Playing too much? I disagree. If you acquire max this and max that, taking a break isn't going to relieve the boredom of an underdeveloped game.
I was bored of this game 2 years ago and stopped playing it and played other games.
Now I am back and not yet bored. I have to catch up to a lot.
So I think yes - you can simply play to much. No matter how excellent the content team, they won't be able to create enough content for oyu that you never got bored of it. It's a ton easier to play content then to make it. If you don't believe that, try making a Foundry mission and see how quickly that would get boring.
To make the gum interesting again, you can let it go for a while, and then return when you're bored with the stuff you did instead, and see what new has happened in the game.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I was bored of this game 2 years ago and stopped playing it and played other games.
Now I am back and not yet bored. I have to catch up to a lot.
So I think yes - you can simply play to much. No matter how excellent the content team, they won't be able to create enough content for oyu that you never got bored of it. It's a ton easier to play content then to make it. If you don't believe that, try making a Foundry mission and see how quickly that would get boring.
To make the gum interesting again, you can let it go for a while, and then return when you're bored with the stuff you did instead, and see what new has happened in the game.
This - just step back for awhile. Not just a week or two, go for a month or two. Or five. By that time, new things'll pop up.
As the title really, just wondering if I am the only one ?
I have been playing for maybe just over a year.
I have a Fed toon and a Rom toon. Both are max level and have top end ships and gear. All fleet gear and all the ships I want right now. JHDC for both toon's, Kumari, Fleet Ar'Kif, Scimitar etc... All kitted to the best they can be.
Both toons have 300k+ in Dilithium and a further 240K each to refine..... They both have several thousand fleet mks which I cannot get rid of due to no fleet projects as everything is a t max level, but then having said that they both have in excess of 250k fleet credits anyway..... Again with nothing to actually spend them on as both toons have everything.
I have 150Mill EC between the 2 toons but again, nothing I can buy with it that is better that I currently have.
STF's and end game content now just seem totally pointless. Nothing to grind for, nothing to aim for. I find myself now logging in and just literally doing nothing.....
The new undine stuff we have waiting, what ? 6 months for ? A few missions that last an hour at most and a couple of space Queued missions that are awful.... Being pulled all over the place by rifts, stuck in bubbles, shooting at enemies that vanish and then reappear.... It's all just frustrating rather than being fun and something that I am not alone in thinking judging by how sparse the Queues are for these maps.
And what do we have right now ? Get 15 Lobi each day by repeating the same old stuff you have already done !
Why should we have to keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over ?
I really do long for new content, something fresh, something new, something exciting. I see little point in revamping old feature episodes and missions for the tiny amount of people that will actually play them.
More and more the people I used to play with day in day out, I now see maybe once a week or sometimes even further apart so it's clear that people are not playing as much as they used to.
Why can't we have more space missions ? Why can we not settle down somewhere ? Build our own houses etc... ? Why can we not customise ships more ? Why can I not spend my hundreds of millions of EC, adding tac console slots to ships ? Tailor them as I want them ? Why can I not add further weapon slots ? Everything is predetermined which means that when the vast majority of people get to the top level they fly the same ships, with the same gear etc...
This game, this universe has so much potential, so much scope, so much depth and it;'s all just being ignored and bypassed in favour of repeating the same boring TRIBBLE day in day out.
Sorry for the rant, but I just don't want to see this game slowly vanish and fade into nothing.... :cool:
Greetings Captain 07
I have been playing STO for a good 8 months now. When I first started playing I was HOOKED!. Levelling up receiving ships as I reached new ranks fighting with all I had just to get pass the mission in front of me.
When I reached lvl50 for the first time I asked my those in my fleet what's next? They told me get your DPS as high as possible. So I did that... the next 3 months were dedicated in tricking out my ship with the best possible gear and I did just that. I was hitting around 17k DPS in my fleet MVAE.
I was so happy, I was able to wreck thru missions soloing 1 side of KASE on my own. I then noticed something.. I wasn't having fun? I had AP weaponery and being an escort... I flew up to my target and unleashed everything I had and melted a cubes in good time but it wasn't fun and it kept getting less and less fun. I was even falling asleep!
5 months into the game and I was wanting to stop? At this point in time I have made some really good friends and mostly the ones keeping me in game but that was it really. The DPS bug I caught wore thin on me because it wasn't what I knew ST to be.
I was watching some ST clips and even thinking back to some other ST games I played like Bridge Commander and remembered even when I first started playing how I flew my ships. I was flying them around, you see ST ships flying around. So I decided to scale down my DPS and go somewhat canon my my MVAE.. and you know what?? THAT is what I was missing... 1 flying my ships but also having a little challenge when doing the missions. With dailing down my DPS the encounters say with a borg cube was REALLY hard... I needed help from others to take down the cube. Just like in the show!
From that I created the Star Trek Battles channel where we are not worried about mix/maxing our ships rather dailing down our DPS and relying on skill and teamwork to finish missions. It also has given me and some others within the channel to fly others ships that normally some wouldn't say like the Connie..... 5 man ISE with Connies anyone?
I guess what I'm trying to say is, with what is available in STO you can make of it what you want. I have been fortunate to find people who were in the same boat as me and since forming STB I haven't had to grind for anything really... just play and play for fun. We have themed runs like low tier/TOS runs or TNG run etc... we even have an upcoming Dominion war PvP re-enactment coming up next month which will surely be fun with ships having no high end gear.
It's a long reply but as I mentioned try to have fun with STO the way YOU want to. If nothing is working than maybe a break is in order? Would hate to see that but one must do what one must do.
I extend an invitation to you to maybe even give STB a chance to see if that can keep your interests up if not I wish you all the best.
But it is very possible to do, two other games have done it with no more than a couple programmers. Granted they are rather bad and/or early in development, it is entirely possible to have ships run by a player crew.
Starquest Online and Hazeron both have this.
Puzzle pirates and Pirates of the Caribbean Online also have elements of exactly this.
So there is no reason that it should be merely a dream, if my deductions are correct, this game should be able to manage it without TOO much work.
Many good viewpoints, concerns & creative ideas in this thread! While I don't claim to have a single truly original thought in my head, it occurs to me that players who find themselves in the situation of the OP have to take matters into their own hands to restore the fun. Trizeo1 has shown one available path, others have done similar things.
It is a sad commentary that the players should find themselves in the role of the dev's, who get PAID to create content. By this I mean that since the dev's are obviously neither Trek fans nor accomplished gamers, the players have to be more creative and develop fun things for free, and pay for the "privilege" to do so. At least there is the Foundry, where players can create their own content., and the Fleets, where like-minded players can work out their own RP in the Trek universe.
