While I have to admit I spend very little time and indeed have avoided the exploration clusters for awhile now, I really don't feel that their outright removal without some decent content replacement is a good idea.
Realistically I think the most intelligent thing that could be done would be to leave them as they currently are however spend the next while communicating with foundry authors and add certain foundry missions directly into the pool of available cluster missions thereby increasing the amount of content available.
Another decent option would be to nuke the cluster sector's go ahead with making it a map object but also add the option to explore the cluster which would trigger one of the typical cluster mission's and possibly foundry one's as well adding a possibility for it to generate map's with crafting node's and a few hostiles could be nice to.
The biggest problem I can see with the current plan is you are removing content granted it might be what would be considered substandard content but its still content. It's akin to suddenly deciding that since the majority of older ships don't preform as well you might as well just remove them all from the game.
Is there really that big of a reason or need to remove the clusters from the game until you actually have a decent replacement for them or indeed a actual realistic plan to improve the game with their removal ?
I do very few foundry mission's even though there are a number of them that look rather interesting and some with amazing stories, why do I not bother with them ? the answer is quite simply the interface and current system for accessing them sucks. Adding the foundry missions into something like a pool of possibles through exploration would be a nice way to actually get more people playing them and make better use of what I really believe is a underused resource.
Now granted you would have to have the foundry missions run through and checked out before adding them but I find it difficult to believe that there is no one working for the company who wouldn't be quite happy to get payed for playing the game for X amount of hrs. Hell I would do it gladly for minimum wage.
Pug more...it's pretty believable at that point...unfortunately.
I have humane mouse traps that work the same way. Put peanut butter at the end of a cube and the mouse has no way of getting out of the only exit he came in.
That being said, sometimes the peanut butter is gone -- and so is the mouse.
The Exploration Missions weren't really good. But they were a welcome distraction from all that grinding madness we had to face recently. Another way to generate dilithium is gone forever also, even when they say they are looking into ways to compensate that. Removing content from a game that lacks endgame content isn't a really smart idea.
X2 better to be really really awsome, because season 9.5 seems like a major letdown to me as it looks so far.
With the cluster/nebula now part of the standard sector block instead of its own sector, is this something that is planned on being maintained - or - will Ops Heads just pull from the normal sector block list and thus not provide that additional opportunity for those particular DOFF missions.
When I last checked on Tribble, the department heads showed only assignments from the sector block. Furthermore, I've not seen more than 5 assignments in the exploration cluster tab, so I don't think the tab even contains all the assignments that used to be available under "Current Map".
i liked the clusters, but the mission generator needs to go and a complete overall of the clusters would be amazing and some of the roleplayers would love it and respect them for revamping it
(STO)
Matriarch of Banished Orion Girls. Neela D'tan @captaintpol (with many alts)
May we sail and have fun always and forever. LLAP
(PC version NW)
Arwen@captaintpol TR - Tully's of RiverRun
Mai Kelly DC-Tully's of RiverRun
Neela BumKisses HR-
Arya Stark GF-
Sansa Stark CW- Team Fencebane
Crystal Marie OP-
(xbox version NW)
Arwen@Admiral Jazdia TR- Team Fenebane
Mai Kelly DC- " "
Ahsoka Tano CW- " "
Neela BumKisser HR- " "
Whilst i'm all in favour of drawing attention to the Foundry and some of the excellent missions that people have made, i think this is a bit of a cop out on the dev's part.
Basically you've removed part of the game and to fil the gap you expect the players to fill it with their own creations. That's just a really lazy way to fill the game with things for players to do. You are the dev's not us. You get paid to develop this game so actually do it, don't take stuff out and expect the playerbase to do the work for you.
Or if you are happy to swap actual game content for player made stuff, why not go the whole hog and let players design their own ships and uniforms. After all it'll mean you wont need to bother with those either. Then you can concentrate on dreaming up more grindfests and money sinks for us to "enjoy".
Whilst i'm all in favour of drawing attention to the Foundry and some of the excellent missions that people have made, i think this is a bit of a cop out on the dev's part.
Basically you've removed part of the game and to fil the gap you expect the players to fill it with their own creations. That's just a really lazy way to fill the game with things for players to do. You are the dev's not us. You get paid to develop this game so actually do it, don't take stuff out and expect the playerbase to do the work for you.
Or if you are happy to swap actual game content for player made stuff, why not go the whole hog and let players design their own ships and uniforms. After all it'll mean you wont need to bother with those either. Then you can concentrate on dreaming up more grindfests and money sinks for us to "enjoy".
