If you're referring to the foundry (and with that "THOUSANDS," you must be), I can only say that I certainly do not play this game to read fan fiction.
Considering this game is not canon and everything the Devs write is also just fan fiction I am not seeing your point.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I enjoyed the missions. I don't much care for the repetitive open world stuff. I mean, it doesn't help much that the framerate plummets inside the sphere (at least on my Mac Mini), but even so, doing stuff like that more than once gets pretty old. I prefer the story progression of the missions, but there just weren't very many of them.
Considering this game is not canon and everything the Devs write is also just fan fiction I am not seeing your point.
I don't read most of the official NPC text either. "Blowing things up for loot" is more important. Or it would be if the drops weren't all junk that goes straight to the nearest 50% vendor.
If you're referring to the foundry (and with that "THOUSANDS," you must be), I can only say that I certainly do not play this game to read fan fiction.
If you're playing a dev created mission - yes you do. It's all "fan fiction". Unless it happens on a television screen or a film screen, it's not canon. This entire game is one big fan fiction.
EDIT: Looks like someone else beat me to this punch above. Fedora off to you, thecosmic1.
Every "power creep nedded to be fixed" argument in defence of their actions fails at this point.
Well, not quite. Once someone has the stones to take it to its logical conclusion, "we had to reduce existing power creep to make room for us to add more," then the defense is again valid because it's no longer a load of self-contradicting hooey.
If you're referring to the foundry (and with that "THOUSANDS," you must be), I can only say that I certainly do not play this game to read fan fiction.
I'm really getting sick of that derogatory "fan fiction" comments gated to foundry mission.
Examples for worst then poorly written fan fiction?
Star Trek 2009
Thereshhold
Half of the Voyager episodes in general
Any Voyager episode involving the borg beside Scorpion
Generations
Nemesis
Lots of STO official missions, which, being non canon, are technically ALL fan fiction.
Pretty much every single Foundry mission I played so far had more sophisticated stories and plots then all those examples.
So where is the problem? If you like mindlessly blow up enemys don't complain about the lack of story missions.
If you like story then play them. The foundry missions are en par with the official missions. And en par with a lot of actual episodes. If you reject them because you "generally don't like who made them", while you do not even KNOW who made them, and not judge them by their actual quality, that that is YOUR failure alone and not cryptics or the authors.
I'm really getting sick of that derogatory "fan fiction" comments gated to foundry mission.
Examples for worst then poorly written fan fiction?
Star Trek 2009
Thereshhold
Half of the Voyager episodes in general
Any Voyager episode involving the borg beside Scorpion
Generations
Nemesis
Lots of STO official missions, which, being non canon, are technically ALL fan fiction.
Pretty much every single Foundry mission I played so far had more sophisticated stories and plots then all those examples.
So where is the problem? If you like mindlessly blow up enemys don't complain about the lack of story missions.
If you like story then play them. The foundry missions are en par with the official missions. And en par with a lot of actual episodes. If you reject them because you "generally don't like who made them", while you do not even KNOW who made them, and not judge them by their actual quality, that that is YOUR failure alone and not cryptics or the authors.
I would slightly disagree with this. There is worse fan fiction out there that what you have listed and some of it is in the Foundry. Some people are just better at telling a story than others and some have a talent for making especially bad stories. Some Foundry missions are on par with the official missions while others are worse. There are some Foundry missions that are just better than the best official missions.
I would slightly disagree with this. There is worse fan fiction out there that what you have listed and some of it is in the Foundry. Some people are just better at telling a story than others and some have a talent for making especially bad stories. Some Foundry missions are on par with the official missions while others are worse. There are some Foundry missions that are just better than the best official missions.
You might wanna pick the missions before playing them.
The officially featured are obviously the better ones.
Then look up the authors of those and play their other missions.
Then look up missions with good reviews.
The daily purple box for each mark means you can run ONE mission or hang out in ONE zone for one capture and have enough marks to complete 2 days worth of rep missions.
The new rep is great not for the passives... but for the gear. Which is part of the fun isn't it.
