings, and 25% coordinating with Brandon/PWE's outside Marketing and Cryptic's Chief Marketing Officer.
The Junior Marketing Designer compiles issues with community response and exploits/bugs and acts to anticipate them while analyzing the player needs that drive them.
JMDs answer to the QA lead then Dan Stahl and then the CMO in that order.
JMDs compile regular reports directly to the CMO, utilizing the information they gather, that Brandon gathers, and that they discover in the QA process. They have an observational role at high end design meetings (effectively, no vote) but Stahl may recognize them for feedback. They're expected to bring ideas from behavioral psychology and marketing into the mix.
Pluses would include degrees in psychology, marketing, organizational behavior, or communications. Strong oral and written competency required and a knowledge of the game they're assigned to is a plus, with activity in the community given strong consideration.
Try it out for 12 months. If it flops, cut the program and shift these folks to fulltime QA positions. If it succeeds, create Marketing Leads for each game and give the Marketing Lead a co-equal role in the design process with veto power, answering directly to the Executive Producer and CMO in such a way that the EP and CMO would need to agree to override a Marketing Lead's idea veto or to fire or reassign the Marketing Lead.
And it's an option that been discussed before ad naseum, and is so ridiculously easy to exploit:
1) Create Fleet
2) Find minimum amount of members needed to get the lowest cost on Fleet Projects.
3) Round Robin players in and out of the Fleet (keeping it at the required Fleet member number) and get Fleet to T5/Embassy to T3.
4) Once complete invite everyone back
For a system to work, it can't be so easily exploitable.
And? Its still gonna take months to get there. Make it so that as the fleet gains new accounts the costs scale up to prevent the round robin.
IE: Fleet is formed with 5 accounts. New account joins after one has left. Fleet history is at 6 accounts. Costs go up. That account leaves, and a new one joins. Fleet now has 7 accounts. Costs go up. etc.
And? Its still gonna take months to get there. Make it so that as the fleet gains new accounts the costs scale up to prevent the round robin.
IE: Fleet is formed with 5 accounts. New account joins after one has left. Fleet history is at 6 accounts. Costs go up. That account leaves, and a new one joins. Fleet now has 7 accounts. Costs go up. etc.
Again, the trick is to just maintain the minimum number of members for the maximum gain. If they try to tweak it like you suggest; then a Fleet would be penalized for each member that left (and Guild movement is common and constant in any MMO.) And if they counted a person who left as a member, you'd have the same issue many are complaining about now - a small Fleet with high Project costs.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Comments
This is nothing in comparison to the player council debacle and erm....generally every 'bombshell' the devs would drop before going home for the weekend during the first 6 months of the game going live.....
Ahhhhhhh you could almost taste the discontent in the air as the devs prepared to patch the game......still at LEAST they give us patch notes and engineer reports now......back then they just dropped it on us all from the top floor of their building :P
Hes always been like that. Did the same thing last time he was on STOked as well. Some of the Devs are ok people, but the only one I really had A LOT of respect for was Heretic. He was definitely interactive with the players.
I am sure a very matter of fact answer would be he doesn't get paid to care about people. he gets paid to deliver results to corporate. If he doesn't, they'll find someone who will. Still, I would hope that they would at least acknowledge that this was a bad move. If you at least admit that you were wrong about something, I can respect that. They responded by saying that this was always part of the game plan, yet we were completely left in the dark about it. How hard is it to toss out a forum post a few weeks in advance and say this here is what is going to happen. Not very hard at all, yet they refuse to do such things.
I know i keep bringing up Blizzard, but it's very true what I say about them. At least they were honest with us. Heck, the very few times they did TRIBBLE up we got an apology and even in one instance a few days of free game time. There is too much pride in that office in California. Humility can be a good thing. Not a single time have I heard "Ok, we screwed up. Let's get this fixed. Our bad." The times they do come back and make a change that helps the players they act like they are doing us a favor.
I'm 30's full time job have kids and limited me time.
I get maybe an hour alone to play on the PC a night.
The FM, dill 30 min mission was great I could and did do a farmer for EC. Then do a SFT, or rom mission for marks then do another foundary mission for fun, not dill not fm but fun.