Knowing that Cryptic is unwilling/unable to sustain the creation of engaging story content, I would be interested in seeing a player collaboration where a group of Foundry authors, Trek enthusiasts, and accomplished gamers deliberately collaborated on fleshing out the most recent disappointing seasons. Different skills can be pooled, so story creation, episode coding, and so forth can be "crowd-sourced" into something more cohesive than the dev's efforts to date. Some interesting story chains have already been done for the Foundry, so it's not hard to imagine the fan base filling in the gaps where Cryptic has fallen flat...:cool:
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
If you are bored, then the best thing to do is simply take a break as more content will be released later. Typically what happens in games is you eventually become extremely powerful and everything eventually becomes a cakewalk. You got top ships, you got top gear, and you have tweaked your toon, Boffs and slotted Doffs to make your ship run at peak performance... Why not make new toons and try something different?
This is my 1st MMO, but I would say that players can burn through content much faster than developers can create them so it is foreseeable that players will eventually become bored. For example, I have read several post of people completing the main story missions in less than 7 days. Some people posted they did it within in 3 days. All that just so they can start playing endgame content.
I would say that expecting a game to keep you fully entertained is simply expecting too much especially for a game that is Free 2 Pay. Prior to playing STO I was playing Skyrim and even with all the community created content the game eventually became very boring playing the same character again and again. At that point I simply created a new character. Yes, I know I am comparing a single player game to a MMO, but the point is the same... eventually you are going to get board playing the same character/toon day after day after day...
I find myself now logging in and just literally doing nothing.....
been doing this a little over a year now, nice to see others catching up.
as for stuff to do no idea, accolades? foundry missions, even make your own foundry mission? make a klingon, try the content there? since you only have fed and rom, one faction to go..climb nimbus? reach the top of the probe on defera? find some fun bugs and use them with friends?....yeah i get up to alot of "stuff"...
Here's an idea... grind the exploration cluster missions and catalog the missions you play. They're not great, but there's a wider variety than most people have seen.
+1 for Foundry. Not necessarily authoring, but just playing. Go in, and do a custom search for the "Story" tag. There's a ton of quality stuff in there that will keep you going for quite some time. The longer missions also heap on a good amount of dilithium, especially with the Investigate Officer Reports wrapper, so you still get some "grind" done. Once a day you can do one of the Spotlight missions for an additional bunch of dil. I spent two straight weekends hitting Foundry missions and barely scratched the surface.
As for authoring, it's not as hard as it's sometimes made out. The hardest thing is constructing stuff on the ground because you only have a 2D view while placing, and have to playtest the map to see if you got things where you want them. Other than that, it's not so bad. You don't have to do any "coding", just string different types of events together and define when things appear and disappear related to those events. I watched kirkfat's tutorials on YouTube this past weekend, and was able to bang out a fairly competent little demo mission.
In general though, when I feel I've had enough of the game, I walk away from it for a few weeks. I go play another game. I spent most of my gaming time last week having a blast with South Park: The Stick of Truth, and I have The Wonderful 101 next in the queue to play. I only really need to log in for like 5-10 minutes a day to kick my rep projects with the heaps of marks I have built up. I have plenty of dil and EC ready for whenever I really want to start playing again.
As the title really, just wondering if I am the only one ?
I have been playing for maybe just over a year.
I have a Fed toon and a Rom toon. Both are max level and have top end ships and gear. All fleet gear and all the ships I want right now. JHDC for both toon's, Kumari, Fleet Ar'Kif, Scimitar etc... All kitted to the best they can be.
Both toons have 300k+ in Dilithium and a further 240K each to refine..... They both have several thousand fleet mks which I cannot get rid of due to no fleet projects as everything is a t max level, but then having said that they both have in excess of 250k fleet credits anyway..... Again with nothing to actually spend them on as both toons have everything.
I have 150Mill EC between the 2 toons but again, nothing I can buy with it that is better that I currently have.
STF's and end game content now just seem totally pointless. Nothing to grind for, nothing to aim for. I find myself now logging in and just literally doing nothing.....
The new undine stuff we have waiting, what ? 6 months for ? A few missions that last an hour at most and a couple of space Queued missions that are awful.... Being pulled all over the place by rifts, stuck in bubbles, shooting at enemies that vanish and then reappear.... It's all just frustrating rather than being fun and something that I am not alone in thinking judging by how sparse the Queues are for these maps.
And what do we have right now ? Get 15 Lobi each day by repeating the same old stuff you have already done !
Why should we have to keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over ?
I really do long for new content, something fresh, something new, something exciting. I see little point in revamping old feature episodes and missions for the tiny amount of people that will actually play them.
More and more the people I used to play with day in day out, I now see maybe once a week or sometimes even further apart so it's clear that people are not playing as much as they used to.
Why can't we have more space missions ? Why can we not settle down somewhere ? Build our own houses etc... ? Why can we not customise ships more ? Why can I not spend my hundreds of millions of EC, adding tac console slots to ships ? Tailor them as I want them ? Why can I not add further weapon slots ? Everything is predetermined which means that when the vast majority of people get to the top level they fly the same ships, with the same gear etc...
This game, this universe has so much potential, so much scope, so much depth and it;'s all just being ignored and bypassed in favour of repeating the same boring TRIBBLE day in day out.
Sorry for the rant, but I just don't want to see this game slowly vanish and fade into nothing.... :cool:
Have you tried Foundry missions? Teaching fleetmates about STF mission complexities? Toyed and played with different ship builds like pure kinetic builds or mine-layer builds? Played around with different ground type builds of your toons? Would you want to complete all the DOFF chains? Collect all reputation items or passives? Would you want to crack a certain game mechanic? Play missions that you enjoy and like only because you enjoy and like them? Just a few ideas for you.
Endgame STO can be challenging and sometimes it is hard to find a purpose to keep playing; I used to grind out reputation systems for the defensive passives but with the nerf, oh well. I enjoyed the bonus hours for fleet marks to grind for marks for my small fleet, they removed this, oh well.
If you are truly not interested in playing STO anymore for whatever reason then write Cryptic a ticket telling them why you are not playing anymore, take a break and do something that makes you happy.
In this, players would be crewmen aboard a ship, tending to many of the aspects of running one in order to enhance its performance, repair damage, and keep everyone on board well and alive.
When shields are lowered, or boarding shuttles land, a crew may have to contend with intruders and fight them off before they can sabotage anything critical.
As for who would actually be controlling the simulated ship, and if it would simulate a fully functional bridge and all, that is up for discussion, but the main idea is that the ship would be jam packed with interactive nodes that all contribute to keeping the ship operating at full capacity.
Star Trek Battles Channel - Play Star Trek like they did in the series!Avatar: pinterest-com/pin/14003448816884219Are you sure it isn't time for a "colorful metaphor"? --Spock in 'The Voyage Home' SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
Something even as simple as a Guns of Icarus type game with a Star Trek theme could be fun. The mechanics would need some work though, since you wouldn't need to run to another side of the bridge to fire a different weapon, you just stay at the Tactical console...
