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Thoughts on One Year in STO
rylanadionysis
Member Posts: 3,359 Arc User
My forum join date is mostly accurate, I joined the forums a couple weeks after I started playing STO last March (2013).
Id heard a lot of mixed reviews about the game, but because it was a free to play model I decided what is there to lose, downloaded it, started a toon, and was immediately put off by the level requirement to roll a Klingon. Not to be discouraged I plodded through it, deleted a couple characters as I learned some things, and eventually rolled up my main Rylana near the beginning of April.
Since then I have beaten every piece of PvE the game has to offer, done 29k DPS in an ISE, helped build a starbase, leveled repped and geared nine PvP toons with a tenth on the way, ground my head off in every adventure zone, collected over 12 thousand accolade points, completed every doff chain, made a billion+ EC, spent twice as much, put in a couple hundred (or more) dollars into the game, subscribed, unsubscribed, PvPed in tournaments, PvPed in Kerrat, PvP all over gods green earth.
Ive done it all, Ive played your game to death, and now I am bored. Not only am I bored silly, but I am also annoyed at the fact no new challenges exist or are being put in. Monetized ship sales is all I have seen for months, and a new way to dilithium farm via dinosaur tagging.
Ive loved getting my Kirk on and just going nuts in a space MMO that represents one of the best franchises of all time, but Cryptic I am asking you sincerely, when are you going to give the hardcore serious gamer something new to do?
Many of my friends in game have already moved on, and I am starting to understand why they have. Patch after patch its another lockbox or reskin of a ship, another broken FOTM combat mechanic, more insane power creep, more this more that, but where is the meat? Where is the harder enemy to fight? Where is the challenge? My ships today, almost one year after I first reached level 50 are more than 10 times as powerful as they were the day my main was promoted to Vice Admiral. But the enemies have remained the same.
We have players that are doing NWS in 3 man Arkif groups, players that are doing ISE in less than a minute, players that are SOLOING STFs. Would you please kick our asses and give us something we can actually FAIL? Something that isnt just catering to the smallest common denominator?
Look at my post count cryptic. That is how passionate ive been about this game in just one short year. Look at my account history, see how much I have supported your product. Look at this post and for the love of god dont lose me as a customer.
See you in game, I just had to get that off my chest before I truly do leave the game someday.
Id heard a lot of mixed reviews about the game, but because it was a free to play model I decided what is there to lose, downloaded it, started a toon, and was immediately put off by the level requirement to roll a Klingon. Not to be discouraged I plodded through it, deleted a couple characters as I learned some things, and eventually rolled up my main Rylana near the beginning of April.
Since then I have beaten every piece of PvE the game has to offer, done 29k DPS in an ISE, helped build a starbase, leveled repped and geared nine PvP toons with a tenth on the way, ground my head off in every adventure zone, collected over 12 thousand accolade points, completed every doff chain, made a billion+ EC, spent twice as much, put in a couple hundred (or more) dollars into the game, subscribed, unsubscribed, PvPed in tournaments, PvPed in Kerrat, PvP all over gods green earth.
Ive done it all, Ive played your game to death, and now I am bored. Not only am I bored silly, but I am also annoyed at the fact no new challenges exist or are being put in. Monetized ship sales is all I have seen for months, and a new way to dilithium farm via dinosaur tagging.
Ive loved getting my Kirk on and just going nuts in a space MMO that represents one of the best franchises of all time, but Cryptic I am asking you sincerely, when are you going to give the hardcore serious gamer something new to do?
Many of my friends in game have already moved on, and I am starting to understand why they have. Patch after patch its another lockbox or reskin of a ship, another broken FOTM combat mechanic, more insane power creep, more this more that, but where is the meat? Where is the harder enemy to fight? Where is the challenge? My ships today, almost one year after I first reached level 50 are more than 10 times as powerful as they were the day my main was promoted to Vice Admiral. But the enemies have remained the same.
We have players that are doing NWS in 3 man Arkif groups, players that are doing ISE in less than a minute, players that are SOLOING STFs. Would you please kick our asses and give us something we can actually FAIL? Something that isnt just catering to the smallest common denominator?
Look at my post count cryptic. That is how passionate ive been about this game in just one short year. Look at my account history, see how much I have supported your product. Look at this post and for the love of god dont lose me as a customer.
See you in game, I just had to get that off my chest before I truly do leave the game someday.
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Hardcore serious gamers are OP, pls nerf
I had that one coming XD
Making me laugh is OP, plz srs
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
Anyhow, that what you described is one of the reasons I took it more slowely. Yeah, I made reasonable dps, can handle quite the punch. But I know if I go too fast, I would probably hit that bump way sooner then I did now (I started around sept/oct 2012, pre S7 if I'm correct).
Just started my own fleet awhile ago. Keeps me busy :cool:. And definitly not to forget the great company of people in the foundry channel. Do you know how hard it is to actually grind when you're having fun chatting away there? :P
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
OK ok srs now.
