Why Im I not going to go off on you? Because it would be pointless to do so. I have come to be pretty good at reading between the lines and discovering deeper meening from things NOT said. YOU do not want STO to be the way it is. YOU'RE pissed that it is now the way it is just like many of us. This is not what YOU would have your team doing with STO if it was truly up to you.
This is PWE's call. It is PWE that has dictated the development model. Yes, the buck stops with you because that is how PWE wants it. You are the buffer between the community and PWE. They feel absolutely no sting over this. But you Dan by dent of your contract have become their whipping boy.
This is quite absurd. You're going to absolve Dan because he's a PWE sock-puppet? PWE isn't going to involve itself in day-to-day minutiae - it just wouldn't be feasible across all their properties. So the nerf last week to the IOR could easily have been delayed to this week when the first promised 'adjustment' is due. Dan even had cover to do it in the many Tribble bug reports filed on the new Spotlight rewards.
The evidence doesn't support your conclusion.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
This is where it should be realized that it is a game... now what that means is you need to keep the game players (customers) happy, you have heard the thoughts and disgruntled players of STO, you should listen and keep them happy.
For most previous players
1. Customers that play the game buy zen to purchase items as I have done myself, this is an added income for PWE.
2. Invest time into the game due to enjoying it.
3. Have a goal that is common with others towards building a star base.
I think that these objectives need to be address.
1. Make mix factions able to join in all STF ques so a round can kick off.
Keeping FED & KDF separate is no good since FED dominate and KDF ques will take forever to launch or not at all as I get bored of waiting and leave the ques after a wait of 5 minutes or more. It will not hurt if we are all on the same team playing for fleet marks.
This also puts a strain on KDF to work on their star base if ques don't kick off so lets make a change for the better of the game.
2. Add back Investigate Officers Daily's as it was on season 6 where you can do it once a day for 50 fleet marks and 1440 dillithium.
3. Lower the dillithium cost on star base special projects under 200.000 to at least 100.000 or less and remove dillithium from all projects... I am not saying remove the projects just drop the dillithium from it and make it a bit of an easier achievable goal.
4. Bump up the value of bottom level of earning 5 in dillithium for officers duties mission to at least 10 as 5 is not very much.
5. Stop making it that players do not want to play the game but encourage them to play by keeping them happy, I know you can not please everyone but these basic I believe will make a difference of being better for more players then less.
I also need to get this out there, I know its probably not feasible with the current engine, but when someone says to me what do you want from a Star Trek MMO... this is what i dream:
I arrive at the Starbase to find a list of missions. These missions are essentially quests as you would find in say DDO or the such like. These are story missions. You and other players group up to carry out the mission. It could be diplomacy, it could be scientific investigation or a neutral zone patrol, or even exploration. We start the mission by traveling to our destination.
We may encounter issues to resolve on the way or conflicts to overcome and the when we get to the main mission it involves team work and specific skill traits from the the different classes to solve puzzles and mysteries, it could be repair work or helping out a criminal investigation as sleuths for a Federation member planet, it could creating and transporting vaccines through a dangerous zone to a colony in dire need (imagine this last one where you have to protect the player whose carrying the medical supplies from attack).
The quests and stories are endless and this for me would be far closer to an actual Star Trek experience, puzzles, mysteries, combat, morality plays, stories, adventure, exploration and above all fun!
I also need to get this out there, I know its probably not feasible with the current engine, but when someone says to me what do you want from a Star Trek MMO... this is what i dream:
I arrive at the Starbase to find a list of missions. These missions are essentially quests as you would find in say DDO or the such like. These are story missions. You and other players group up to carry out the mission. It could be diplomacy, it could be scientific investigation or a neutral zone patrol, or even exploration. We start the mission by traveling to our destination.
We may encounter issues to resolve on the way or conflicts to overcome and the when we get to the main mission it involves team work and specific skill traits from the the different classes to solve puzzles and mysteries, it could be repair work or helping out a criminal investigation as sleuths for a Federation member planet, it could creating and transporting vaccines through a dangerous zone to a colony in dire need (imagine this last one where you have to protect the player whose carrying the medical supplies from attack).
The quests and stories are endless and this for me would be far closer to an actual Star Trek experience, puzzles, mysteries, combat, morality plays, stories, adventure, exploration and above all fun!
I think this essentially summarises what sto should have been from the start.