Either way, that's a whole other game from STO. One that is valid and I'd like to see exist, but separately.
I find it sad that we, the players, have to develop our own content if we went the path of the Foundry so that we avoid boredom. It's one thing to develop an "episode" to enrich the STO, but it's another to do job of the developer, especially with the limitation we have. As I mentioned before, there is a learning curve to the Foundry. If you are creating content to not be bored, it may--as for some--tedious and almost grinding-like to create something you are interested without violating TOS. A lot of the ideas and philosophies of science fiction really can't be tackled here without getting close to or violating TOS.
As for role-playing, one of the posters mentioned that we, the players, are the ones who have to come up with a "free" means to avoid boredom in a "paying" environment. Sure this MMO is F2P, but to access models and other goodies, someone has to pay for it. Most chat role-plays really just require the use of the channel and nothing more, which means that role-players can use a less memory-hogging chat client to satisfy this aspect of the game. And yes, there are 3D chat clients that have "Star Trek" content.
I do not know what the solution truly is for players who are bored in an F2P MMO. I believe that most people who play STO are Trekkies at heart and want to embrace themselves with the ideals set by the series and novels. Sure it would be nice to see our favorite characters come aboard the game, which has happened, but we, the players and our characters, need to explore and discover. One of the posters on here has a picture in the signature that states, "Does anyone remember when we were explorers?"
Well,as people have mentioned often, it's quicker to play missions than it is to write them. It's impossible for the devs to write missions fast enough for people to keep playing new stuff every day.
Playing the game is just not rewarding. By this I don't mean to say the game in general isn't fun at all. I just mean there's little incentive to play any of it for anything else than what you know you'll receive. In most cases that's some grind progressing reward.
And you can get pretty much everything by grind (and/or money).
Lobi Store items? -> Play the market for EC and buy lockbox keys
Fleet items? -> Play the market for EC, grind Dil on multiple chars, grind the marks
Set items? -> Grind Dil on chars, Grind reputation
Everything else? -> Gather EC, purchase on the exchange
Are drops even remotely meaningful? Not at all.
Is your performance important? For bragging rights, maybe. For a slight yet irrelevant difference in the number of marks, maybe. But generally not.
What keeps players entertained? 1. New/unused content - this is pretty much bombed by the minimal time it takes to get to lvl 50, and Cryptic's recent development priorities. Also hard to maintain, yet not impossible. 2. Randomness aka epic item drops - waiting for the right item with the perfect combination of enchantments/stats/prefixes/suffixes/whatever? Stop looking. Not here. 3. Repeatable content that keeps being challenging, changing, fun and perhaps even meanigful aka PvP (RvR) - Nothing to see here. PvP is an afterthought, the balance is trash as a result of F2P "bigger, better, you want this new lockbox!". And there's really no concept whatsoever apart from borderline P2W random team deathmatch without any sort of matchmaking 4. Bragging rights - ok, this can theoretically be found in either of the above, but there's also PvP titles or whatever. Basically it also comes down to rewards for beating a challenge or being very hard-working. I guess all I could come up with is accolade points (yeah, right..), the last MACO/KHG style unlock and the title for beating NWS. That's.. underwhelming to say the least. So, basically, nope. 5. Challenge! This sums up 2-4, but for emphasis I'll repeat it: some meaningful, fair, rewarding Challenge! And NO, the No Win Scenario alone doesn't fill this requirement. Apart from that NWS is a case of get the right equipment, realize that some roles or choices are rubbish, remember or note down the sequence. I'm not sure if this can be called skill. It's more a case of gather the right information. But to be fair, it's better than pretty much everything else.
That's it. feel free to add things you think make a game fun or give it replayability.
I just think Cryptic has succesfully erased all challenge, randomness and thrill out of the game.
It's casual, it's mildly entertaining. But if you're not into that weird kind of horrible elitist and expensive 'countestrike with spaceships'ish PvP that STO has to 'offer' atm, then you're out of luck once you're through with the grind. IF you endure the grind.
Solution? Dunno. Adding content doesn't seem to be Cryptic's strong point. And it's not like there isn't enough content to begin with. The existing content (episodes, old 'adventure' zones) is just so trivial, meaningless, optional, not rewarding, all in all treated badly and in need of an overhaul.
Improvements on some of the episodes are noted, but thats merely the right direction and a cautious start.
(Re-)Adding challenge would kinda contradict everything Cryptic has done recently. But I think eventually there's no getting around it. Unless they want to add a bunch of real good episodes every quarter..
Some really well designed open PvP would be awesome. Imagine the Romulans as a proper third faction, then go all **** RvR'ish with stations/areas/planets to hold, for faction-wide bonuses and fame. The only problem is I don't see this coming. Ever.
-edit-
Seriously? The acronym for Dark Age of C. is filtered? Seriously? Wtf..
First, as a result of removing the daily-hourly events, the game has started to suffer from a lack a variety. 'Scheduled' daily-hourly events allowed players to diversify their playing time. If someone was getting tired of queued missions, the individual could try a hand at crafting, 2409 trivia, scanning anomalies, race around the universe, get a bonus on marks, etc... While I think its great that we can casually play certain events, without waiting for them to appear, I also believe that the scheduled calendar events made the game feel episodic, alive, and entertaining.
Second, according to what I have seen on YouTube, the DS9 Omega office was once a lively place. DS9's Omega office and Risa need a set of 'permanent' casual missions, which will gather everyone to those locations. Cryptic needs to use places similar to DS9's Omega Office, Risa, and Qwark's bar to promote STO unity. Even though the summer and winter events are a plus, the major problem with them is that they are yearly.
Third, the rotating weekend events are working and not working. During the next four weeks, the majority of the events are useless. I know my opinion is subjective. Not everyone likes the color red. Since I am not interested in the next set of events, I have technically nothing to do for roughly four weeks. I have to wait a whole month for the bonus marks event. I also do not see the bonus dilithium event.
Fourth, the timegates cause a pause in progress. Waiting twenty hours for a timer to expire is a game stopper. Timegates are a literal pause in the flow of entertainment. Players should be allowed to quickly complete rep systems, so they can enjoy obtaining and using unlocked gear. As a result of the twenty hour timegates, combined with the resource grinding, the players are quickly burning out. Only one of my avatars will complete three rep systems. My alternate avatar will only have one rep system completed.
Fifth, everything is too damn expensive. Out of all the issues at hand, the players and Cryptic are responsible for the exchange rates. I can understand the high exchange rates for selling c-store items. When it comes to the exchange rates of lower level items, the players are bleeding each other into oblivion. Cryptic needs to put a price cap on lower level items, so they can help new players to obtain 'fun' gear. Heck, Cryptic should just flood the market with low-level items, so they can discourage veteran players from bleeding new comers.