Obviously hardcore serious gamers are not STO's target audience. If it were, PVP would be fixed, the classic STF progression would be the norm (rather than pugging queues), and when they brought back Crystalline Catastrophe it would be in the old format rather than the way it is now.
Currently I see 3 options for STO that don't rock the boat too hard with regard to the structure of the game and preserve the systems the way they are while allowing more accomodation for the elite crowd.
1. Call of Duty style "prestiging" - i.e. allowing players to reset their level or rank and do it all over again for some reason.
This option is interesting but more suited to much more competitive games (like CoD). STO is fundamentally not very competitive (not even in the "first-to-finish" hardcore raiding sense that WoW can cater to), and this would not be very appealing in the current "ala carte" approach to content at max-level.
2. Raise the level cap.
This is just a matter of time. The trick will be to finding the right balance, because Cryptic doesn't want to nerf purchased ships. Most lilkely captain levels will be increased (with new traits and powers) but not ship tiers.
And of course raising the level cap won't do jack if there's no new content to challenge that level cap, so that'll have to happen, too, obviously.
The wrinkle in this plan is once again the difficulty of content generation.
Even today a game like Wow, which maintains a hardcore raiding community and healthy levels of challenge for max-level players, is running into mathematical limits on the way power scales up. That's why they're planning a flattening of the power curve with the latest expansion.
3. A "legacy" system
This can be used in conjunction with #2 to make creating multiple alts more appealing. The sponsorship tokens are just the first example. The next steps would be some kind of system to grant special gear, powers, traits, boffs, or other things to players who maintain alts. Maybe some kind of cool cross-faction costume, ship skin, or something ala WoW or SWTOR.
Im... not sure if I should laugh or be mad I just got owned
Fleet Admiral Rylana - Fed Tac - U.S.S Wild Card - Tactical Miracle Worker Cruiser
Lifetime Subscriber since 2012 == 17,200 Accolades = RIP PvP and Vice Squad
Chief of Starfleet Intelligence Service == Praise Cheesus
wall of death text is op, plz nerf. nerf is op, plz nerf
there needs to be an additional level of difficulty and the current ones should be renamed from normal to easy, elite to medium and bring in hard which is 3x harder then elite difficulty.
features of hard difficulty includes:
all enemy boff powers are instantly and 1s cd (scimmy thal charge up is just 15s and hits between 100k to 500k damage a pop, also not interruptible by tractor beams or trics).
where you would see one tac cube(or other super heavy ships from other races, scimmy, bortasqu, typhoon) on a previous difficulty, you see 3x as many, all of them acting very aggressive.
additional destructive powers like tykens IV or GW IV with scramble sensors IV for enemies.
additional beam weapons and stronger beam weapons that go out to 12km for enemies.
torpedoes that on average hit 50k a shot, shield and hull alike and their range goes out to 20km for enemies.
boff powers like boarding parties instantly disable a system with 100% chance for 2 seconds each time in addition to the added attraction of 1:30 cd on all powers and weapons until hostile parties are removed by tt, viral matrix disables 2 systems at random 100% for 5 seconds and effects other systems 50% chance of shut down. scramble sensors forcibly requires a player to target another and fire one of its beams on purpose and at random for a 10k-30k hit to the ally before the scramble sensors wears off or until sci team cleanses it and any attempt to withdraw out of range to avoid firing and lacking sci team will trigger a self destruct.
enemy fighters launched are significantly more threatening, 5x the damage inflicted on an enemy, 6x the hp, 4x speedier with ship boffs skills into IV.
standard none voth and non borg ship are more deadly, even the squishy raiders can have upto 75k hp, 40% damage reduction on shield with a cap of 10k and regen of 700 points and bleed through of 5% while its turning arc is 32 with a 5/4 configuration. cruisers for eg. keldon get photonic generator producting upto 12 photonic warships, all significantly more powerful. while the keldon has a turning arc of 18 with a 5/5 configuration.
voth enemies have an almost 75% coverage of shields with their defense screen, it last 3x longer, their enemy draining abilities are crippling with invisble aceton collectors unless you got a way to detect them with tachyon scans, or anti proton sweep. all voth ships come with 5/5 configuration and even the voth dredie has a turning arc of 6 at minimum, while the frigate has a 26 turning arc and a more powerful cloak which is not detectable even with anti proton and tachyon scans. more deadly weapons and higher hp.
borg all come with a 6/6 configuration, instant weapons frequency modulation in space offering a 50% weapons damage deduction from enemies until shield is down with a backup shield to also take down with a 25% damage reduction, an ordinary cube at millions of hp with very high damage weapons, whiile tac cubes are a whole other story, would be like trying to damage a solid steel wall with a piece of paper with the added advantage that it produces deadly gw's, tykens, scramble sensors, tractor beams and repulsors, many high yield plasma torps, many boarding parties, thats assuming you make it past the shields at 75% damage reduction with a 50k capacity and 20k regen with no bleed through. when past the shields there is a 70% chance of weapons deflection on the borg armour modules and hp regen in effect at all times with a regen rate of 8k damage a second unless applying something with DoT to negate the effect.
i mean thats space with no thought, but it could be far more challenging then that.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I think they need to make a channel where hardcore players can come together and make it challenging again.