Now the way it is setup role alts (asuming you don't have a bunch already)... and enjoy playing the game. Do a few missions on each toon and start your rep projects. Pick on rep that you like for each toon and earn marks for gear for builds ect.
People are such annoying QQers in this game. S9 has been one of the best anti grind moves in a long time. That isn't to say the game isn't still grindy... but at least you are not forced into doing every single grind in the game on every toon.
The game is now ALT friendly... which is a good thing all round.
Agreed that recent changes have made things much more alt friendly, and there has been some mitigation of the grindiness.
However, the idea of controlling power creep has been lost sight of utterly.
One part of cryptic changes game mechanisms, ostensibly to counter the power creep.......while another part of cryptic releases new ships that make a mockery of it.
What I'm seeing is a sense of confusion abut what the future holds for STO. It doesn't seem to me that everyone at Cryptic is on the same page, or even sometimes the same book.
They did something about #1. That is why we have it. STO doesn't gate content. So all content is completable by people that just got to level 50 and veterans. At some point in the future, veterans would have so many passive powers that any new content would be a complete joke. The only solution to this is either nerf the number of passive powers we have or create challenging content that only players that have jumped through some hoops can do.
People should learn the reason why a nerf happens before they start complaining about it. Not doing this makes players seem like they don't care about the long-term stability of the game and only care about themselves.
100% right!
" Experience is a hard mistress, she gives the tests first, and the lessons after... "
So far, I haven't found any motivation to play S9 (same for many of my fleet mates.) I don't feel like grinding for the Undine rep since:
1. The limit number of traits a char can have. I've already had all the rep traits that I need. All the new rep traits are not really a must-have.
2. Don't see any point getting new rep stuff.
Cryptics better do something about #1, or they're gonna lose a lot longtime players like myself. I don't see any logic behind this. Mmo is a genre where players are thrill to farm and accumulate skills/items/powers..
Looking forward to summer event... but aint grinding for new rep 'cause it's a waste of time.
My 2 cents.
If You Don't Want To Play Then Don't Post on the forums Complaining.
So far, I haven't found any motivation to play S9 (same for many of my fleet mates.) I don't feel like grinding for the Undine rep since:
1. The limit number of traits a char can have. I've already had all the rep traits that I need. All the new rep traits are not really a must-have.
2. Don't see any point getting new rep stuff.
Cryptics better do something about #1, or they're gonna lose a lot longtime players like myself. I don't see any logic behind this. Mmo is a genre where players are thrill to farm and accumulate skills/items/powers..
Looking forward to summer event... but aint grinding for new rep 'cause it's a waste of time.
My 2 cents.
I agree with everything you said. With the grind part Cryptic should have include something to advance the story after each teir. I swear with season 9 it almost feels like cryptic is doing the least it possilbe can to keep sto alive. Almost like they are ready to give up on it. NO new 5 mission story arcs. When you stop advancing the story in a MMO its DEAD. NO if, and or Buts about it. NO story NO game and more than anything else STO thrives on good storys. Sto despretly needs more 5man space missions. Flying the Cure,infected and Khitomer over and over is boring. Their awesome but I've done way to many times. Heres the problem. With Rep hubs that offer 3 piece armour sets, 3 piece ship sets and 3 piece weapon sets. Not to mention everything else you can get. You have to run the SAME 5man stfs 100x or more. Thats insane. You may think my estimationi is off but its not. Lets say your awarded with 75 marks for doing a stf. A 3 piece space set cost 3000 marks. You would have to run it 40x just to have your marks. That is way to many times to run 2 or 3 stfs just to make 1 of the sets. There needs to be more STF 5man space missions to keep the player from getting bored to death. Cryptic needs to step up. This may possibly be the biggest problem in sto. If your gonna require someone to get this many marks to buy the rep gear. You have to give them some variety in obtaining it. Right now the strategy doesn't cut it.
...create challenging content that only players that have jumped through some hoops can do.
I can only wonder why the dev's would think that this is not a good idea for the most veteran players. Most every game that I can think of gets harder as the player progresses through the content, so why should STO be any different? In fact, I was somewhat disappointed when I discovered that my captains did not level up uniformly with subsequent episode missions, instead jumping 2-3 levels from one mission to the next. The logical sequence would be to increase the difficulty, range of equipment and tactics as one's character levels up.