"Star Trek: Online" is losing and/or has lost its entertainment value. Instead of being a game about making people feel excited and accomplished, "Star Trek: Online" has been twisted into a hollow experience. If it was not for the social aspects of the game, I would have left "Star Trek: Online" along time ago.
Withing a matter of a few weeks, my main avatar will have completed the Undine rep system. Even though I have an alternate avatar, I have zero plans on leveling more rep systems. I have one more piece of ground gear to obtain. Once I get the final piece in place, I will retire from grinding the rep system.
My main avatar: Undine - T4.5 <---- T5 = No more rep and holding systems for me. Dyson - T5 - Done Romulan - T3 - Done Nukara - T3 - Done Omega - T5 - Done
just repeatable grind content to level up and get more gear to get more gear to get more ger
We need end game content like colonys/explortion territory control
player driven econony like swg had the first 3 years
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
As shocking as some people might think, this game was never supposed to be a virtual life, you aren't going to be able to retire to the old admirals home with fond memories of a life long career, especially one where you would have never been a starship captain for it's entirety. Take a break, try the foundry, roll a new toon and start over. There are all kinds of things you could do to keep busy in this game, sitting on you thumbs with all of your accumulated shineys waiting for developers to hand you new content on a silver platter is only one of them.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
I would argue that the main factor is the homogenization of content that occurred in Season 7. After season 7, pretty much all content was homogenized into blandness. There was no longer any real reward for running any content. Instead, you ground marks to advance your rep, which, if you wanted to get it done with, you picked from a shortlist of efficient content for, like everyon else, and if you attempted to deviate from the list, your queue wouldn't pop anytime soon. Upon "earning" that reward...you got to PAY for that reward, which had been jacked up to outlandish price levels, forcing you to turn to massive external grinding for resources if you wanted to even someday be able to afford any of it, instead of actually playing the game.
Meanwhile, without any actual reward for simply playing the game, there wasn't really much of a reason to do so, so BOREDOM follows. I don't feel rewarded by the notion of having to pay for my reward. That's not a reward anymore.
Anyone bored with endgame and looking to get the dust off their mountains of dilithium and fleet marks, just let me know. I have many fleet projects needing contributions.
"After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true. Except for a T5 Connie. That would be f*%#ing awesome." - Mr. Spock
I would argue that the main factor is the homogenization of content that occurred in Season 7. After season 7, pretty much all content was homogenized into blandness. There was no longer any real reward for running any content. Instead, you ground marks to advance your rep, which, if you wanted to get it done with, you picked from a shortlist of efficient content for, like everyon else, and if you attempted to deviate from the list, your queue wouldn't pop anytime soon. Upon "earning" that reward...you got to PAY for that reward, which had been jacked up to outlandish price levels, forcing you to turn to massive external grinding for resources if you wanted to even someday be able to afford any of it, instead of actually playing the game.
Meanwhile, without any actual reward for simply playing the game, there wasn't really much of a reason to do so, so BOREDOM follows. I don't feel rewarded by the notion of having to pay for my reward. That's not a reward anymore.
Yeah, I can understand that logic.
Getting gear through grinding removes the idea of being rewarded. If players were rewarded for 'highest score in a stf', the meaning behind it would be worth while. Our current system is gate unlocking, purchasing of items, rinse, and repeat.
Current rep system feels like you are buying your reward; therefore, the player is grinding to purchase a trophy.
Now, I see where everything went wrong.
Only one problem... Its too late. If only a few people completed the system, I can see a third drastic change to the reward system. People would walk away if Cryptic took people's rewards and progress away.
After people complete the Omega rep system, obtaining all of their gear, the next logical step would be to use it to obtain 'ungrindable' rewards. In order to obtain the 'ungrindable rewards', (not recycled or reorganized content), players would have to meet certain 'unknown' criteria. Some examples include: 'best consecutive score', 'record number of kills', etc... Do you know what would work? Dropping lockbox keys from stfs.
Only one problem... Its too late. If only a few people completed the system, I can see a third drastic change to the reward system. People would walk away if Cryptic took people's rewards and progress away.
Why does it need to be taken away? Taken away is what happened in S7. There was no reason the tech drop system had to be taken away. It could have just been augmented with the Rep System. You could even have a tech drop system in which you turn in the techs through the rep system.
This homogenization of content, where everything is bought with marks (which admittedly are at least earned in playing the game), or minerals(which are NOT earned from playing ANY content, you have to refine it yourself at an extremely limited rate far below the cost of the item), contributes to the system where you simply seek the best possible reward-to-effort ratio. There is no specific reason to play one mission over another because no mission offers anything of value over the other, aside from marks-per-time. This immediately creates a system where there's only one right answer, because there's only one question. Sure, you'll have a few people who stubbornly insist on being wrong, or simply don't know better, but that's not enough to sustain a queue, and that's why every queue except a select few is dead. If each queue offered something that others DIDN'T, the actual serviceable variety of content would significantly increase, as would the motivation to play them.
Take, for instance, IGE. In the old days of S6, sure, people griped about how hard it was, how terrible PUGs were, how often the mission flat out failed, but you know what? I ground out my set through it anyway, and I never had a problem getting the queue to pop. It was even sort of a bonding experience, I met people in that mission I still talk to today. Now? Good luck. Never pops. And why would it? It's a terrible way to grind marks.
Now let's look at the various Undine missions. These are new! Shiny! They should be interesting! Most of them are dead. BZ has essentially sidelined all of them as the mark grind of choice, Infiltration gets a bit of play from those who don't realize how slow it is, and how poor the pay is, although it's still the fastest queued mission for those who can't afford to relocate to BZ, but for the most part, people are rapidly clearing out of them. By next season, they'll be stone dead. No surprise: There's no reward! Now imagine if Infiltration dropped a token that could be turned in for a piece of the ground set WITHOUT PAYING MORE MINERALS FOR IT, and the Assault and Viscous each dropped a token that could buy, say, one of two pieces of the space set (not the same token for both, that's that homogenization thing again), so it was possible to actually earn the reward from playing the content.
I betcha those queues would fill right up. You could still PAY for TRIBBLE if you wanted to. But I dunno about you, but I'm not a bank. I'd rather play the game, I can't afford to buy this stuff, especially since most of it is quite dubious in utility value, as I don't have slots to wear this stuff! What would I do with both a Voth armor and an Undine armor? I can only wear one armor. Give it to a boff? You're joking. You expect me to pay thousands of minerals, more than I can even make, to equip a boff that I can use in all of one place in the entire game? Do I look like Crosis to you?
Yeah that is the laziest and easiest thing to do is take away and nerf something lol.