I 100% agree with Thisisoverloard on the what should be improved on this game.
I have been a player of STO since day one. Over the three years, I have watched this game go from fun and adventurous with potentional to an endless boring grind to earn ingame gear, reputation teirs, SB teirs and what have you. Star trek in it's self is not about continious grind or war, it's about complex exploration, adventure and surviving in the process. There is no science, strategy or complex puzzles for players to engaged in. Which makes this game feel repetitive.
The PVP aspect of this game is horrible. There is no strategy to it. PWE/Cryptic should take pointers from games such as eve online, planetside 2 or even star citizen (which is in development) when it comes to pvp content.
The emersion in game does not feel star trek cannon at all. Nothing is to correct scale, There is no interaction with computer consoles other than hiting the "f" key. There is no bridge crew interaction as like on the 2002 game ST Bridge commander and there is no way to command or control your ship from the bridge.
I can go on and on; however, that would be beating a dead horse.
As a Star Trek fan and a love for aerospace and science, if this game holds on it's current path, I as a player / customer will cancel my gold membership and no longer play this game.
I hope the devs seriously take into account of how the players feel and listen to make changes for the better - but it seems as if this is falling on deaf ears and PWE/Cyrptic is intentionally destroying this game by not listening to players/customers.
What on Earth is keeping you from elaborating on a patch due out in two days? Is that not close enough to fudge it and fill us in? Really? I guess it's better to know something is coming than being left totally in the dark, but when the best you can do is "we can't elaborate", is it any wonder people get this mad? If people were calmer, then I could accept that answer, but the mob is calling for blood. You had to know coming into this that that was just going to aggravate people.
Other than that, good to see I was absolutely right when I called Tuesday as the day we'd get some word back on all this. For all that was worth, anyway.
I sincerely hope your daughter gets well quickly. Here's something to zone out to while you wait for the headache medicine to kick in.
A critical review of the systems and game-play in Star Trek Online
Before I begin I'd like to address the recent posts and response from Dan, firstly this goes beyond Fleet Marks and poor communication from the developers the recent dissatisfaction is merely the expression of long standing disenchantment by a number of players.
I'm not going to give figures or estimates of just how many players feel this way, it is likely several factors more than those that are actually posting about it.
With regards to Dan's statements in the past few pages the failure to communicate honestly is shown once again. I understand it's difficult; businesses usually do everything they can to put up walls to stop customers from knowing the true workings of the organisation especially if the truth might be less than savoury. I also understand Cryptic as a subsidiary organisation may not have the kind freedom required to make changes that even internally they may want. The following is not an attack on the team or Dan personally but an honest assessment of the state of the game by many of us players.
So let me start by saying that this review is about a problem many players perceive with the way the game currently is. Many of us feel that it is no longer enjoyable to play. We may all be from a similar demographic or perhaps not but I know as a person who works hard and has family commitments that ultimately I may only be able to play every few days. On the weekends I have more free time and in Season 6 I really enjoyed spending a large chunk of my weekend playing, the game was fun and I made a lot of friends. I didn't really feel corralled into doing things I found boring.
On to the analysis:
Some argue the number of currencies in game is a problem, perhaps it is but for most of the reality is the problem is to do with volume of currency available divisible by the amount of time it costs to acquire them and enjoyment of the tasks that we have to do get those currencies.
Most of us are time limited, as you will know a large proportion of your premium demographic are in their middle-age usually work full-time and have a family. This makes them grind averse and consciousness of gameplay that feels unrewarding for the time spent.
I'm going to treat Dilithium separate from the other currencies as it's unique in its form in comparison to the others. For now let us look at the various marks in the reputation systems for personal and fleet.
The main issue with the Mark currencies at the moment is a triangle of desperation, at one point we have lack of supply, at the next boring repetitive and buggy content that must be grinded to achieve the Marks and at the final point; unbalanced and overly expensive inputs that magnify the problems of the first two parts to create a perfect triangle of despair for players.
With the personal reputation systems we can also add in the extra element of time gates and other expensive item inputs that require EC farming.
Whilst I understand that the development team is small and there has been little in the way of story content and what I would call deep level content (especially in comparison to other big franchise MMO's) I do not believe you have got the balance right. We understand that because you have a low content game you want to elongate the content you do have so players don't get bored too quickly equally if you make the game to much of a grind without a good reward or enjoyment factor then players will also leave from grind fatigue.
