I liked the beginning the way it used to be. Most MMO's take much longer to get to end game. I liked it better when it took a few months to level up a character to 50 and you had to play ALL the content to progress your character. I remember having to do patrols and story and some deep space encounters to make sure my character was leveled properly as I trekked through the various sector blocks. All we do now is play through to about romulan space and now your level 50 with no need to play any further except to grind your life away on a handful of missions to further your character through obtaining commodities that the rest of storyline doesn't provide. There has to be some middle ground to put all the old content to better use.
Truth be told, IMHO putting in that 700 Day Veteran skill boost was a mistake. Unless of course the intent was to get as many toons to level 50 as possible so they can by dilithium to hurry there grinding.
At least make that skill boost optional.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
It's not the "grinding on the farm" vision that is wrong...
It's how we, the players, are positoning ourselves at our PCs that's causing the real problem.
We just need to morph into the correct type of players needed...
pm me for the link so I don't get moderated, but you will laugh your rear end off!
P.S. This is hosted on my web server in my domain so the content is approved.
Note this is meant to be humor and humor only to lighten this thread up at little since it has been a very long and sometimes fustrating period now.
Sirsitsalot has made a really good point about this. Why do MMOs always have to be a grindfest? I want to just fly around with my buddies and play a Star Trek Experience. If Cryptic maybe added FM and Dil rewards to other missions like Featured Episodes, then people wouldnt be so bored and mad at grinding.
And dont stop with just FMs, maybe add more Borg and Romulus Missions as well. And dont make them long and impossible, but make them interesting and fun to replay over and over.
The possibilities are endless, but really the only thing holding Cryptic back is a budget set by PWE sadly.
Sirsitsalot has made a really good point about this. Why do MMOs always have to be a grindfest? I want to just fly around with my buddies and play a Star Trek Experience. If Cryptic maybe added FM and Dil rewards to other missions like Featured Episodes, then people wouldnt be so bored and mad at grinding.
And dont stop with just FMs, maybe add more Borg and Romulus Missions as well. And dont make them long and impossible, but make them interesting and fun to replay over and over.
The possibilities are endless, but really the only thing holding Cryptic back is a budget set by PWE sadly.
::: nods ... What people like about FMs with the Foundry mission is that its an added reward away from the grind that is given for playing FRESH and UNIQUE content within this game. Plus we as players have choices in which type of Foundry missions we wish to run.
As well as many foundry missions work well for team play as well as solo.
is this a fracking Joke i just did a foundry mission which used to give 940 dilithium and 50 fleet marks now it is only giving 652 dilithium. you people need to get your heads on straight how is this better?? answer this is getting ridiculas
is this a fracking Joke i just did a foundry mission which used to give 940 dilithium and 50 fleet marks now it is only giving 652 dilithium. you people need to get your heads on straight how is this better?? answer this is getting ridiculas
who is gong to join me in going to planetside 2?
It is a joke because they think it is better thats the problem!
Well bravo. I'm in an admittedly small fleet, but we'd managed to get slowly through to T3, and were actually starting to speed up after the infusion of some new members. One was even willing to go so far as to buy Zen just to boost our dilithium stream, but with this asinine decision without so much as any sort of plan for something to take the place of IOR, our progression has once again slowed to a crawl. Guess what? No reason to buy Zen/dilithium now if our FM acquisition can't even keep up. Shot, meet foot?
[...]
This debate itself has demonstrated that even among those of us who are upset with the latest patch there are many who has embraced the grindfest philosophy. Which ones? Anyone who asks "Why did you take FMs out of the Foundry?" rather than asking "Why do we have to grind for FMs anyway?" The former are enslaved to the notion that they must grind and are only really concerned about how to best go about doing it now that the IORs are gone and theire previous "best source of FMs" no longer offers it. The latter are those who have spoken of the game's potential that is not even being reached for.
I put myself in the middle of these. I understand the grinders' perspective, and I also understand the anti-grinders perspective. I am in line with the latter but recognize that the themepark-only nature of the mainline MMO industry has trained the majority of MMO players to be good little grinders. Many don't even realize that they have been conditioned. They skip past dialogue in missions, cut to the action, collect a reward and move on to the next. The "go here, kill this, collect treasuer, rinse and repeat" model has most of them going, "just bottom line it for me and let me get at it."
[...]
etc see page 155 for full post.
As I agree to what you mostly said into the full post; and as what you are saying anyway is something we ALL know bout, I think you are missing the point that is not about the FM anymore.
We , as ST fans, are bored with the never stopping grind that is.
FM gate is just about the one last thing that made people rage, the cherry on the top.