Yeah this game is getting boring though their answer to spamming the F key to do missions was to add in a timer for a dps race. Now people are bored of that so they don't really have an answer to that yet it seems. Kinda sad had a decent collection of players on my friends list but now of days I might see one or two on for a few hours but most of the time pretty much all the decent players I've come across don't even play anymore.
I think most of the problem is GW2 is soaking up a lot of the market and other games are following their lead where as ones like this with the grind grind grind mentality of the same thing over and over again are losing their cohesion.
Edit: The other funny part is one thing that was mentioned a long time ago in a podcast is something as massive as the Star Trek universe there have been those who have been proven correct in their statements that they just don't have what it takes to fulfill a commitment to making this a proper Star Trek MMOrpg. The F key issue and being that there is very little to actually explore. At the minimum they should have massive planetwide federation core planets for exploration lol. I don't think they will actually ever understand unless it gets to where it was back in 2011 where every player on the forum both fed and kdf could all fit in one sector space instance. Then master says okay 20 ppl online and they aren't opening lockboxes do something!!!
As the title really, just wondering if I am the only one ?
I have been playing for maybe just over a year.
I have a Fed toon and a Rom toon. Both are max level and have top end ships and gear. All fleet gear and all the ships I want right now. JHDC for both toon's, Kumari, Fleet Ar'Kif, Scimitar etc... All kitted to the best they can be.
Both toons have 300k+ in Dilithium and a further 240K each to refine..... They both have several thousand fleet mks which I cannot get rid of due to no fleet projects as everything is a t max level, but then having said that they both have in excess of 250k fleet credits anyway..... Again with nothing to actually spend them on as both toons have everything.
I have 150Mill EC between the 2 toons but again, nothing I can buy with it that is better that I currently have.
STF's and end game content now just seem totally pointless. Nothing to grind for, nothing to aim for. I find myself now logging in and just literally doing nothing.....
The new undine stuff we have waiting, what ? 6 months for ? A few missions that last an hour at most and a couple of space Queued missions that are awful.... Being pulled all over the place by rifts, stuck in bubbles, shooting at enemies that vanish and then reappear.... It's all just frustrating rather than being fun and something that I am not alone in thinking judging by how sparse the Queues are for these maps.
And what do we have right now ? Get 15 Lobi each day by repeating the same old stuff you have already done !
Why should we have to keep doing the same thing over and over and over and over ?
I really do long for new content, something fresh, something new, something exciting. I see little point in revamping old feature episodes and missions for the tiny amount of people that will actually play them.
More and more the people I used to play with day in day out, I now see maybe once a week or sometimes even further apart so it's clear that people are not playing as much as they used to.
Why can't we have more space missions ? Why can we not settle down somewhere ? Build our own houses etc... ? Why can we not customise ships more ? Why can I not spend my hundreds of millions of EC, adding tac console slots to ships ? Tailor them as I want them ? Why can I not add further weapon slots ? Everything is predetermined which means that when the vast majority of people get to the top level they fly the same ships, with the same gear etc...
This game, this universe has so much potential, so much scope, so much depth and it;'s all just being ignored and bypassed in favour of repeating the same boring TRIBBLE day in day out.
Sorry for the rant, but I just don't want to see this game slowly vanish and fade into nothing.... :cool:
I noticed four things that you haven't mentioned doing: creating Alts, playing as KDF, competing in PvP, and playing or writing for the Foundry. Start with those and see if the alieve your boredom. As far as creating Alts (and trying the KDF), you have a Fed and you have a Rom... but what Career are they and what Species? How do they fight, what are their skills, what ship do they use? Now that you've answered that to yourself... do something different.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
I noticed four things that you haven't mentioned doing: creating Alts, playing KDF, competing in PvP, and the playing or writing for the Foundry. Start with those and see if the alieve your boredom. As far as creating Alts (and trying the KDF), you have a Fed and you have a Rom... but what Career are they and what Species? How do they fight, what are their skills, what ship do they use? Now that you've answered that to yourself... do something different.
The problem there is that a lot of people especially long time players way before f2p have done all of that lol. Speaking for myself I've done mostly KDF and most KDF races I have 1-5 of each race so I have one of just about every class and race lol. I've done foundry too but it looks like a knockoff of mine craft imo nothing really special other than stacking blocks on top of each other. You can spend an eternity there and not even make anything as good as places like defera, new romulus, etc.
There is a thing as too many alts though especially when you get attached to one and then 20 - 100+ on top of that and then it just invites the burn out or bored to death lol. It was kind of sad when I heard a dev in a recent interview saying there is too much content already lol. They really need to do core federation worlds and klingon worlds with random dynamic events like GW2 has or something with a Star Trek feel that does the same thing but different. So your not constrained to the same exact boring TRIBBLE lol.
Yes now that I've answered that though there is nothing really different I can do except what ppl used to do before f2p which was level a character to 50 and then delete it and start over but I'm not doing that TRIBBLE lol.
There is a thing as too many alts though especially when you get attached to one and then 20 - 100+ on top of that and then it just invites the burn out or bored to death lol. It was kind of sad when I heard a dev in a recent interview saying there is too much content already lol...
Wow!
Could that be the reason why the Undine rep has both disruptor and phaser types?
Surely creating Alts would mean just doing the EXACT same thing over and over just as I have been with my current toons ?
I simply cannot bare the thought of repeating the same old grind over and over for new alts. That is essentially what I, and seemingly many others want to try and avoid.
And since the game is based around how many millions of DMG you can do in a second, the idea of a Sci, Healer or something else just doesn't warrant a second thought.
ISE for me is usually done in under 2 minutes from start to finish. If I decided to use a Sci alt.... What good would he be ? Nothing to heal as people kill things faster and faster with the power creep and I couldn't do any respectable dmg to keep up with them. Only choices are Engineer and Tac, which is a shame.
One of the biggest things IMO to turn this game around is also the simplest.
Kill all the power creep, dump it right back down to next to nothing. All my ships currently do in excess of 20kdps and some over 30k... Its ridiculous but something you feel pushed into by the games mechanics.
If we were back in the days when most people did 2-3k dps and the really well geared up guys struggles to hit 10k dps then the content we have would last far longer, be far more fun.
Or give everything 10X hitpoints compared to what they have now ?
Comments
Play PVP!
Soon you will not be bored (or rich) anymore!
Now I am back and not yet bored. I have to catch up to a lot.
So I think yes - you can simply play to much. No matter how excellent the content team, they won't be able to create enough content for oyu that you never got bored of it. It's a ton easier to play content then to make it. If you don't believe that, try making a Foundry mission and see how quickly that would get boring.
To make the gum interesting again, you can let it go for a while, and then return when you're bored with the stuff you did instead, and see what new has happened in the game.
This - just step back for awhile. Not just a week or two, go for a month or two. Or five. By that time, new things'll pop up.