You have failed to get the balance right across all areas of the end-game content. As a result many of us find that the few areas of the game that we do enjoy have to be sacrificed if we wish to progress through the grind. The result of this is that when it comes to the weekend and I have free time instead of associating STO with fun and enjoyment I associate it with tedium so I no longer log on. This is the case for a great many of us and the underlying issue is a lack of supply, over demanding inputs and boring repetitive content. Indeed this is why exploits have arisen (though I would call them player developed fixes for unbalanced game mechanics) like the auto farming on the foundry.
Dilithium is also something that needs to be addressed because frankly for a currency based on time it is unacceptable that there is no automatic timed rewards, so if you play for an hour you get say 250 Dilithium, it also suffers from the issues that the other currencies suffer from.
So for us players who have lives and are often cash rich and time poor the game is horrifically unbalanced.
Alongside the lack of balance is the lack of enjoyable content in game. As it stands the game feels very beta still, with large areas of the game effectively not fit for production, an example being both the KDF faction and PVP. These are two areas in which players could find an opportunity to enjoy refreshing gameplay and stave off game fatigue but both are woefully undeveloped.
Game fatigue and apathy would also be greatly reduced if the missions that have to be grinded were more enjoyable, the old STF's both ground and Space are fine, but the Fleet Mark missions are seriously poor and boring to play, also with the 20 man space event the lag is usually unbearable and for 30 minutes of play time the rewards for that very boring event are pitiful. The Romulan Mark missions also suffer from element of boredom but the most shocking issue with them is also the pathetic amount of currency that is rewarded for completion of them.
Alongside this we have the compounding issue of the development team offering no real compelling content for a long time. New Romulus as it stands is really part of the game that is a sandbox for children the mini-quests like tagging and the like are not fit for endgame players and I perceive the way it is currently structured to be a huge waste of potential for an adventure zone. There is so much that could be done with New Romulus and more importantly other planetary destinations like Andoria for example. Once again a whole portion of the game which frankly feels and practically is alpha release content.
The lockboxes are clearly no more than a way for you as a team to acquire sales in a quick and easy way playing on human nature and addictive personalities. While in the short run this may be of great financial benefit if you continue in the current development style this game will become less and less appealing to more and more of your core demographic.
Finally, there a several UI issues that makes this game less enjoyable than it ought to be and they are easily fixable. Firstly and I cannot stress this enough we need to be able to save ship layouts in a reliable way so that when I play Temporal Ambassador for example my tray isn't ruined by flying the Enterprise C. That was the main reason why I only played that mission once that and the belt was terrible, especially the laziness of having a federation belt as a Klingon reward.
Secondly the fact that we do not have greater searchable metatags in the exchange and foundry makes both an annoyance to use especially when searching for traits or powers with boffs on the exchange.
Then there is the whole issue with fleets and your current system which kills small fleets and hurts the game in more ways than you can imagine. I was feeling a bright future in Season 6 and has set up a fleet and was in the process of building a website and advertising my fleet. I felt this was the next step up for my end of game content a whole new area to progress in. Season 7 killed my fledgling fleet and scattered its members to more advanced fleets or out of the game completely. Such was the lack of balance in the game that now T1 and T2 fleets find it practically impossible to attract players. This situation is clearly unacceptable. You must find a way to make starting a new fleet attractive and to give some positive encouragement and help to small fleets especially as many out-game friend groups tend to create small fleets that they don't want to enlarge. It is unacceptable that nearly all other MMO's cater to that guild style and you have not found the creative ability to incorporate this into your game.
Thus in closing you can see that practically every area of the end-game and many other parts of the game are unbalanced, half-finished and have fast lost the fun factor especially after the last round of unbalancing in the horrific Season 7 changes.
Alongside the glaring problems with the game we have the attitude and you the developers towards your customers. The way in which you treat your customers is frankly distasteful, often condescending arrogant and dismissive of people who are in reality your best tool for improving this game by using our feedback and time that we freely spend quality testing your product, especially in lieu of the fact that you have no Q&A department at all.