Now you have told us bout Cryptic and PWE economic plans . Well we know about this and franklyI don't care for a bit what their economic plans are;
Let's be honest, this is about far more then just the IOR. Tensions have been high since about halfway S6 when it became clear that bugs weren't getting fixed, requirements wouldn't be lowered etc. What we see here is what happens when you have a community that's on edge. The smallest additional affront just make thing's boil over. Or maybe a flash over would be a better analogy. This is just like when they took out the STF rewards. By this change they didn't just take away an easy source of fleetmarks, they effectively force us to get them elsewhere. In other words, we are being forced to do things we don't want to do and they take longer then the IOR did too. Our fun just got diminished, and because it takes longer we have less time for things we *do* enjoy. Look at the STF rewards, things stayed unruly untill the item drops where restored. Simply because getting an item, or having the chance to get one, is fun . I never understood why the reputation system had to replace the old system. Those unlucky few who didn't get their tech drops would have had the guarantee of being able to get them, and the rest of us could enjoy looking forward to the lootbag at the end. The dev's keep thinking all we care about is dilithium and fleetmarks, etc. but we don't. If they ever introduce new drop-only gear that can be collected by doing missions with an STF structure, I would play them all day long regardless of them rewarding marks of any kind or dilithium. There no longer are real achievements in this game, it's all about endurance and perseverence now. It isn't rewarding to play this game anymore. All the stuff is either buyable for zen/dilithium, or EC(which effectively is also buyable by zen or dilithium). Sure, you need some marks, running some elites will get you those quick enough. Or I guess grinding down eppohs if you need RM's.
This game as it stands now, has become a grindfest. Now, that in itself isn't that big of a deal. The problem is that a lot of us are not mmo fans or whatever, we are here because of Star Trek. That means that this game has incredible potential, with loyal fans. However, it also means they can't treat us like mmo fans who like to grind all day. Most of us love the IP to much to just walk away, so we will put up with it for a while....But sooner or later, we will reach a breaking point, where even the most loyal Star Trek fan refuses to put up with this any longer. That would mean the end of this game, because aside from the IP this game has nothing to offer. There are several mmo's out there, that from a gameplay perspective are far better developed, there are several that are more fun, etc.
Basicly they have the goose laying golden egg's here, only they keep pushing the goose for more egg's. Hell, they are close to taking a chokehold on the goose and shake it for more golden egg's. At the short term that might work, and the goose will lay some additional golden egg's, but then it will die. Keeping the goose happy and entertained might produce a few daily egg's less, but the goose will lay those egg's for years and years to come.
Stop trying to force the community to spend money, if you present us with enjoyable content, gameplay, bugfixes, fun items, etc. we will gladly give it to you!!!
Here's another idea to bring back fun into the game again and to generate profit for you PWE/Cryptic...
Let us craft the all of the consoles and gear offered in the game, but with this twist...
We can craft to Blue quality Mk XI level but give us a way to upgrade them to the best in the game by the following methods;
A) Upgrade drops for doing the missions (foundry spotlights or episodes, etc. - make them very rare drops like the STF's and very random)
Lobi store upgrades for the existing consoles/gear you already have (we choose what to apply the upgrade to.
C) Zen store based upgrades for all sorts of items (extra items that make your ship into a higher grade/class of ship, upgrade ships into the Fleet versions - at a much higher price than getting them from Fleet stores, console/gear upgrades - we choose what to apply the upgrade to, etc.)
D) Change the artifact modules to upgrade modules like the above (Unpowered would have to be DOFM'd into powered first, then maybe another set of DOFM's to the upgrade versions)
E) Make these part of the Lockbox items and have them drop at the special ship rate.
This is just one way to generate interest in a forgotten aspect of the game and generate more profit for you while making the game more fun again.
PWE/Cryptic Stop the grinding, bring back the fun!
"dStahl created the thread, so if he has more updates, he'll post. Until then, we're reading it and considering feedback"
So, is it fair to assume from dStahl's deafening silence in response to one of the quickest growing, biggest threads ever, is that he has nothing to say?
I see two things. One is that Dan has a family and this is probably a three day weekend. The other is that for him to reply, he has to know WHAT his response is (and probably needs to have a meeting with leads before he can say for sure what the response will be).
I mean, he could come on here and say, "Free 10,000 ZEN for everyone who posted in this thread and a trip to the Bahamas." But that doesn't address the problem and he wouldn't have the authority to do that on his own if it did.
It's going to be Tuesday before there's a reply, most likely.
I have a nagging feeling sometimes, however, that community outrage gets used as a blunt weapon to solve internal disputes. Both in terms of patch deployments and dev posts.