Greetings Captain 07
I have been playing STO for a good 8 months now. When I first started playing I was HOOKED!. Levelling up receiving ships as I reached new ranks fighting with all I had just to get pass the mission in front of me.
When I reached lvl50 for the first time I asked my those in my fleet what's next? They told me get your DPS as high as possible. So I did that... the next 3 months were dedicated in tricking out my ship with the best possible gear and I did just that. I was hitting around 17k DPS in my fleet MVAE.
I was so happy, I was able to wreck thru missions soloing 1 side of KASE on my own. I then noticed something.. I wasn't having fun? I had AP weaponery and being an escort... I flew up to my target and unleashed everything I had and melted a cubes in good time but it wasn't fun and it kept getting less and less fun. I was even falling asleep!
5 months into the game and I was wanting to stop? At this point in time I have made some really good friends and mostly the ones keeping me in game but that was it really. The DPS bug I caught wore thin on me because it wasn't what I knew ST to be.
I was watching some ST clips and even thinking back to some other ST games I played like Bridge Commander and remembered even when I first started playing how I flew my ships. I was flying them around, you see ST ships flying around. So I decided to scale down my DPS and go somewhat canon my my MVAE.. and you know what?? THAT is what I was missing... 1 flying my ships but also having a little challenge when doing the missions. With dailing down my DPS the encounters say with a borg cube was REALLY hard... I needed help from others to take down the cube. Just like in the show!
From that I created the Star Trek Battles channel where we are not worried about mix/maxing our ships rather dailing down our DPS and relying on skill and teamwork to finish missions. It also has given me and some others within the channel to fly others ships that normally some wouldn't say like the Connie..... 5 man ISE with Connies anyone?
I guess what I'm trying to say is, with what is available in STO you can make of it what you want. I have been fortunate to find people who were in the same boat as me and since forming STB I haven't had to grind for anything really... just play and play for fun. We have themed runs like low tier/TOS runs or TNG run etc... we even have an upcoming Dominion war PvP re-enactment coming up next month which will surely be fun with ships having no high end gear.
It's a long reply but as I mentioned try to have fun with STO the way YOU want to. If nothing is working than maybe a break is in order? Would hate to see that but one must do what one must do.
I extend an invitation to you to maybe even give STB a chance to see if that can keep your interests up if not I wish you all the best.
Starquest Online and Hazeron both have this.
Puzzle pirates and Pirates of the Caribbean Online also have elements of exactly this.
So there is no reason that it should be merely a dream, if my deductions are correct, this game should be able to manage it without TOO much work.
It is a sad commentary that the players should find themselves in the role of the dev's, who get PAID to create content. By this I mean that since the dev's are obviously neither Trek fans nor accomplished gamers, the players have to be more creative and develop fun things for free, and pay for the "privilege" to do so. At least there is the Foundry, where players can create their own content., and the Fleets, where like-minded players can work out their own RP in the Trek universe.
Knowing that Cryptic is unwilling/unable to sustain the creation of engaging story content, I would be interested in seeing a player collaboration where a group of Foundry authors, Trek enthusiasts, and accomplished gamers deliberately collaborated on fleshing out the most recent disappointing seasons. Different skills can be pooled, so story creation, episode coding, and so forth can be "crowd-sourced" into something more cohesive than the dev's efforts to date. Some interesting story chains have already been done for the Foundry, so it's not hard to imagine the fan base filling in the gaps where Cryptic has fallen flat...:cool:
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
This is my 1st MMO, but I would say that players can burn through content much faster than developers can create them so it is foreseeable that players will eventually become bored. For example, I have read several post of people completing the main story missions in less than 7 days. Some people posted they did it within in 3 days. All that just so they can start playing endgame content.
I would say that expecting a game to keep you fully entertained is simply expecting too much especially for a game that is Free 2 Pay. Prior to playing STO I was playing Skyrim and even with all the community created content the game eventually became very boring playing the same character again and again. At that point I simply created a new character. Yes, I know I am comparing a single player game to a MMO, but the point is the same... eventually you are going to get board playing the same character/toon day after day after day...
Take a break, come back for season 9.5.
been doing this a little over a year now, nice to see others catching up.
as for stuff to do no idea, accolades? foundry missions, even make your own foundry mission? make a klingon, try the content there? since you only have fed and rom, one faction to go..climb nimbus? reach the top of the probe on defera? find some fun bugs and use them with friends?....yeah i get up to alot of "stuff"...
My character Tsin'xing
As for authoring, it's not as hard as it's sometimes made out. The hardest thing is constructing stuff on the ground because you only have a 2D view while placing, and have to playtest the map to see if you got things where you want them. Other than that, it's not so bad. You don't have to do any "coding", just string different types of events together and define when things appear and disappear related to those events. I watched kirkfat's tutorials on YouTube this past weekend, and was able to bang out a fairly competent little demo mission.
In general though, when I feel I've had enough of the game, I walk away from it for a few weeks. I go play another game. I spent most of my gaming time last week having a blast with South Park: The Stick of Truth, and I have The Wonderful 101 next in the queue to play. I only really need to log in for like 5-10 minutes a day to kick my rep projects with the heaps of marks I have built up. I have plenty of dil and EC ready for whenever I really want to start playing again.
Have you tried Foundry missions? Teaching fleetmates about STF mission complexities? Toyed and played with different ship builds like pure kinetic builds or mine-layer builds? Played around with different ground type builds of your toons? Would you want to complete all the DOFF chains? Collect all reputation items or passives? Would you want to crack a certain game mechanic? Play missions that you enjoy and like only because you enjoy and like them? Just a few ideas for you.
Endgame STO can be challenging and sometimes it is hard to find a purpose to keep playing; I used to grind out reputation systems for the defensive passives but with the nerf, oh well. I enjoyed the bonus hours for fleet marks to grind for marks for my small fleet, they removed this, oh well.
If you are truly not interested in playing STO anymore for whatever reason then write Cryptic a ticket telling them why you are not playing anymore, take a break and do something that makes you happy.
Something like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72XhdVqDT1g&index=2&list=PL532DC01F548EE15C
http://www.artemis.eochu.com/
SCE ADVISORY NOTICE: Improper Impulse Engine maintenance can result in REAR THRUSTER LEAKAGE. ALWAYS have your work inspected by another qualified officer.
Either way, that's a whole other game from STO. One that is valid and I'd like to see exist, but separately.
Earwig: Then give it to me! :-)
As for role-playing, one of the posters mentioned that we, the players, are the ones who have to come up with a "free" means to avoid boredom in a "paying" environment. Sure this MMO is F2P, but to access models and other goodies, someone has to pay for it. Most chat role-plays really just require the use of the channel and nothing more, which means that role-players can use a less memory-hogging chat client to satisfy this aspect of the game. And yes, there are 3D chat clients that have "Star Trek" content.