Nerfing the reputation system was just a blatant admission by the dev's that they lack imagination and skill with regard to better content creation. I have yet to play any S9 content, and have no incentive to rush into it, since no additional skills/traits are needed to complete the missions; this very fact negates the challenge that could have been S9...:(
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
1. The limit number of traits a char can have. I've already had all the rep traits that I need. All the new rep traits are not really a must-have.
I don't see the problem. If you don't want the new traits, and have everything you want, as you said, why would you want to grind them ? Limited slot or not.
However, the idea of controlling power creep has been lost sight of utterly.
One part of cryptic changes game mechanisms, ostensibly to counter the power creep.......while another part of cryptic releases new ships that make a mockery of it.
I seriously think the problem with this isn't Cryptic's intentions, but their vagueness leading to us not understanding what they mean. I don't think they meant "put and end to power creep" at this point. Their actions strongly suggest what was meant was "we need to back up on some of the power creep to make room for more."
Because the alternative is to believe they intended to stop power creep, but are so utterly incompetent as to not realize they're playing "two steps forward then one step back" and thinking it's accomplishing something- and whatever else I may think I can't really convince myself they're that clueless.
People should learn the reason why a nerf happens before they start complaining about it. Not doing this makes players seem like they don't care about the long-term stability of the game and only care about themselves.
So? What's wrong with that? In the end limiting active rep powers means the one character progression mechanic was done away with. People care about it BECAUSE it affects them, therefore its incredibly important to them, and by extension to Cryptic. Am I the only one that sees this as their final farewell to long time players? They know the average churn player won't get to max in even a single rep so what does it matter if anyone sticking around for a while will hit a ceiling?
I seriously think the problem with this isn't Cryptic's intentions, but their vagueness leading to us not understanding what they mean. I don't think they meant "put and end to power creep" at this point. Their actions strongly suggest what was meant was "we need to back up on some of the power creep to make room for more."
Because the alternative is to believe they intended to stop power creep, but are so utterly incompetent as to not realize they're playing "two steps forward then one step back" and thinking it's accomplishing something- and whatever else I may think I can't really convince myself they're that clueless.
I think it is also important to understand that we do not ever see the long-term picture. We look at things in quarterly perspectives, at best. For example, if this new Expansion Pack is a Level Cap increase then it stands to reason that there will be some harder Content within it - Content that makes our Power Creep levels seem normal rather the over-the-top. So it is quite possible that what we consider too powerful now might be just right later.
Think about this upcoming Expansion. Cryptic started working on it in December, which means it was planned and charted out probably around September or October so they could get all of the OKs from CBS by the time they needed to start working on it. So they have known where the power levels were going to be long before we did.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I'm really getting sick of that derogatory "fan fiction" comments gated to foundry mission.
It wasn't derogatory. I like fan fiction (well, some fan fiction). But when I want to read some, there are places to do that. MMORPGs I play for the character advancement. Something that is not possible in a reward-less foundry mission.
So where is the problem? If you like mindlessly blow up enemys don't complain about the lack of story missions.
I'm not complaining about the lack of story missions. I'm complaining about the lack of challenge. I want there to be a mission somewhere that actually requires some of that supposedly OP gear that this game is full of. And then a mission that requires the reward from winning that mission, and so on. Some mountains to climb on that flat plain of easy that is the endgame in STO.
It was infinitely scalable, but the developers have shown zero interest in actually scaling anything. The endgame is flat as a pancake, every mission as easy as the rest.
The nerf has shown me how pointless the rep system is. I used to do the reps automatically for the free passives, then considered if any of the gear was worth buying (usually not). Cutting the passives forced me to seriously consider the whole system for the first time and I realized that you don't actually need any of the stuff. None of the stuff lets you do anything you couldn't do without it. It's all useless "options," a waste of time and effort.
And now, since I'm not doing the rep and there is no more fleet holdings to build, 99% of the so-called endgame is a waste of time, too. It doesn't give you anything you need except dilithium, which I have enough of already. And then you don't really need anything you could buy with dilithium either.