Simply put your communication is appalling and your ham-fisted attempts to foister unpopular and damaging changes to the game on a population of players who are keen to ramifications on their free time and in-game enjoyment have in the 8 months that I have been playing left me with a view of the company and game that ranks you well below your peers like Turbine (Who may I add employ in game GMs and have a good a customer support division unlike PWE whose current online ticket system has been broke since I started playing and STO that has no in game GMs)
Overall my experience in game and out of game has been steadily getting worse and I believe my opinion is echoed by others here. Despite all this there are parts of the game that I enjoy and I love Star Trek and those things have kept me coming back but honestly there are just to many negatives outweighing the positives at the moment that my time in game is incredibly diminished.
How do you fix this? Simple, solve bugs, add in-depth content, fix those half-finished parts of the game, design more enjoyable PVE grinds, increase rewards and freeze or lower input costs, fix the UI and above all take on the advice of your players and offer us the basic respect we deserve for having invested time and money into your game and your wallets.
Executive Summary (tl:dr)
Increase supply of currencies
Ensure boring content is updated or that we have grind less of it to get rewards
Freeze or decrease currency input costs
Fix several UI issues
Ensure lockboxes are ancillary to the aim of developing real content
Fix the major issues with small fleets and fleet scaling
Treat your players properly
That should bring back the fun.
I agree 110% If people want them to listen. We need to stop buying keys and ships. If they see a decrease in profits they will start to listen and read what people have typed here in the past week.
PWE has Cryptic and this community over a barrel. They could shut STO down tonight and not bat an eye at potential revenue loss. As long as they are in control, resistance IS futile. STO as it has been is over. From this time forward we will service PWE.
Thank you for that. I'll reply to it in some length when I have a little more time
Ensure boring content is updated or that we have grind less of it to get rewards
Freeze or decrease currency input costs
Fix several UI issues
Ensure lockboxes are ancillary to the aim of developing real content
Fix the major issues with small fleets and fleet scaling
Treat your players properly
That should bring back the fun.
Very nice, productive summary--though I would say that the bugs and issues in the game from a technical standpoint go beyond just the UI.
This provides some good, useful action items that I think would help make the game better.
Just one more thing I ned to get on the record since it got taken in a personal-attack way by some other posters that I did NOT mean to happen. I mentioned Mr. Stahl's comment from the other thread about his daughter being sick simply to express some sympathy for that situation as it was, on its own. Not to tie the two together and open him up to personal attacks suggesting he is incapable of maintaining work-life balance. That was NOT it. I was, quite frankly, just treating him like a person.
I may disagree with him tremendously when it comes to the way the game has been managed and have said so, I may have tried to warn him off from that Harlem Shake disaster before it blew up, but I see no reason to be a jerk about it. I see no reason to engage in personal slams in order to get my point across. That doesn't get any of us anywhere.
Better to focus on the problems at hand and how they can be solved.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
so last fleet marks run...get in and 2 people immediately leave, leaving 3 of us. 1 of the three is afk. So it was me and one other person for the run. 6 whole fleet marks earned.
I love you, Cryptic.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
I took a look over at the Dev Blog forum post regarding the new Andorian ships and saw this (name redacted to protect the innocent ):
[QUOTE=[redacted]]2 years of bitterness about this game's development wiped away in just a few short posts by you. This rocks. I haven't been this happy about STO since I first heard a diplomacy system was being made.[/QUOTE]
No wonder this game is like this. People are actualy appeased by a few ships to grind the same content they've been grinding for years. I'm starting to wonder if the dev is at fault or if we, the players are more at fault for the state of the game.
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
so last fleet marks run...get in and 2 people immediately leave, leaving 3 of us. 1 of the three is afk. So it was me and one other person for the run. 6 whole fleet marks earned.
I love you, Cryptic.
I ahve seen so many more AFKers in Fleet missions now. I have submitted 10 Report to GM tickets just on one person that keeps AFKing
I took a look over at the Dev Blog forum post regarding the new Andorian ships and saw this (name redacted to protect the innocent ):
No wonder this game is like this. People are actually appeased by a few ships to grind the same content they've been grinding for years. I'm starting to wonder if the dev is at fault or if we, the players are more at fault for the state of the game.
Ohhh SHINY!!
pfft!
Some people are in a constant state of denial, or as long as it doesn't infringe upon their mindless grinding they just don't care.
Wait for the upcoming ship nerf to hear them wake from their mindless slumber and begin to scream...
Here's my 5 cents on the subject.
It used to be two cents, but the Australian mint withdrew that coin from circulation.