Internally, there's probably a fair amount of getting along. They joke. They have cake and wear funny hats when big patches deploy. And while things get passionate, there are direct confrontations that don't happen.
But my perception of Cryptic over the last seven years, right or wrong, is that when devs lose arguments with eachother, the guy who lost either leaks upcoming plans to the forums or posts a bunch of "working as intended" threads to provoke us into forming an angry mob on his side.
Take a look at Dan's posts on fleet progress versus Al's interview. People who listened to Al's interview walked away thinking Al had points. People who read Dan's comments got outraged. Many people have noticed that they used different terminology and even benchmarks for what counted as average.
My feeling is that this is one of Al's design babies. Dan disagrees and can't override Al on it without reason so Dan hits the forums with a bunch of "my hands are tied"/"this is working as intended"/"small fleets aren't supposed to progress" posts to generate two hundred pages of angry forum posts to use as ammunition for a compromise when the devs have a design meeting on Tuesday.
That's my cynical take anyway.
I think devs use and build our outrage to settle disagreements with other devs without having to be directly confrontational with eachother.
So, the removal a large source or Fleet Marks without the promise of possibly thinking about putting in more sources in the future makes sense?
Well, um... you haven't been paying much attention, have you?
Stahl did say he has plans to add ways to get Marks... in a few months.
The problem isn't necessarily that marks were removed from the Foundry daily. While that certainly sucks, the issue is he didn't have a replacement ready to roll out in the near future after that removal, essentially leaving us high and dry until May-ish.
I see two things. One is that Dan has a family and this is probably a three day weekend. The other is that for him to reply, he has to know WHAT his response is (and probably needs to have a meeting with leads before he can say for sure what the response will be).
I mean, he could come on here and say, "Free 10,000 ZEN for everyone who posted in this thread and a trip to the Bahamas." But that doesn't address the problem and he wouldn't have the authority to do that on his own if it did.
It's going to be Tuesday before there's a reply, most likely.
I have a nagging feeling sometimes, however, that community outrage gets used as a blunt weapon to solve internal disputes. Both in terms of patch deployments and dev posts.
Internally, there's probably a fair amount of getting along. They joke. They have cake and wear funny hats when big patches deploy. And while things get passionate, there are direct confrontations that don't happen.
But my perception of Cryptic over the last seven years, right or wrong, is that when devs lose arguments with eachother, the guy who lost either leaks upcoming plans to the forums or posts a bunch of "working as intended" threads to provoke us into forming an angry mob on his side.
Take a look at Dan's posts on fleet progress versus Al's interview. People who listened to Al's interview walked away thinking Al had points. People who read Dan's comments got outraged. Many people have noticed that they used different terminology and even benchmarks for what counted as average.
My feeling is that this is one of Al's design babies. Dan disagrees and can't override Al on it without reason so Dan hits the forums with a bunch of "my hands are tied"/"this is working as intended"/"small fleets aren't supposed to progress" posts to generate two hundred pages of angry forum posts to use as ammunition for a compromise when the devs have a design meeting on Tuesday.
That's my cynical take anyway.
I think devs use and build our outrage to settle disagreements with other devs without having to be directly confrontational with eachother.
Personally the only person that I would like to see take on a hour long comment/response interaction is the man who makes the decisions most of the time : Al Rivera!
Now that would be a very cool and interesting forum pvp as Al says what he believes - says what he wants and says - "your not only gonna take my changes but you will like them because I told you to!!" He is so Blunt and not a politician like Mr Stahl, it would be a very interesting thread then!
For all those who are convinced the game is fine I have a question for you.
Its fine that people can't slot Bridge officers, without using multiple workarounds?
its fine to have one of the Que'd matches, have spawn issues, IE lack of spawns, Lack of respawns, Lingering mobs that normally warp out
a Cloaking bug that has been in existence for over 2 years
Oh and I saw a tweet from Branflakes that said to avoid using Engineering team.
These are fine?
Unfortunately there's always going to be bugs in software. I write software for a living. I hate bugs lol I do my best to avoid them and if they occur, fix them. I'm sure the sto devs are the same because most programmers take pride in their creations.
Sometimes bugs are too costly to fix, or too difficult. Or perhaps the bug is in an 3rd party game engine/component. Who knows, but I think they'd be fixed if there was an opportunity to. I think they do a good job tbh.
This thread has long since literally become the saying about not being able to help yourself when watching the car crash happening in front of you.