Maybe play blindfolded....turn off all audio and only use a mouse to play. I mean some fly connies and other only equip white gear.....Be a real man or woman and play so that it is a challenge..
Then STo will truly be a challenge.
Not every piece of PvE content. Have you tried the Foundry? Look, there are limits to how quickly Cryptic can put out content, and players will always consume it more quickly. That's where the Foundry comes in. Think of it as outsourced content. Most missions are made by players every bit as passionate as you with a story to tell. Some missions can even rival what Cryptic has made.
I'd be happy to give you a few suggestions if your interested.
When i rarely outspike those guys in my Sci/Torpedo B'rel, i dont typically have to lay off the torpedo buttons for long. Plus, you do run into situations where you PUG with multiple suboptimal ships (i.e my ship should behave how i think they looked on a tv show, not what the current FOtM is) and you neither have the tanking nor the DPS to do the job.
IKS Korrasami (Fleet B'rel Bird of Prey Retrofit T5-U)
Your first option has a lot of merit, I know in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer I have been round up to 6 times with some classes and soon will take all my classes around again.
In the terms of STO, this option would add a new angle to the game, the lower tier blues and purples you find / craft - would suddenly be worth keeping as you could use them next time around. (So may sell more bank slots)
Also the difficulty levels could be tweaked, so, for example, first time around you have Normal and Advanced but after a level reset, it then opens up Elite gaming.
A very lazy third solution would be a third difficulty setting. Likely that just means the enemy does more dps and has more resists, but it would be a band-aid fix for a while with less work than a level cap increase and new content. It would probably need some sort of reward upgrade, though I would be interested in seeing mark XII purple random items drop regularly as good enough for that (its cash, and provides lesser geared players something to buy that is half decent).
ISEs in T2 Connies or Exeters ("Spock! Have we ... been thrown forward ...in time? What... the hell are those .....planet-sized ...CUBES??") [ellipsis added for authenticity]
ISEs after Removing all of your consoles. ("Red Alert - SABOTAGE!! Find me Riker - FIRE AT WILL!")
Just a few thoughts. Race to the end, and you'll just get to the end faster. It's not the Devs fault that 1% of 1% of the players are 'soooooo awesomesauce!!!!" that they run out the content and want MOAR.
Some - scratch that, NEARLY ALL of us can't play 24/7; no need to make more content for the 15 or 20 'superawesome' players out there who can play so long each week it's ludicrous.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
Keep the current STF's as well obviously but have the option for people to try take less than 10 mins.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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I raced thru the content on my first FED, since I started him last summer and played a lot over summer break. Didn't give myself a chance to enjoy it...
Now that the school year is back in swing, I started a KDF, ROM, and another FED. Now I'm taking my time and enjoying it. Plus, sometimes a good replay is healthy too, when you can't remember a plot line, or there's a connection to the Iconians somewhere.
My FED1 now is my serious PvP or PvE ship on weekends when the fleet needs marks or dilithium, since I can get thru episodes with relative ease...
CM
That is my next stomping grounds. I have been there for eq1 and eq2's release and this one will be grand..I hope. I also hope they really reinvent the MMo genre.
+1.
And to the STO Devs:
Look I understand the business decision and need to cater to the very casual players as there are in fact more of them, and their money is just as good as mine; but IT WOULD be nice to see the Devs throw the more hardcore -- weened on old EQ and vanilla WoW raiding, where content DID take 30 - 40 players working together to beat - a bone as it were.
I realize you honestly can't do something along the lines of an old 40 man molten core raid (circa 2006) from WoW - but some sort of content that requires a bit more then 'spam FAW for max DPS' tactics and maybe something that requires MORE then two runs to master whatever simple rudimentary mechanic you might have added to try and give a tiny bit more challenge.
Now, I realize it's asking a bit because if done right, it would be content that not everyone and his brother could win at by just letting their pet walk on their keyboard; and that many casuals will shriek that it's 'too hard/not fair'; but if done right/well (IE not just throwing in a game mechanic that randomly one shots you (aka 'The Hive' STF); but some mechanics and tactics that require actual teamwork and different powers/roles to successfully defeat); would at least give something more hardcore MMO players could enjoy too.
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..."
Doing stuff like that only goes to a certain degree. There will ALWAYS be someone who does something as a personal challenge, like a Nuzlocke challenge on a Poke'mon game. People ARE challenging themselves in various ways, but it doesn't change the base problem: The game never changes, never alters, nothing. Instead they add more stuff in with each patch it feels like, instead of anything more to actually DO.
I've said this a bunch in the past, and I still hold it true:
A game can be casual, that's fine. But it doesn't automatically have to make it EASY.
As for Rylan's original post. As you probably read in my own thread recently, I've grown weary with the game as well. So we are in the same boat together on that.