In other words, the problem of the game is it lacks challenge. Because you can do everything, there is no incentive to do anything.
I do not think I could phrase any better my own feeling regarding the rep nerf.
To me, reputations abilities and gear are hidden level cap increases. They are more difficult than your regular career path but that is fine since the XP requirements to level are typically exponential.
The rep nerf closed a good possibility of further improving an existing character. You can only make some exchange or trade offs between existing traits/abilities.
Now, there are some problems: were the first reputations too difficult? Sure, definitely.
With 4 or 5 tracks, having very costly reputations paths could have been a deterrent for alts or new players.
This is why the change for the Dyson reputation structure compared to the previous three were good: Dyson reputation was easier but challenging enough to be rewarding and fulfilling.
I would have preferred to have the five reputations modelled under the Dyson reputation templates.
As far as scalability is concerned, the question is scalable to what?
story-lines missions? they are scaled. When you replay a mission with a higher ranking, rewards and difficulty are automatically adjusted
PvE Team missions? which not scale them too? Add a new difficulty settings
So, no challenges, no incentives, no higher mountains to climb, no bigger dragons to slay, no fun, no play
They did something about #1. That is why we have it. STO doesn't gate content. So all content is completable by people that just got to level 50 and veterans. At some point in the future, veterans would have so many passive powers that any new content would be a complete joke. The only solution to this is either nerf the number of passive powers we have or create challenging content that only players that have jumped through some hoops can do.
People should learn the reason why a nerf happens before they start complaining about it. Not doing this makes players seem like they don't care about the long-term stability of the game and only care about themselves.
what you said is part of the reason we need (like just about everyother game out there) level increases every few years (typically with expansions). this makes it so they can release new content, without it being to "easy" for us..
even without the "traits" we were cruching every new piece of content they laid out. being stuck at the same level for this long is counter productive to everything. its the reason almost every other mmo has level cap increases. its not our (the players) fault they still have us playing endgame content that is 4 years old.
yes, we are getting a level cap increase, but cryptic is on record as saying this is the last one.. I for one do not wish to be stuck at the same level. I used to love getting a new patch and enjoying leveling in "new" content with my "main toon" again. it breaks it up and makes the content more enjoyable.. right now, I beat all that s9 had to offer in less than a day.
honestly, at first I didn't care when they announced the trait changed. I didn't really comment on anything and blah blah blah.. but now, that I find myself having to deal with it. it is making me angry. I grinded my a** off on all of my toons (12ish) to get those traits. knowing I was gonna get "all" of those powers. had I known we wouldn't need them all, I would have been more picky about which ones I did. the juice was not worth the squeeze for me. and im pretty bumbed that I wasted so much time for stuff I cant use now.
The Undine weapon set is awesome even if you're not fighting Undine. The phaser+disruptor boost makes phaser boats worthwhile in PvE again and it nearly puts disruptors back on top as the king of dps. The tactical console in the set isn't worth it over spire CRTH consoles though. The special weapon proc is okay compared to protonic weapons, but it still doesn't beat the Elachi proc.
I will also note that the Counter command deflector is the only one besides Omega force that actually boosts a ship's tactical abilities (and more than just accuracy). Also the Counter command engines are the only ones that boost a ship's inertia, so they're great for big heavy ships that accelerate like a paralyzed manatee.
Unfortunately none of the reputation warp cores have [AMP] making them worthless compared to fleet cores.
I think it is also important to understand that we do not ever see the long-term picture.
You are mistaken, we see the long term plans quite clearly. Focus on player retention so that average STO churn player stays for a few extra months. Most of the changes in STO can be directly traced to this overarching design consideration. Limiting the number of passives has made thing more attractive for the new player since he or she no longer feels that they're impossibly far behind. In truth they won't max out more than a rep or two, but they feel like they can catch up, that its not hopeless, so they stay around longer before getting discouraged by the grind.
In truth they won't max out more than a rep or two, but they feel like they can catch up, that its not hopeless, so they stay around longer before getting discouraged by the grind.