Maybe I am gullible and it's far more obvious to others but are some of these posters for real? I mean, we should expect to wait years to build a SB because it would take years or decades even in real life? I must say that I am really, truly, absolutely glad that you in no way, shape or form had anything to do with any of the Civ games just for starters! :eek:
Someone tried to pass off that things were not that bad because the dissent was now slowing, sure. Maybe he/her didn't think that if people are not happy they might have gone off and played something else. Hey they might have gone out for a drink or simply just gone out and wondered what that big spherical thing in the heavens was. We can always check back in a few hours, weeks, months or never due to our differing levels of dissatisfaction and see if things are changing and that has been the basic gist of a lot of posts, it's a game so entertain us.
I don't want to just come across as being negative or confrontational though so here goes. I posted this in the ideas thread a couple of days ago when this all started......
Make projects have countdown timers. Pick a project to work on and its timer starts counting down the resources needed so that each day everything drops by something like 5-10% then those that can will fill the projects quicker to get access to the goodies faster or simply for prestige while smaller fleets can wait a little but eventually get there in the end.
Now I am not trying to make out that this is the best idea around before anyone might think that, it only got one specific response I think although that was sort of positive and no feedback can in itself be positive. The reason why I posted it then was just off the top of my head to throw something out there because of what looked to be brewing and I didn't really think much of it again after that, now I am though.
I have seen that people seem to automatically write off any price reduction scaling for small fleets on the whole. Sometimes this is due to possible exploits so yes that seems like a good valid reason not to do the idea in that instance with that tweak but then I noticed something else too which puzzles me. It seems that some people say 'it's expected that small fleets will take longer' and I wonder why is that?
What are SB's for? People can hang out on any of the hubs but some wanted meeting places for their fleets alone or for allies to visit too which is all hunky dory. No problem with that and if you are going to do this then it makes sense to add lots of other things there to make it practical as well as just a meeting place so bring in vendors and such too.
It has to be worth it's programming while though and this is where all the problems originate the more I think of it because this is also where Cryptic failed so dismally. Why should my Pound, Dollar, Yen or simply game time not be worth as much as someone in a large fleet?
This game might be advertised as F2P but to keep it afloat it needs cash so it needs ways to entice people to spend. So now we go back to how Cryptic makes it worthwhile them even bothering with SB's and their solution is to add special exclusive kit with the vendors and THIS is where the root of all evil is.
If you expect people to take this GAME seriously and pay you then you need to offer everyone the same possibilities and you have not/are not. You added special select top notch gear that only some have access to because only they have the size to and this is apparently by design because you couldn't be arsed to think of how to get fleet size scaling to work.
Now obviously by now it's clear that I have little to no respect for the freeloaders that think they are better and somehow worth more and entitled to cheaper things just because they are in a big fleet. I truly am amazed at their gall and wonder if they carry the same philosophy over into the real world?
Would they be perfectly happy to pay extra for their food because they are smaller or fatter or because someone else shook the owners hand funny? I mean people let's take a burger, if I get charged ?2 and then they tell you that they want ?10 because....well because it's you and not me, would you just smile and say yeah seems reasonable here's the money? I very much doubt it but you people seem happy for my small fleet to do that in a game where money changes hands.
Anyway not here just to bandy insults and derail things so I shall leave and possibly lurk shortly but before I go I shall leave you with this.
If only superficial things were added with missions to the bases like the plants and such then this would not have been a problem like I said as it does not affect gameplay and give possible advantages. Cryptic needed to make it worth while though, they could have offered items from vendors straight away but they would have had to cost loads. To get around this they came up with the current mess but what should they have done?
Only my opinion but they should have done something more along the lines of the rep system. How would that work? Have everything already on the bases but as you complete personal missions yourself in a rep style system you get access to the vendors and such for YOURSELF ONLY. Abracadabra fleet size difference would not have ever have been an issue unless I am missing something and everyone would have had to have paid the same for their ships, equipment and whatever else they wanted from the base.
Unfortunately there's always going to be bugs in software. I write software for a living. I hate bugs lol I do my best to avoid them and if they occur, fix them. I'm sure the sto devs are the same because most programmers take pride in their creations.
Sometimes bugs are too costly to fix, or too difficult. Or perhaps the bug is in an 3rd party game engine/component. Who knows, but I think they'd be fixed if there was an opportunity to. I think they do a good job tbh.
Yea, about them bugs.
Season 7 launched with the Tau Dewa sector broken, and it still hasn't been fixed. And this was the sector their entire new and improved rep system was built around! Still can't find a Red Alert to this day. Oh wait, you can find one from 20 minutes ago with no problem. Its the one you fly into, then out of 2 seconds later. The various mission on or about New Romulus are glitchy at best, sometimes you get paid, and sometimes you don't. About the only thing that's working right is the Epohh farming. Thank god we had the winter festival to help get the bugs out of that one.:rolleyes:
There are bugs on KDF ships that have been around on the KDF side since BETA! When was the last time you played a day on the KDF side, tried to beam down to Quo'nos and ended up on the shipyard. A few times in a row. Lets not rehash the cloaking problems...