Why because I felt with the dill and FM from these would help my fleet,
I enjoyed playing as although I was grinding I saw progression in my fleet. Now I've lots of dill that I can't convert but no fleet marks for my fleet.
Yes I can repeat the same fleet missions but I play for fun not to repeat the same task all day that's work!...
Simple fact I believe me and my age groups disposable income will vanish from this game because I, we like the fact that in an hour we could make a difference in the game. So I
I've paying to help that.
Now the grind is back, I don't have 2 or even 3 hours each night to play I live in the real adult world whe this game is an escape from MY daily grind. Please revert your changes and give me back me escape from the daily grind.......deaf ears I know!
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
big update on the 28-29th of this month iirc, they're pretty good with updates every60 to 90 days andstarting a world storyline event soon..probably starting a storyline forJormag to the north.
(sudden closing of CoH aside) it seems that even though NCsoft iskorean, they have a very light touch on their western studios. Stark contrast to PWE and Cryptic, unfortunately. Ireally,really want to like STO, but dang Stahl and the chinese moneymen just make me want to scream.
Yep, Heretic was my favorite developer.
The sad truth of it is, is that since online gaming has become a mainstream past time the quality of games has nose dived while the profit making gimicks have risen.
As a 30 something I have witnessed the meteoric rise of gaming from what was an industry of games by gamers for gamers to it's fall into just another way to squeeze money out of the wallets of consumers.
Gone are the days when game developers would try to squeeze as much game play into every kb of memory such as the almighty Elite which to this day STILL astounds me as to HOW they managed to get a 360 space combat game with THOUSANDS of solar systems..........*has a JD scrubs moment*
...........sorry where was I.....oh yes....I was lamenting the fall of gaming. Look sad truth is gaming will NEVER be for gamers again.....the fact that Dollar Bill Roper is considered a successful game producer simply reinforces my belief that games for gamers is six foot under he was all about teh monies.
Anyway......still.....at least STO is F2P now and the choice to pay Cryptic any money is ours....if they make changes i don't like....they don't get my money.....and if they make changes I like then they get my money. It's that simple.
I logged in today and saw officer reports was removed yet again..REALLY? im gone a week, and this sneeks in? When officer reports was removed the first time, i understood. This time..NOT at all.
I swear, every couple weeks, its like trying to play a new game because everything changes. Players set goals for themselves in game you know. I do, and im sure others do as well. When the game is nerfed every 2 weeks, those goals become unrealistic, because now a player has to figure out a new way to reach those goals..
I also have to say, i have never been a part of a game before where something has been given, then taken away, then given again, and taken away yet again! It's rediculous!
This game needs stability! This aint BETA for cryin outloud, it's been 3 years since launch! Quit treating this game like it is beta, and everything can be completely nerfed, or turned around!
Just think how far this game might be, if all those man hours were spent on new content instead of nerfing, changing the content we already have!
Something to think about. Please just set this game on a clear path for the future, and quit changing content we already have.
Thankyou..
A concerned STO player.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
That said while demanding new content would be a bit more than Cryptic/PWE could do "on the fly" especially with a big update hinted for May (which might just be the Playable Romulan faction people have wanted going by the teaser 'coming soon' page), it would be nifty if perhaps the fleet mark rewards for some of the existing fleet content were improved.
One CONSTRUCTIVE idea might be to take the fleet "officers of the watch" and increase their fleet mark awards. As things are I hardly seem to see anyone bothering to go and do those simple escort missions because it isn't worth the headache to change zones multiple times to go there. On the other hand if they changed those assignments to 50 marks a day once a day, it would encourage people to do them (and visit their starbase daily instead of just pumping stuff into it by remote, and simply going once in a while to visit the stores). It woudn't be as huge as being able to grind out 50 marks per pop on a spammable foundary mission, but it might be a decent good will gesture, helping with marks, without creating the level of inflation mentioned.
I'll also say that if this "Territory Control Game" I've heard about ever gets moving there is going to be some need to work on catching up the smaller fleets, if for no other reason than the fact that it seems most people play Fed, and KDF is a sideline, as a result it seems most KDF fleets fall into the "small" catagory, at least in terms of progression, but that could just be my own experiences and observations. If you want everyone to participate when that's finally done... game balance is going to be an issue.