I do not know what the solution truly is for players who are bored in an F2P MMO. I believe that most people who play STO are Trekkies at heart and want to embrace themselves with the ideals set by the series and novels. Sure it would be nice to see our favorite characters come aboard the game, which has happened, but we, the players and our characters, need to explore and discover. One of the posters on here has a picture in the signature that states, "Does anyone remember when we were explorers?"
My character Tsin'xing
Playing the game is just not rewarding. By this I don't mean to say the game in general isn't fun at all. I just mean there's little incentive to play any of it for anything else than what you know you'll receive. In most cases that's some grind progressing reward.
And you can get pretty much everything by grind (and/or money).
Lobi Store items? -> Play the market for EC and buy lockbox keys
Fleet items? -> Play the market for EC, grind Dil on multiple chars, grind the marks
Set items? -> Grind Dil on chars, Grind reputation
Everything else? -> Gather EC, purchase on the exchange
Are drops even remotely meaningful? Not at all.
Is your performance important? For bragging rights, maybe. For a slight yet irrelevant difference in the number of marks, maybe. But generally not.
What keeps players entertained?
1. New/unused content - this is pretty much bombed by the minimal time it takes to get to lvl 50, and Cryptic's recent development priorities. Also hard to maintain, yet not impossible.
2. Randomness aka epic item drops - waiting for the right item with the perfect combination of enchantments/stats/prefixes/suffixes/whatever? Stop looking. Not here.
3. Repeatable content that keeps being challenging, changing, fun and perhaps even meanigful aka PvP (RvR) - Nothing to see here. PvP is an afterthought, the balance is trash as a result of F2P "bigger, better, you want this new lockbox!". And there's really no concept whatsoever apart from borderline P2W random team deathmatch without any sort of matchmaking
4. Bragging rights - ok, this can theoretically be found in either of the above, but there's also PvP titles or whatever. Basically it also comes down to rewards for beating a challenge or being very hard-working. I guess all I could come up with is accolade points (yeah, right..), the last MACO/KHG style unlock and the title for beating NWS. That's.. underwhelming to say the least. So, basically, nope.
5. Challenge! This sums up 2-4, but for emphasis I'll repeat it: some meaningful, fair, rewarding Challenge! And NO, the No Win Scenario alone doesn't fill this requirement. Apart from that NWS is a case of get the right equipment, realize that some roles or choices are rubbish, remember or note down the sequence. I'm not sure if this can be called skill. It's more a case of gather the right information. But to be fair, it's better than pretty much everything else.
That's it. feel free to add things you think make a game fun or give it replayability.
I just think Cryptic has succesfully erased all challenge, randomness and thrill out of the game.
It's casual, it's mildly entertaining. But if you're not into that weird kind of horrible elitist and expensive 'countestrike with spaceships'ish PvP that STO has to 'offer' atm, then you're out of luck once you're through with the grind. IF you endure the grind.
Solution? Dunno. Adding content doesn't seem to be Cryptic's strong point. And it's not like there isn't enough content to begin with. The existing content (episodes, old 'adventure' zones) is just so trivial, meaningless, optional, not rewarding, all in all treated badly and in need of an overhaul.
Improvements on some of the episodes are noted, but thats merely the right direction and a cautious start.
(Re-)Adding challenge would kinda contradict everything Cryptic has done recently. But I think eventually there's no getting around it. Unless they want to add a bunch of real good episodes every quarter..
Some really well designed open PvP would be awesome. Imagine the Romulans as a proper third faction, then go all **** RvR'ish with stations/areas/planets to hold, for faction-wide bonuses and fame. The only problem is I don't see this coming. Ever.
-edit-
Seriously? The acronym for Dark Age of C. is filtered? Seriously? Wtf..
Second, according to what I have seen on YouTube, the DS9 Omega office was once a lively place. DS9's Omega office and Risa need a set of 'permanent' casual missions, which will gather everyone to those locations. Cryptic needs to use places similar to DS9's Omega Office, Risa, and Qwark's bar to promote STO unity. Even though the summer and winter events are a plus, the major problem with them is that they are yearly.
Third, the rotating weekend events are working and not working. During the next four weeks, the majority of the events are useless. I know my opinion is subjective. Not everyone likes the color red. Since I am not interested in the next set of events, I have technically nothing to do for roughly four weeks. I have to wait a whole month for the bonus marks event. I also do not see the bonus dilithium event.
Fourth, the timegates cause a pause in progress. Waiting twenty hours for a timer to expire is a game stopper. Timegates are a literal pause in the flow of entertainment. Players should be allowed to quickly complete rep systems, so they can enjoy obtaining and using unlocked gear. As a result of the twenty hour timegates, combined with the resource grinding, the players are quickly burning out. Only one of my avatars will complete three rep systems. My alternate avatar will only have one rep system completed.
Fifth, everything is too damn expensive. Out of all the issues at hand, the players and Cryptic are responsible for the exchange rates. I can understand the high exchange rates for selling c-store items. When it comes to the exchange rates of lower level items, the players are bleeding each other into oblivion. Cryptic needs to put a price cap on lower level items, so they can help new players to obtain 'fun' gear. Heck, Cryptic should just flood the market with low-level items, so they can discourage veteran players from bleeding new comers.
"Star Trek: Online" is losing and/or has lost its entertainment value. Instead of being a game about making people feel excited and accomplished, "Star Trek: Online" has been twisted into a hollow experience. If it was not for the social aspects of the game, I would have left "Star Trek: Online" along time ago.
Withing a matter of a few weeks, my main avatar will have completed the Undine rep system. Even though I have an alternate avatar, I have zero plans on leveling more rep systems. I have one more piece of ground gear to obtain. Once I get the final piece in place, I will retire from grinding the rep system.
My main avatar:
Undine - T4.5 <---- T5 = No more rep and holding systems for me.
Dyson - T5 - Done
Romulan - T3 - Done
Nukara - T3 - Done
Omega - T5 - Done
My alternate avatar:
Undine - T1 - Done
Dyson - T0 - Done
Romulan - T1 - Done
Nukara - T0 - Done
Omega - T5 - Done
I am almost at my goals.
So, what can I use my new gear on?
I have paid so much money into STO.
I am hoping to use my items on something exciting.
just repeatable grind content to level up and get more gear to get more gear to get more ger
We need end game content like colonys/explortion territory control
player driven econony like swg had the first 3 years
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Meanwhile, without any actual reward for simply playing the game, there wasn't really much of a reason to do so, so BOREDOM follows. I don't feel rewarded by the notion of having to pay for my reward. That's not a reward anymore.
Getting gear through grinding removes the idea of being rewarded. If players were rewarded for 'highest score in a stf', the meaning behind it would be worth while. Our current system is gate unlocking, purchasing of items, rinse, and repeat.