Then of course there's the Valentines Day Massacre patch. But then, we know about those bugs already. The ones players had to find the work arounds for. Those players should get paid by Cryptic for helping out. They just keep piling on new content, and breaking more of the old content, without fixing any of it.
That's just a tiny, tiny portion. I bet we could fill up another 10 pages with bugs that haven't been fixed. Theres one sure thing you can know about bugs and Cryptic:
If its to the players advantage, its hotfixed, nerfed or removed. If its to Cryptics benefit, its ignored, not fixed or working as intended...
Are we taking bids for Vacuum-Desiccated Dan yet? Like the Temporal Ambassador mission, it's time to shed our gameplay oppressors.
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.
Unfortunately there's always going to be bugs in software. I write software for a living. I hate bugs lol I do my best to avoid them and if they occur, fix them. I'm sure the sto devs are the same because most programmers take pride in their creations.
Do you know how many bugs have gone from "yeah that's a known bug" to "oh that? it's supposed to not work that way" because Cryptic is (take your pick of any/all of the following) too cheap, lazy, incompetent, apathetic, rushed, or sloppy to actually fix?
It's one thing to have small bugs and issues persist, as you said it's a fact of life that those will exist in any software project. It's something else entirely to have entire swathes of your software project broken and riddled with issue after issue.
Someone tried to pass off that things were not that bad because the dissent was now slowing, sure. Maybe he/her didn't think that if people are not happy they might have gone off and played something else. Hey they might have gone out for a drink or simply just gone out and wondered what that big spherical thing in the heavens was. We can always check back in a few hours, weeks, months or never due to our differing levels of dissatisfaction and see if things are changing and that has been the basic gist of a lot of posts, it's a game so entertain us.
.
Actually that was me - but you got the idea wrong - almost 12hrs ago I posted that "posting velocity and viewing velocity" was decreasing - and over the last 12 hours has decreased to a crawl compared to the first 12 hrs.
This could mean many things. But one of the things it shows could be that this thread is rapidly burning itself out. This was something I said earlier that could be part of their plan - to let the fire burn itself out enough and then add some token thing back.
This could mean many things. But it shows that this thread is rapidly burning itself out.
Self-contradict much?
Also, the instant anyone from Cryptic pokes their head back in here to say anything short of "we're restoring IOR until we can deploy the new fleet mark stuff in May" there's going to be another explosion of activity.
Actually that was me - but you got the idea wrong - almost 12hrs ago I posted that "posting velocity and viewing velocity" was decreasing - and over the last 12 hours has decreased to a crawl compared to the first 12 hrs.
This could mean many things. But it shows that this thread is rapidly burning itself out. This was something I said earlier that could be part of their plan - to let the fire burn itself out enough and then add some token thing back.
Maybe. But what they don't realize is the weekends here, and alot of people took the next 3 days away from STO but will be waiting for them to get back on Tuesday.
Actually that was me - but you got the idea wrong - almost 12hrs ago I posted that "posting velocity and viewing velocity" was decreasing - and over the last 12 hours has decreased to a crawl compared to the first 12 hrs.
This could mean many things. But it shows that this thread is rapidly burning itself out. This was something I said earlier that could be part of their plan - to let the fire burn itself out enough and then add some token thing back.
Several people have stated to resume posting after the weekend by the way. On the nerf everything first, un-nerf half after the weekend thing, it wouldn't surprise me, at all.
Lost and Delirious... and Disenchanted too Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine?
Unfortunately there's always going to be bugs in software. I write software for a living. I hate bugs lol I do my best to avoid them and if they occur, fix them. I'm sure the sto devs are the same because most programmers take pride in their creations.
Sometimes bugs are too costly to fix, or too difficult. Or perhaps the bug is in an 3rd party game engine/component. Who knows, but I think they'd be fixed if there was an opportunity to. I think they do a good job tbh.
When you put it like that makes sense.
Now a question. My First Officer sitting next to me tells me "Unidentified ship entering orbit." and *poof* goes my cloak. Players report bug to devs.
Their response "Working as intended."
Can you make sense of this?
Several people have stated to resume posting after the weekend by the way. On the nerf everything first, un-nerf half after the weekend thing, it wouldn't surprise me, at all.