Or they quit after getting to level 50, given that there is nothing worthwhile to accomplish after that.
Comments
If you're playing a dev created mission - yes you do. It's all "fan fiction". Unless it happens on a television screen or a film screen, it's not canon. This entire game is one big fan fiction.
EDIT: Looks like someone else beat me to this punch above. Fedora off to you, thecosmic1.
That sounds about right.
Well, not quite. Once someone has the stones to take it to its logical conclusion, "we had to reduce existing power creep to make room for us to add more," then the defense is again valid because it's no longer a load of self-contradicting hooey.
I'm really getting sick of that derogatory "fan fiction" comments gated to foundry mission.
Examples for worst then poorly written fan fiction?
Star Trek 2009
Thereshhold
Half of the Voyager episodes in general
Any Voyager episode involving the borg beside Scorpion
Generations
Nemesis
Lots of STO official missions, which, being non canon, are technically ALL fan fiction.
Pretty much every single Foundry mission I played so far had more sophisticated stories and plots then all those examples.
So where is the problem? If you like mindlessly blow up enemys don't complain about the lack of story missions.
If you like story then play them. The foundry missions are en par with the official missions. And en par with a lot of actual episodes. If you reject them because you "generally don't like who made them", while you do not even KNOW who made them, and not judge them by their actual quality, that that is YOUR failure alone and not cryptics or the authors.
I would slightly disagree with this. There is worse fan fiction out there that what you have listed and some of it is in the Foundry. Some people are just better at telling a story than others and some have a talent for making especially bad stories. Some Foundry missions are on par with the official missions while others are worse. There are some Foundry missions that are just better than the best official missions.
You might wanna pick the missions before playing them.
The officially featured are obviously the better ones.
Then look up the authors of those and play their other missions.
Then look up missions with good reviews.
That way you rarely hit a bad one.
Agreed that recent changes have made things much more alt friendly, and there has been some mitigation of the grindiness.
However, the idea of controlling power creep has been lost sight of utterly.
One part of cryptic changes game mechanisms, ostensibly to counter the power creep.......while another part of cryptic releases new ships that make a mockery of it.
What I'm seeing is a sense of confusion abut what the future holds for STO. It doesn't seem to me that everyone at Cryptic is on the same page, or even sometimes the same book.
100% right!
If You Don't Want To Play Then Don't Post on the forums Complaining.
I agree with everything you said. With the grind part Cryptic should have include something to advance the story after each teir. I swear with season 9 it almost feels like cryptic is doing the least it possilbe can to keep sto alive. Almost like they are ready to give up on it. NO new 5 mission story arcs. When you stop advancing the story in a MMO its DEAD. NO if, and or Buts about it. NO story NO game and more than anything else STO thrives on good storys. Sto despretly needs more 5man space missions. Flying the Cure,infected and Khitomer over and over is boring. Their awesome but I've done way to many times. Heres the problem. With Rep hubs that offer 3 piece armour sets, 3 piece ship sets and 3 piece weapon sets. Not to mention everything else you can get. You have to run the SAME 5man stfs 100x or more. Thats insane. You may think my estimationi is off but its not. Lets say your awarded with 75 marks for doing a stf. A 3 piece space set cost 3000 marks. You would have to run it 40x just to have your marks. That is way to many times to run 2 or 3 stfs just to make 1 of the sets. There needs to be more STF 5man space missions to keep the player from getting bored to death. Cryptic needs to step up. This may possibly be the biggest problem in sto. If your gonna require someone to get this many marks to buy the rep gear. You have to give them some variety in obtaining it. Right now the strategy doesn't cut it.
I can only wonder why the dev's would think that this is not a good idea for the most veteran players. Most every game that I can think of gets harder as the player progresses through the content, so why should STO be any different? In fact, I was somewhat disappointed when I discovered that my captains did not level up uniformly with subsequent episode missions, instead jumping 2-3 levels from one mission to the next. The logical sequence would be to increase the difficulty, range of equipment and tactics as one's character levels up.