Current rep system feels like you are buying your reward; therefore, the player is grinding to purchase a trophy.
Now, I see where everything went wrong.
Only one problem... Its too late. If only a few people completed the system, I can see a third drastic change to the reward system. People would walk away if Cryptic took people's rewards and progress away.
After people complete the Omega rep system, obtaining all of their gear, the next logical step would be to use it to obtain 'ungrindable' rewards. In order to obtain the 'ungrindable rewards', (not recycled or reorganized content), players would have to meet certain 'unknown' criteria. Some examples include: 'best consecutive score', 'record number of kills', etc... Do you know what would work? Dropping lockbox keys from stfs.
This homogenization of content, where everything is bought with marks (which admittedly are at least earned in playing the game), or minerals(which are NOT earned from playing ANY content, you have to refine it yourself at an extremely limited rate far below the cost of the item), contributes to the system where you simply seek the best possible reward-to-effort ratio. There is no specific reason to play one mission over another because no mission offers anything of value over the other, aside from marks-per-time. This immediately creates a system where there's only one right answer, because there's only one question. Sure, you'll have a few people who stubbornly insist on being wrong, or simply don't know better, but that's not enough to sustain a queue, and that's why every queue except a select few is dead. If each queue offered something that others DIDN'T, the actual serviceable variety of content would significantly increase, as would the motivation to play them.
Take, for instance, IGE. In the old days of S6, sure, people griped about how hard it was, how terrible PUGs were, how often the mission flat out failed, but you know what? I ground out my set through it anyway, and I never had a problem getting the queue to pop. It was even sort of a bonding experience, I met people in that mission I still talk to today. Now? Good luck. Never pops. And why would it? It's a terrible way to grind marks.
Now let's look at the various Undine missions. These are new! Shiny! They should be interesting! Most of them are dead. BZ has essentially sidelined all of them as the mark grind of choice, Infiltration gets a bit of play from those who don't realize how slow it is, and how poor the pay is, although it's still the fastest queued mission for those who can't afford to relocate to BZ, but for the most part, people are rapidly clearing out of them. By next season, they'll be stone dead. No surprise: There's no reward! Now imagine if Infiltration dropped a token that could be turned in for a piece of the ground set WITHOUT PAYING MORE MINERALS FOR IT, and the Assault and Viscous each dropped a token that could buy, say, one of two pieces of the space set (not the same token for both, that's that homogenization thing again), so it was possible to actually earn the reward from playing the content.
I betcha those queues would fill right up. You could still PAY for TRIBBLE if you wanted to. But I dunno about you, but I'm not a bank. I'd rather play the game, I can't afford to buy this stuff, especially since most of it is quite dubious in utility value, as I don't have slots to wear this stuff! What would I do with both a Voth armor and an Undine armor? I can only wear one armor. Give it to a boff? You're joking. You expect me to pay thousands of minerals, more than I can even make, to equip a boff that I can use in all of one place in the entire game? Do I look like Crosis to you?
Yeah this game is getting boring though their answer to spamming the F key to do missions was to add in a timer for a dps race. Now people are bored of that so they don't really have an answer to that yet it seems. Kinda sad had a decent collection of players on my friends list but now of days I might see one or two on for a few hours but most of the time pretty much all the decent players I've come across don't even play anymore.
I think most of the problem is GW2 is soaking up a lot of the market and other games are following their lead where as ones like this with the grind grind grind mentality of the same thing over and over again are losing their cohesion.
Edit: The other funny part is one thing that was mentioned a long time ago in a podcast is something as massive as the Star Trek universe there have been those who have been proven correct in their statements that they just don't have what it takes to fulfill a commitment to making this a proper Star Trek MMOrpg. The F key issue and being that there is very little to actually explore. At the minimum they should have massive planetwide federation core planets for exploration lol. I don't think they will actually ever understand unless it gets to where it was back in 2011 where every player on the forum both fed and kdf could all fit in one sector space instance. Then master says okay 20 ppl online and they aren't opening lockboxes do something!!!
I noticed four things that you haven't mentioned doing: creating Alts, playing as KDF, competing in PvP, and playing or writing for the Foundry. Start with those and see if the alieve your boredom. As far as creating Alts (and trying the KDF), you have a Fed and you have a Rom... but what Career are they and what Species? How do they fight, what are their skills, what ship do they use? Now that you've answered that to yourself... do something different.
The problem there is that a lot of people especially long time players way before f2p have done all of that lol. Speaking for myself I've done mostly KDF and most KDF races I have 1-5 of each race so I have one of just about every class and race lol. I've done foundry too but it looks like a knockoff of mine craft imo nothing really special other than stacking blocks on top of each other. You can spend an eternity there and not even make anything as good as places like defera, new romulus, etc.
There is a thing as too many alts though especially when you get attached to one and then 20 - 100+ on top of that and then it just invites the burn out or bored to death lol. It was kind of sad when I heard a dev in a recent interview saying there is too much content already lol. They really need to do core federation worlds and klingon worlds with random dynamic events like GW2 has or something with a Star Trek feel that does the same thing but different. So your not constrained to the same exact boring TRIBBLE lol.
Yes now that I've answered that though there is nothing really different I can do except what ppl used to do before f2p which was level a character to 50 and then delete it and start over but I'm not doing that TRIBBLE lol.
Could that be the reason why the Undine rep has both disruptor and phaser types?
Omega = Antiproton
Nukara = Antiproton
Romulan = Plasma
Dyson = Polaron/Proton
Undine = Phaser/Disruptor
According to what I understand, the original Omega office stores contained six weapons types. "Star Trek: Online" has almost come full-circle.
Tetryon showed up in lockboxes.
Anyways, people with a lot of alts will be getting bored sooner. Its an universal rule.
Surely creating Alts would mean just doing the EXACT same thing over and over just as I have been with my current toons ?
I simply cannot bare the thought of repeating the same old grind over and over for new alts. That is essentially what I, and seemingly many others want to try and avoid.
And since the game is based around how many millions of DMG you can do in a second, the idea of a Sci, Healer or something else just doesn't warrant a second thought.
ISE for me is usually done in under 2 minutes from start to finish. If I decided to use a Sci alt.... What good would he be ? Nothing to heal as people kill things faster and faster with the power creep and I couldn't do any respectable dmg to keep up with them. Only choices are Engineer and Tac, which is a shame.
One of the biggest things IMO to turn this game around is also the simplest.
Kill all the power creep, dump it right back down to next to nothing. All my ships currently do in excess of 20kdps and some over 30k... Its ridiculous but something you feel pushed into by the games mechanics.
If we were back in the days when most people did 2-3k dps and the really well geared up guys struggles to hit 10k dps then the content we have would last far longer, be far more fun.
Or give everything 10X hitpoints compared to what they have now ?