Its a standard tactic to do a big nerf - then a few days later after the fire dies down a bit they add something back - usually less than what thet took - and most people are overjoyed.
anyone remember the Beta bug where you couldn't make a toon? Or your crew being complete idiots who would get stuck in walls even in the ceiling... must talk to the transporter chief about that. There is also Terrordome the wana be STF that has been broken since I have forgotten how long it's been, also the Sirius Red Alert just like the Tholian hasn't worked since it came into existence. Also the Bridge officer slotting has been mentions several times. Corbomite I'm going to go on a limb here and say you are probably a better programmer than these people.
Also we've had issues with C-Store items such as the Galaxy Bridge packs with holes in the steps where you can see the star fields, or the cookie cuter LCARS on the Prometheus bridge pack. The Clipping of the TNG and Voyager combadges on large busted females don't think you can go past a B-Cup for it not to clip, ohh and the new Yesterday's Enterprise Belt top clips as well. If not mistaken the KDF just now got access again to the fireworks that were released way back when before the new Qo'Nos was around you see it in a Fek'lahr mission.
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
Now a question. My First Officer sitting next to me tells me "Unidentified ship entering orbit." and *poof* goes my cloak. Players report bug to devs.
Their response "Working as intended."
Can you make sense of this?
Yes and you should have killed that officer - there should be no communication while cloaked - just like running silent in a sub hiding below a destroyer.
Comments
Truth be told, IMHO putting in that 700 Day Veteran skill boost was a mistake. Unless of course the intent was to get as many toons to level 50 as possible so they can by dilithium to hurry there grinding.
At least make that skill boost optional.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I think I know what is wrong here...
It's not the "grinding on the farm" vision that is wrong...
It's how we, the players, are positoning ourselves at our PCs that's causing the real problem.
We just need to morph into the correct type of players needed...
pm me for the link so I don't get moderated, but you will laugh your rear end off!
P.S. This is hosted on my web server in my domain so the content is approved.
Note this is meant to be humor and humor only to lighten this thread up at little since it has been a very long and sometimes fustrating period now.
Zeus
And dont stop with just FMs, maybe add more Borg and Romulus Missions as well. And dont make them long and impossible, but make them interesting and fun to replay over and over.
The possibilities are endless, but really the only thing holding Cryptic back is a budget set by PWE sadly.
::: nods ... What people like about FMs with the Foundry mission is that its an added reward away from the grind that is given for playing FRESH and UNIQUE content within this game. Plus we as players have choices in which type of Foundry missions we wish to run.
As well as many foundry missions work well for team play as well as solo.
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
who is gong to join me in going to planetside 2?
It is a joke because they think it is better thats the problem!
But of course, he also said we'd have a full KDF, and so many other things....
etc see page 155 for full post.
As I agree to what you mostly said into the full post; and as what you are saying anyway is something we ALL know bout, I think you are missing the point that is not about the FM anymore.
We , as ST fans, are bored with the never stopping grind that is.
FM gate is just about the one last thing that made people rage, the cherry on the top.
Now you have told us bout Cryptic and PWE economic plans . Well we know about this and franklyI don't care for a bit what their economic plans are;
I care for a FUN game .
Gravitar said it all there : ( page 139)
Let us craft the all of the consoles and gear offered in the game, but with this twist...
We can craft to Blue quality Mk XI level but give us a way to upgrade them to the best in the game by the following methods;
A) Upgrade drops for doing the missions (foundry spotlights or episodes, etc. - make them very rare drops like the STF's and very random)
C) Zen store based upgrades for all sorts of items (extra items that make your ship into a higher grade/class of ship, upgrade ships into the Fleet versions - at a much higher price than getting them from Fleet stores, console/gear upgrades - we choose what to apply the upgrade to, etc.)
D) Change the artifact modules to upgrade modules like the above (Unpowered would have to be DOFM'd into powered first, then maybe another set of DOFM's to the upgrade versions)
E) Make these part of the Lockbox items and have them drop at the special ship rate.
This is just one way to generate interest in a forgotten aspect of the game and generate more profit for you while making the game more fun again.
PWE/Cryptic Stop the grinding, bring back the fun!
Zeus
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<R&D + Upgrade Costs> <Duty Officer Finder> <Suliban Doff Reqs> <Fleet Costs> <Rep Costs>
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I see two things. One is that Dan has a family and this is probably a three day weekend. The other is that for him to reply, he has to know WHAT his response is (and probably needs to have a meeting with leads before he can say for sure what the response will be).
I mean, he could come on here and say, "Free 10,000 ZEN for everyone who posted in this thread and a trip to the Bahamas." But that doesn't address the problem and he wouldn't have the authority to do that on his own if it did.
It's going to be Tuesday before there's a reply, most likely.
I have a nagging feeling sometimes, however, that community outrage gets used as a blunt weapon to solve internal disputes. Both in terms of patch deployments and dev posts.