It might also be possible to work out a system where there are fleet mark missions that award marks on a "curve". Estimating fleet mark contribution accross the board (however Cryptic charges it) and awarding bonus marks depending on how far a fleet falls behind the average. Perhaps combined with that suggestion of boosting the duty officers. It would have to be capped of course to be reasonable to prevent some fleet with 1 guy from getting 1000 marks or more a day, but it's something that might help a bit, and would again be a decent good will gesture. If it say varied from 50-200 marks a day depending on relative performance, that would be a big help, without creating the same problem of spammable foundary missions, especially at the high end.
What that dude said.
the FUN is no more in this game. It is all about holy grind.
The so called reducing currency is a lie. there are too many different currencies needed for everything.
Who wants to grind over and over the same boring events everyday for such a low ridiculous amount of mark rewarding?
Here a tip for a start : remove Fleet mark? Merge Omega and Romulan marks?
It's getting harder and harder to not go full on Rage mode whenever I log on to the STO forums these days.
Cryptic gives us Fleet Marks for running Foundry missions, the foundry gets more popular, Cryptic states that the new rewards have brought more players into the foundry, Cryptic then takes the rewards away
I'm just adding this in with the Bug Gate.
It would be nice if Cryptic would stop taking away things that the players like and that we've gotten use to having.
50 Fleet Marks a day? U are missing something.
They did its called Dilithium.
Oh wait....then they went and repeated what they called a mistake.
I'm sure they could afford to and I'd move for it but I can't say for sure they would after some of the back and forth here.
However, if they wanted to look at a marketing team, here's how I'd handle it, starting out...
Introduce a new position:
Junior Marketing Designer
This position spends 50% of its time as a QA tester, 25% in design meetings, and 25% coordinating with Brandon/PWE's outside Marketing and Cryptic's Chief Marketing Officer.
The Junior Marketing Designer compiles issues with community response and exploits/bugs and acts to anticipate them while analyzing the player needs that drive them.
JMDs answer to the QA lead then Dan Stahl and then the CMO in that order.
JMDs compile regular reports directly to the CMO, utilizing the information they gather, that Brandon gathers, and that they discover in the QA process. They have an observational role at high end design meetings (effectively, no vote) but Stahl may recognize them for feedback. They're expected to bring ideas from behavioral psychology and marketing into the mix.
Pluses would include degrees in psychology, marketing, organizational behavior, or communications. Strong oral and written competency required and a knowledge of the game they're assigned to is a plus, with activity in the community given strong consideration.
Try it out for 12 months. If it flops, cut the program and shift these folks to fulltime QA positions. If it succeeds, create Marketing Leads for each game and give the Marketing Lead a co-equal role in the design process with veto power, answering directly to the Executive Producer and CMO in such a way that the EP and CMO would need to agree to override a Marketing Lead's idea veto or to fire or reassign the Marketing Lead.
That would mean letting the customer desires influence the decisions of the all mighty dev team. Blaspheme!
On that note I always found it interesting that Riot Games had such a large number of employees with psychology degrees. Wonder if that fact and their number one status are related in anyway.
Nah.
Although the answer to the question of the next exploit. I just hope they don't make a Military Offensive and try to Reclaim the Artifact rewards to a lower level preventing my alts from generating a large quantity of Fleet Marks for little time investment. Although that does take a bit more to get going than the previous foundry wrapper.
I also hope that with the precedent of Fleets selling store access for energy credits that doesn't expand to any form of RMT. Although it most likely will sadly.
As if the godly dilithium requirement havent forced the fleet to a crawl, now all FM contributions have stopped also. Even dilithium payins, since half the people cant even hit the cap anymroe with their limited playtime. The daililes and such are extremely timeconsuming, flyign acrossthe galaxyy, sitting in loading screens and dialogs and flying after groups of enemies that are 50 lightyears apart.
ATLEAST make the fleet PVE worth the time, 50 fleet marks with some extra dilithium.
All this talk about " you can get sooo much dilithium" yet you forget the 8k/day refine limit.
Iv spent today 8 hours to reach 8k dil limit, get enough omega marks to continue projects, farm FM for fleet - yet i have had no time to farm EC or romulan marks or gear. Even the last 10 borg STF elites gave max 1 processor.