This is pretty much a disaster on so many levels.
My fleet projects haven't filled any projects in about a week or two.
We used to average at least one, maybe two if we were lucky every 2-3 days.
The marks have pretty much stopped coming in, they're not increasing at all.
And any system that based fleet assignment costs on members would be confused by my fleet.
There are currently 60 members, but out of those, about 5-8 are active players.
The rest just left or don't come by on a daily basis.
And the problem is Dilithium is easy to obtain?
My Dilithium gathering is at a even lower rate then the mark gathering!
Also, the Dil/Zen imbalance isn't helping issues.
Cryptic, in all honesty, I think you just made a lot of enemies with this move, as illthought as it is.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
2 years of bitterness about this game's development wiped away in just a few short posts by you. This rocks. I haven't been this happy about STO since I first heard a diplomacy system was being made.
Uh... happy about what? A shiny, paper-thin glass canon that's going to explode within seconds of entering any PvP Arena or Elite STF you take it near??
Honestly, I don't even need new content. I just want enough time left over after the grind to play the content we already have. I had that before S6, but it got cut down heavily by the introduction of the fleet advancement system, and since S7 has been all but nonexistent. And that's despite the facts that I got the Fleet Recon Sci within a couple weeks after S6 and the Vesta the day S7 came out, so my DPS has kept climbing.
No wonder this game is like this. People are actualy appeased by a few ships to grind the same content they've been grinding for years. I'm starting to wonder if the dev is at fault or if we, the players are more at fault for the state of the game.
You are probably seeing a dichotomy in player age/maturity. One thing the game industry is not coming to terms with well is that the gamers of the 80s are still gaming.
And they are professionals who know all the bull*** PR tricks and business mumbo jumbo. So the shinies that distracted us as kids... no longer work. It's a hard demographic to cater too, because it means work. But on the other hand... we have $$$.
How MMO companies reach for the stars: "And as far as Season 7 being "grindy" - welcome to the MMORPG genre."
Uh... happy about what? A shiny, paper-thin glass canon that's going to explode within seconds of entering any PvP Arena or Elite STF you take it near??
Some people are just...
well it will live up to the glass cannon nickname escorts should have lol
That depends on which point of view you examine the evidence from. If it is from the point of view of one simply seeking to find someone to lash out at because of the decisions, then no, the evidence doesn't support my conclusion. However, if you remove yourself from that line of consideration and examine the evidence... ALL of it... from the point of view of one seeking to understand the whole issue, then my conclusion is the only one that makes sense.
PWE does not care how passionate we are about this game or what WE think its potential is. All they care about is their plans and how much money they can get off of people who choose to be blind to what is going on. At least until decisions are made that effect those individuals, whose eyes will be open wide.
And when (not if) STO gets to the point where they've milked it for as much as they can get off of it, they will put it on maintenance mode and vacuum up any loose change they can find that has fallen by the wayside. By that time, they will have more than just CO and NW under the Cryptic name.
We cannot win this. The deck is stacked against us. The House always wins...
Except that they actually lose. Why would anyone go to them if they get a rep for killing games. IF they want profit. then give what the customer wants. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. such a simple concept that seems to be missed again and again. IF either Cryptic or PWE can get this than they should no longer exist. FOR WESTWOOD STUDIOS!
You are probably seeing a dichotomy in player age/maturity. One thing the game industry is not coming to terms with well is that the gamers of the 80s are still gaming.
And they are professionals who know all the bull*** PR tricks and business mumbo jumbo. So the shinies that distracted us as kids... no longer work. It's a hard demographic to cater too, because it means work. But on the other hand... we have $$$.
You speak the truth. I'm not that old (only 27) but my first gaming experience were flight sims and very early online games like Mad Maze on an old Tandy computer, back in the old days when if you were online you weren't receiving phone calls lol. Before the days of speedy Internet and the ability to download humongous files, if you didn't release a debugged and enjoyable game you were likely to go bankrupt (or in the case of ET for Atari, almost kill off an entire industry).
Then processing power increased and graphics got better, but bugs became more prevalent, but the old gamers held companies accountable.
Not anymore with the younger crowds now. All you need are nice graphics and gimmicks and you have a best selling game. Companies have forgotten how to make good games.