Internally, there's probably a fair amount of getting along. They joke. They have cake and wear funny hats when big patches deploy. And while things get passionate, there are direct confrontations that don't happen.
But my perception of Cryptic over the last seven years, right or wrong, is that when devs lose arguments with eachother, the guy who lost either leaks upcoming plans to the forums or posts a bunch of "working as intended" threads to provoke us into forming an angry mob on his side.
Take a look at Dan's posts on fleet progress versus Al's interview. People who listened to Al's interview walked away thinking Al had points. People who read Dan's comments got outraged. Many people have noticed that they used different terminology and even benchmarks for what counted as average.
My feeling is that this is one of Al's design babies. Dan disagrees and can't override Al on it without reason so Dan hits the forums with a bunch of "my hands are tied"/"this is working as intended"/"small fleets aren't supposed to progress" posts to generate two hundred pages of angry forum posts to use as ammunition for a compromise when the devs have a design meeting on Tuesday.
That's my cynical take anyway.
I think devs use and build our outrage to settle disagreements with other devs without having to be directly confrontational with eachother.
Just a trip to the Bahamas will do, Breezes Resort near Nassau is really nice and not that expensive, I'll start packing my bags.
Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine? [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Well, um... you haven't been paying much attention, have you?
Stahl did say he has plans to add ways to get Marks... in a few months.
The problem isn't necessarily that marks were removed from the Foundry daily. While that certainly sucks, the issue is he didn't have a replacement ready to roll out in the near future after that removal, essentially leaving us high and dry until May-ish.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Personally the only person that I would like to see take on a hour long comment/response interaction is the man who makes the decisions most of the time : Al Rivera!
Now that would be a very cool and interesting forum pvp as Al says what he believes - says what he wants and says - "your not only gonna take my changes but you will like them because I told you to!!" He is so Blunt and not a politician like Mr Stahl, it would be a very interesting thread then!
Unfortunately there's always going to be bugs in software. I write software for a living. I hate bugs lol I do my best to avoid them and if they occur, fix them. I'm sure the sto devs are the same because most programmers take pride in their creations.
Sometimes bugs are too costly to fix, or too difficult. Or perhaps the bug is in an 3rd party game engine/component. Who knows, but I think they'd be fixed if there was an opportunity to. I think they do a good job tbh.
Maybe I am gullible and it's far more obvious to others but are some of these posters for real? I mean, we should expect to wait years to build a SB because it would take years or decades even in real life? I must say that I am really, truly, absolutely glad that you in no way, shape or form had anything to do with any of the Civ games just for starters! :eek:
Someone tried to pass off that things were not that bad because the dissent was now slowing, sure.
I don't want to just come across as being negative or confrontational though so here goes. I posted this in the ideas thread a couple of days ago when this all started......
Now I am not trying to make out that this is the best idea around before anyone might think that, it only got one specific response I think although that was sort of positive and no feedback can in itself be positive. The reason why I posted it then was just off the top of my head to throw something out there because of what looked to be brewing and I didn't really think much of it again after that, now I am though.
I have seen that people seem to automatically write off any price reduction scaling for small fleets on the whole. Sometimes this is due to possible exploits so yes that seems like a good valid reason not to do the idea in that instance with that tweak but then I noticed something else too which puzzles me. It seems that some people say 'it's expected that small fleets will take longer' and I wonder why is that?
What are SB's for? People can hang out on any of the hubs but some wanted meeting places for their fleets alone or for allies to visit too which is all hunky dory. No problem with that and if you are going to do this then it makes sense to add lots of other things there to make it practical as well as just a meeting place so bring in vendors and such too.
It has to be worth it's programming while though and this is where all the problems originate the more I think of it because this is also where Cryptic failed so dismally. Why should my Pound, Dollar, Yen or simply game time not be worth as much as someone in a large fleet?
This game might be advertised as F2P but to keep it afloat it needs cash so it needs ways to entice people to spend. So now we go back to how Cryptic makes it worthwhile them even bothering with SB's and their solution is to add special exclusive kit with the vendors and THIS is where the root of all evil is.
If you expect people to take this GAME seriously and pay you then you need to offer everyone the same possibilities and you have not/are not. You added special select top notch gear that only some have access to because only they have the size to and this is apparently by design because you couldn't be arsed to think of how to get fleet size scaling to work.
Now obviously by now it's clear that I have little to no respect for the freeloaders that think they are better and somehow worth more and entitled to cheaper things just because they are in a big fleet. I truly am amazed at their gall and wonder if they carry the same philosophy over into the real world?