This is too much grind and when weekend is over, i have to start choosing - ether dilithium, reputation, marks or gear/money.
Or ill just find another game and avoid all this stress.
Option C: Scale fleet project costs with fleet sizes. Large fleets have proportionally large requirements, small fleets have proportionally small requirements. Do not touch project rewards... so projects will still reward the same XP no matter what fleet sieze fleet you are in. Do not mess with project time limits. Projects will still take 20 hours-7 days to complete. Minimum fleet size set at 5 accounts. Can not scale below that. Based on accounts within the fleet, not characters.
I came up with that in 2 minutes... so you guys didnt think that hard now did you?
And see this is part of the problem. I can grind out 6k-8k dil in an hour easily because I know what/how to do it. And it has nothing to do with me being a good player just that I know where to go and use the right ships to bash threw the content.
Klingon 1v1 Foundry: 2 runs, 10 minutes, 1k+
Gorn Minefield if Daily is up: 10-15 min, 1.5k & 50 marks
Contraband Turn + Misc Doffing: 5 min, 0-3k
ISE or CSE: 15 min, 2k
Breen Dailies twice: 15 min per run, 5k total
Those are just a few and it depends on what is available. You will only rarely see me run stuff with terribad rewards mainly Azure Nebula because I love it and Nukara cause I enjoy killing spiders. I also only use Tac heavy DHC wielding warships.
And it's an option that been discussed before ad naseum, and is so ridiculously easy to exploit:
1) Create Fleet
2) Find minimum amount of members needed to get the lowest cost on Fleet Projects.
3) Round Robin players in and out of the Fleet (keeping it at the required Fleet member number) and get Fleet to T5/Embassy to T3.
4) Once complete invite everyone back
For a system to work, it can't be so easily exploitable.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
That only encourages to create a million of mini fleets, which is stupid.
1) Lack of communication on Cryptic/PWE.
2) Stale content.
3) Poor rewards for said content.
4) Loopholes will always be 'exploited'
When people are forced to do stale/repetitive missions they will be more likely to find and use said 'exploits', which is why they become exploits. Like stoleviathan99 stated there is a reason these people are using the exploitative nature of your game mechanics. Pull your head out of the sand/metrics and figure the reasons out. The current state of star bases favor the mega fleets and are being exploited.
Exploit 1)
Step 1: Join small fleet
Step 2: Dump resources in and get tons of easy fleet credits
Step 3: Leave the fleet when the desired amount of credits has been attained
Step 4: Pay to join Mega Fleet X
Step 5: Buy what you want
Step 6: Leave and rejoin small fleet
Exploit 2)
Step 1: Create Mega Fleet X
Step 2: Spam recruitment and fleet invites
Step 3: Attain Tier 5
Step 4: Kick everyone out claiming either a) They aren't contributing enough or b) Make up some other baseless excuse if not too lazy.
Both of these exploits ARE being used. I realized after reading this thread that I really shouldn't care if my SB ever progresses. I will always be able to save up enough EC to buy my way into a T5 fleet and use their facilities so-to-speak. The ONLY thing you are doing with this nerf is creating more incentive to use these exploits. SB have zero function other than these stores and with these exploits they have even less purpose. Anyway </soapbox>
Good luck and fly safe.
(I just remembered I still have a PLEX sitting in my bank on EvE! Guess what I'm playing for the next month?)
Hey, I would love that job!
And? Its still gonna take months to get there. Make it so that as the fleet gains new accounts the costs scale up to prevent the round robin.
IE: Fleet is formed with 5 accounts. New account joins after one has left. Fleet history is at 6 accounts. Costs go up. That account leaves, and a new one joins. Fleet now has 7 accounts. Costs go up. etc.
Again, the trick is to just maintain the minimum number of members for the maximum gain. If they try to tweak it like you suggest; then a Fleet would be penalized for each member that left (and Guild movement is common and constant in any MMO.) And if they counted a person who left as a member, you'd have the same issue many are complaining about now - a small Fleet with high Project costs.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
- Fleet Mark costs scale based on fleet size.
- No other costs scale.
End result?
- Increased desire for dilithium
- Increased desire for white doffs
- Increased desire for ECs
Also known as, more lockbox sales and more Cstore sales to those trading dil.