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
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Comments
This is quite absurd. You're going to absolve Dan because he's a PWE sock-puppet? PWE isn't going to involve itself in day-to-day minutiae - it just wouldn't be feasible across all their properties. So the nerf last week to the IOR could easily have been delayed to this week when the first promised 'adjustment' is due. Dan even had cover to do it in the many Tribble bug reports filed on the new Spotlight rewards.
The evidence doesn't support your conclusion.
Well thought out post of the issues!
I totally agree!
PWE/Cryptic Where are you? Why are you not listening to your customers?
PWE/Cryptic Stop the FARM, Bring back the FUN!
Zeus
For most previous players
1. Customers that play the game buy zen to purchase items as I have done myself, this is an added income for PWE.
2. Invest time into the game due to enjoying it.
3. Have a goal that is common with others towards building a star base.
I think that these objectives need to be address.
1. Make mix factions able to join in all STF ques so a round can kick off.
Keeping FED & KDF separate is no good since FED dominate and KDF ques will take forever to launch or not at all as I get bored of waiting and leave the ques after a wait of 5 minutes or more. It will not hurt if we are all on the same team playing for fleet marks.
This also puts a strain on KDF to work on their star base if ques don't kick off so lets make a change for the better of the game.
2. Add back Investigate Officers Daily's as it was on season 6 where you can do it once a day for 50 fleet marks and 1440 dillithium.
3. Lower the dillithium cost on star base special projects under 200.000 to at least 100.000 or less and remove dillithium from all projects... I am not saying remove the projects just drop the dillithium from it and make it a bit of an easier achievable goal.
4. Bump up the value of bottom level of earning 5 in dillithium for officers duties mission to at least 10 as 5 is not very much.
5. Stop making it that players do not want to play the game but encourage them to play by keeping them happy, I know you can not please everyone but these basic I believe will make a difference of being better for more players then less.
I arrive at the Starbase to find a list of missions. These missions are essentially quests as you would find in say DDO or the such like. These are story missions. You and other players group up to carry out the mission. It could be diplomacy, it could be scientific investigation or a neutral zone patrol, or even exploration. We start the mission by traveling to our destination.
We may encounter issues to resolve on the way or conflicts to overcome and the when we get to the main mission it involves team work and specific skill traits from the the different classes to solve puzzles and mysteries, it could be repair work or helping out a criminal investigation as sleuths for a Federation member planet, it could creating and transporting vaccines through a dangerous zone to a colony in dire need (imagine this last one where you have to protect the player whose carrying the medical supplies from attack).
The quests and stories are endless and this for me would be far closer to an actual Star Trek experience, puzzles, mysteries, combat, morality plays, stories, adventure, exploration and above all fun!
#2311#2700#2316#2500
This.
Less grindfest
Bring the FUN back
I think this essentially summarises what sto should have been from the start.
I have been a player of STO since day one. Over the three years, I have watched this game go from fun and adventurous with potentional to an endless boring grind to earn ingame gear, reputation teirs, SB teirs and what have you. Star trek in it's self is not about continious grind or war, it's about complex exploration, adventure and surviving in the process. There is no science, strategy or complex puzzles for players to engaged in. Which makes this game feel repetitive.
The PVP aspect of this game is horrible. There is no strategy to it. PWE/Cryptic should take pointers from games such as eve online, planetside 2 or even star citizen (which is in development) when it comes to pvp content.
The emersion in game does not feel star trek cannon at all. Nothing is to correct scale, There is no interaction with computer consoles other than hiting the "f" key. There is no bridge crew interaction as like on the 2002 game ST Bridge commander and there is no way to command or control your ship from the bridge.
I can go on and on; however, that would be beating a dead horse.
As a Star Trek fan and a love for aerospace and science, if this game holds on it's current path, I as a player / customer will cancel my gold membership and no longer play this game.
I hope the devs seriously take into account of how the players feel and listen to make changes for the better - but it seems as if this is falling on deaf ears and PWE/Cyrptic is intentionally destroying this game by not listening to players/customers.
Other than that, good to see I was absolutely right when I called Tuesday as the day we'd get some word back on all this. For all that was worth, anyway.
I sincerely hope your daughter gets well quickly. Here's something to zone out to while you wait for the headache medicine to kick in.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
I agree 110% If people want them to listen. We need to stop buying keys and ships. If they see a decrease in profits they will start to listen and read what people have typed here in the past week.