Would they be perfectly happy to pay extra for their food because they are smaller or fatter or because someone else shook the owners hand funny? I mean people let's take a burger, if I get charged ?2 and then they tell you that they want ?10 because....well because it's you and not me, would you just smile and say yeah seems reasonable here's the money? I very much doubt it but you people seem happy for my small fleet to do that in a game where money changes hands.
Anyway not here just to bandy insults and derail things so I shall leave and possibly lurk shortly but before I go I shall leave you with this.
If only superficial things were added with missions to the bases like the plants and such then this would not have been a problem like I said as it does not affect gameplay and give possible advantages. Cryptic needed to make it worth while though, they could have offered items from vendors straight away but they would have had to cost loads. To get around this they came up with the current mess but what should they have done?
Only my opinion but they should have done something more along the lines of the rep system. How would that work? Have everything already on the bases but as you complete personal missions yourself in a rep style system you get access to the vendors and such for YOURSELF ONLY. Abracadabra fleet size difference would not have ever have been an issue unless I am missing something and everyone would have had to have paid the same for their ships, equipment and whatever else they wanted from the base.
Yea, about them bugs.
Season 7 launched with the Tau Dewa sector broken, and it still hasn't been fixed. And this was the sector their entire new and improved rep system was built around! Still can't find a Red Alert to this day. Oh wait, you can find one from 20 minutes ago with no problem. Its the one you fly into, then out of 2 seconds later. The various mission on or about New Romulus are glitchy at best, sometimes you get paid, and sometimes you don't. About the only thing that's working right is the Epohh farming. Thank god we had the winter festival to help get the bugs out of that one.:rolleyes:
There are bugs on KDF ships that have been around on the KDF side since BETA! When was the last time you played a day on the KDF side, tried to beam down to Quo'nos and ended up on the shipyard. A few times in a row. Lets not rehash the cloaking problems...
Then of course there's the Valentines Day Massacre patch. But then, we know about those bugs already. The ones players had to find the work arounds for. Those players should get paid by Cryptic for helping out. They just keep piling on new content, and breaking more of the old content, without fixing any of it.
That's just a tiny, tiny portion. I bet we could fill up another 10 pages with bugs that haven't been fixed. Theres one sure thing you can know about bugs and Cryptic:
If its to the players advantage, its hotfixed, nerfed or removed. If its to Cryptics benefit, its ignored, not fixed or working as intended...
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Do you know how many bugs have gone from "yeah that's a known bug" to "oh that? it's supposed to not work that way" because Cryptic is (take your pick of any/all of the following) too cheap, lazy, incompetent, apathetic, rushed, or sloppy to actually fix?
It's one thing to have small bugs and issues persist, as you said it's a fact of life that those will exist in any software project. It's something else entirely to have entire swathes of your software project broken and riddled with issue after issue.
Actually that was me - but you got the idea wrong - almost 12hrs ago I posted that "posting velocity and viewing velocity" was decreasing - and over the last 12 hours has decreased to a crawl compared to the first 12 hrs.
This could mean many things. But one of the things it shows could be that this thread is rapidly burning itself out. This was something I said earlier that could be part of their plan - to let the fire burn itself out enough and then add some token thing back.
Self-contradict much?
Also, the instant anyone from Cryptic pokes their head back in here to say anything short of "we're restoring IOR until we can deploy the new fleet mark stuff in May" there's going to be another explosion of activity.
Maybe. But what they don't realize is the weekends here, and alot of people took the next 3 days away from STO but will be waiting for them to get back on Tuesday.
Several people have stated to resume posting after the weekend by the way. On the nerf everything first, un-nerf half after the weekend thing, it wouldn't surprise me, at all.
Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine? [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Fixed that to "one of the things could be"
When you put it like that makes sense.
Now a question. My First Officer sitting next to me tells me "Unidentified ship entering orbit." and *poof* goes my cloak. Players report bug to devs.
Their response "Working as intended."
Can you make sense of this?
Its a standard tactic to do a big nerf - then a few days later after the fire dies down a bit they add something back - usually less than what thet took - and most people are overjoyed.
Also we've had issues with C-Store items such as the Galaxy Bridge packs with holes in the steps where you can see the star fields, or the cookie cuter LCARS on the Prometheus bridge pack. The Clipping of the TNG and Voyager combadges on large busted females don't think you can go past a B-Cup for it not to clip, ohh and the new Yesterday's Enterprise Belt top clips as well. If not mistaken the KDF just now got access again to the fireworks that were released way back when before the new Qo'Nos was around you see it in a Fek'lahr mission.
"I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, and reminds us to cherish every moment... because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived" Picard to Riker
Yes and you should have killed that officer - there should be no communication while cloaked - just like running silent in a sub hiding below a destroyer.