Nerfing the reputation system was just a blatant admission by the dev's that they lack imagination and skill with regard to better content creation. I have yet to play any S9 content, and have no incentive to rush into it, since no additional skills/traits are needed to complete the missions; this very fact negates the challenge that could have been S9...:(
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
I seriously think the problem with this isn't Cryptic's intentions, but their vagueness leading to us not understanding what they mean. I don't think they meant "put and end to power creep" at this point. Their actions strongly suggest what was meant was "we need to back up on some of the power creep to make room for more."
Because the alternative is to believe they intended to stop power creep, but are so utterly incompetent as to not realize they're playing "two steps forward then one step back" and thinking it's accomplishing something- and whatever else I may think I can't really convince myself they're that clueless.
So? What's wrong with that? In the end limiting active rep powers means the one character progression mechanic was done away with. People care about it BECAUSE it affects them, therefore its incredibly important to them, and by extension to Cryptic. Am I the only one that sees this as their final farewell to long time players? They know the average churn player won't get to max in even a single rep so what does it matter if anyone sticking around for a while will hit a ceiling?
Think about this upcoming Expansion. Cryptic started working on it in December, which means it was planned and charted out probably around September or October so they could get all of the OKs from CBS by the time they needed to start working on it. So they have known where the power levels were going to be long before we did.
I do not think I could phrase any better my own feeling regarding the rep nerf.
To me, reputations abilities and gear are hidden level cap increases. They are more difficult than your regular career path but that is fine since the XP requirements to level are typically exponential.
The rep nerf closed a good possibility of further improving an existing character. You can only make some exchange or trade offs between existing traits/abilities.
Now, there are some problems: were the first reputations too difficult? Sure, definitely.
With 4 or 5 tracks, having very costly reputations paths could have been a deterrent for alts or new players.
This is why the change for the Dyson reputation structure compared to the previous three were good: Dyson reputation was easier but challenging enough to be rewarding and fulfilling.
I would have preferred to have the five reputations modelled under the Dyson reputation templates.
As far as scalability is concerned, the question is scalable to what?
story-lines missions? they are scaled. When you replay a mission with a higher ranking, rewards and difficulty are automatically adjusted
PvE Team missions? which not scale them too? Add a new difficulty settings
So, no challenges, no incentives, no higher mountains to climb, no bigger dragons to slay, no fun, no play
what you said is part of the reason we need (like just about everyother game out there) level increases every few years (typically with expansions). this makes it so they can release new content, without it being to "easy" for us..
even without the "traits" we were cruching every new piece of content they laid out. being stuck at the same level for this long is counter productive to everything. its the reason almost every other mmo has level cap increases. its not our (the players) fault they still have us playing endgame content that is 4 years old.
yes, we are getting a level cap increase, but cryptic is on record as saying this is the last one.. I for one do not wish to be stuck at the same level. I used to love getting a new patch and enjoying leveling in "new" content with my "main toon" again. it breaks it up and makes the content more enjoyable.. right now, I beat all that s9 had to offer in less than a day.
honestly, at first I didn't care when they announced the trait changed. I didn't really comment on anything and blah blah blah.. but now, that I find myself having to deal with it. it is making me angry. I grinded my a** off on all of my toons (12ish) to get those traits. knowing I was gonna get "all" of those powers. had I known we wouldn't need them all, I would have been more picky about which ones I did. the juice was not worth the squeeze for me. and im pretty bumbed that I wasted so much time for stuff I cant use now.
I will also note that the Counter command deflector is the only one besides Omega force that actually boosts a ship's tactical abilities (and more than just accuracy). Also the Counter command engines are the only ones that boost a ship's inertia, so they're great for big heavy ships that accelerate like a paralyzed manatee.
Unfortunately none of the reputation warp cores have [AMP] making them worthless compared to fleet cores.
You are mistaken, we see the long term plans quite clearly. Focus on player retention so that average STO churn player stays for a few extra months. Most of the changes in STO can be directly traced to this overarching design consideration. Limiting the number of passives has made thing more attractive for the new player since he or she no longer feels that they're impossibly far behind. In truth they won't max out more than a rep or two, but they feel like they can catch up, that its not hopeless, so they stay around longer before getting discouraged by the grind.