Thank you for that. I'll reply to it in some length when I have a little more time
Very nice, productive summary--though I would say that the bugs and issues in the game from a technical standpoint go beyond just the UI.
This provides some good, useful action items that I think would help make the game better.
Just one more thing I ned to get on the record since it got taken in a personal-attack way by some other posters that I did NOT mean to happen. I mentioned Mr. Stahl's comment from the other thread about his daughter being sick simply to express some sympathy for that situation as it was, on its own. Not to tie the two together and open him up to personal attacks suggesting he is incapable of maintaining work-life balance. That was NOT it. I was, quite frankly, just treating him like a person.
I may disagree with him tremendously when it comes to the way the game has been managed and have said so, I may have tried to warn him off from that Harlem Shake disaster before it blew up, but I see no reason to be a jerk about it. I see no reason to engage in personal slams in order to get my point across. That doesn't get any of us anywhere.
Better to focus on the problems at hand and how they can be solved.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
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I love you, Cryptic.
[QUOTE=[redacted]]2 years of bitterness about this game's development wiped away in just a few short posts by you. This rocks. I haven't been this happy about STO since I first heard a diplomacy system was being made.[/QUOTE]
No wonder this game is like this. People are actualy appeased by a few ships to grind the same content they've been grinding for years. I'm starting to wonder if the dev is at fault or if we, the players are more at fault for the state of the game.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I ahve seen so many more AFKers in Fleet missions now. I have submitted 10 Report to GM tickets just on one person that keeps AFKing
They put a new "shinny" in and the herd goes ape for it forgetting everything else!
Ahhh the bliss of the mindless, faceless herd...
"Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life here"
PWE/Cryptic Where are you? Why are you not listening to your customers?
PWE/Cryptic Stop the FARM, Bring back the FUN!
Zeus
Ohhh SHINY!!
pfft!
Some people are in a constant state of denial, or as long as it doesn't infringe upon their mindless grinding they just don't care.
Wait for the upcoming ship nerf to hear them wake from their mindless slumber and begin to scream...
Anyway...Power to the People! Keep fighting The Good Fight!
It used to be two cents, but the Australian mint withdrew that coin from circulation.
This is pretty much a disaster on so many levels.
My fleet projects haven't filled any projects in about a week or two.
We used to average at least one, maybe two if we were lucky every 2-3 days.
The marks have pretty much stopped coming in, they're not increasing at all.
And any system that based fleet assignment costs on members would be confused by my fleet.
There are currently 60 members, but out of those, about 5-8 are active players.
The rest just left or don't come by on a daily basis.
And the problem is Dilithium is easy to obtain?
My Dilithium gathering is at a even lower rate then the mark gathering!
Also, the Dil/Zen imbalance isn't helping issues.
Cryptic, in all honesty, I think you just made a lot of enemies with this move, as illthought as it is.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Uh... happy about what? A shiny, paper-thin glass canon that's going to explode within seconds of entering any PvP Arena or Elite STF you take it near??
Some people are just...
You are probably seeing a dichotomy in player age/maturity. One thing the game industry is not coming to terms with well is that the gamers of the 80s are still gaming.
And they are professionals who know all the bull*** PR tricks and business mumbo jumbo. So the shinies that distracted us as kids... no longer work. It's a hard demographic to cater too, because it means work. But on the other hand... we have $$$.
well it will live up to the glass cannon nickname escorts should have lol
Except that they actually lose. Why would anyone go to them if they get a rep for killing games. IF they want profit. then give what the customer wants. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. such a simple concept that seems to be missed again and again. IF either Cryptic or PWE can get this than they should no longer exist. FOR WESTWOOD STUDIOS!
You speak the truth. I'm not that old (only 27) but my first gaming experience were flight sims and very early online games like Mad Maze on an old Tandy computer, back in the old days when if you were online you weren't receiving phone calls lol. Before the days of speedy Internet and the ability to download humongous files, if you didn't release a debugged and enjoyable game you were likely to go bankrupt (or in the case of ET for Atari, almost kill off an entire industry).
Then processing power increased and graphics got better, but bugs became more prevalent, but the old gamers held companies accountable.
Not anymore with the younger crowds now. All you need are nice graphics and gimmicks and you have a best selling game. Companies have forgotten how to make good games.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Apparently you have two choices, either you agree that Dan Stahl is a PWE sock-puppet, or you are
It's good that everyone has an open mind, though.