I pretty much agree at this point; if the devs are just going to do the bare minimum, they might as well make a single exception to that to enhance tools to be used by PLAYERS, who will actually create BETTER content for FREE. No development time that apparently is always running so short over at Cryptic, no money spent to pay more people. But tons of content. So yeah... Improve the Foundry, improve Foundry accessibility, add more customization, and THEN get back to eliminating features and replacing them with grindable ("repeatable"... hah) content and dilithium sinks. Then people will play more, and have more things to do with the rewards from those grinds and money sinks and C-store items... Thereby keeping more players, and indirectly increasing profit more than any new reputation system or grindy, boring event ever could...
But one of the main reasons theyve stayed in the game as long as they have, is that Exploration Clusters remain a major source of crafting materials. As has been mentioned in other developer blogs, Season 9.5 marks a re-launching of our Research and Development system. This also comes with an update to how crafting materials are earned (most notably by adding them to
PvE queue rewards).
W H A T ? ? ?
Just one week ago, some DEV declared the removal of Exploration, because of (easy way to earn) Crafting Materials ... is some crazy conspiracy theory, cause it has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT ... are you f ****** SERIOUS .... at least get your BS straight ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Whilst i'm all in favour of drawing attention to the Foundry and some of the excellent missions that people have made, i think this is a bit of a cop out on the dev's part.
Basically you've removed part of the game and to fil the gap you expect the players to fill it with their own creations. That's just a really lazy way to fill the game with things for players to do. You are the dev's not us. You get paid to develop this game so actually do it, don't take stuff out and expect the playerbase to do the work for you.
Or if you are happy to swap actual game content for player made stuff, why not go the whole hog and let players design their own ships and uniforms. After all it'll mean you wont need to bother with those either. Then you can concentrate on dreaming up more grindfests and money sinks for us to "enjoy".
Eh it needed to be removed and replaced this content is way out dated even the borg stfs are infants compared to this content that is mostly broken especially when you play KDF which are not explorers per canon IP.
Although if it were me I would have took exploration and foundry out until it could be brought up to speed with the rest of the content as well a bunch of that true way and breen stuff that is just way outdated.
Although I've never agreed that foundry content should be what future content comes from totally. To me though I find myself never playing content like this anymore because of how behind and outdated it is its not even fun don't need to buff anything and just instantly wipe through it without any kind of challenge even in elite mode lol.
I think pretty much an exploration/conquest system would be better set in the gamma and delta quadrants if we ever get that. The game is set in a way in a future from where the last prime universe series ended where the alpha/beta quadrant is basically needing/wanting to come together so there needs to expand outward.
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
Just one week ago, some DEV declared the removal of Exploration, because of (easy way to earn) Crafting Materials ... is some crazy conspiracy theory ... are you f ****** SERIOUS ....
They're removing the clusters, and adding new ways to earn crafting materials to compensate for the ones we're losing.
...talking to players is like being a mall Santa. Everyone immediately wants to tell you all of the things they want, and you are absolutely powerless to deliver 99% of them.
They're removing the clusters, and adding new ways to earn crafting materials to compensate for the ones we're losing.
Yeah PVE Queues ... sooo ? ... you chose to ignore the point, entirely ? ... 1 week ago Exploration Removal was not supposed to be about Crafting 9.5 at all ... but I guess nobody was stupid enough to believe it ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Sorry, but IMO it DOESN'T make sense to remove content UNTIL you have content to replace it.
Also, as to the client download size as an argument as to why this was done, what? You spent a year or so Dev time to develop your "On-Demand" download system that downloads required client content as needed. If that's working (and it is the default setting as I've had friends recently download the STO client); in what way does removing this content make the base client download bigger, since i would think any of the old 'Genesis system' generated Cluster exploration maps wouldn't be downloaded by the on-demand patch system until needed?
So, yeah, as usual, STO Dev management decided they just wanted to do this (probably because they think it will boost PVE queue content play, and really get new players used to grinding that over and over and over).
IMO - STO has been content light FROM DAY ONE! Removing any content without a clear replacement again makes no sense, unless it's an attempt to force player numbers to increase in other areas of the simple PvE queue grind content so they can claim (via data mining) such content is 'more popular; and be able to devote more dev time to that particular content model.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
You are exploring, you're just delegating it to your crew.
Oh, lucky us! So what'd you reckon, how long before we log in for 5 mins. to delegate everything in this game to Doff minigames that do everything for me on a 24 hour cooldown, while I play and enjoy something else?
That said, here is a suggestion I would leave with you. Why not Bring back endless exploration with allowing a sector for captains to flying, that plays random generator Foundry missions? These missions would be compiled by Cryptic, from submissions of players, who generator missions, content, and alien species that fits the Star Trek exploration of strange new worlds concept. As an incentive for players to spend quality and quantity of time make said missions, cryptic could give a reward to players, who's mission makes the cut into the repeatable random foundry mission list. Such a reward might be between 500-1000 Zen, or dilithium.
I'm not a fan of the removing exploration missions. I found them as a nice diversion when I don't feel like doing a queue (or while waiting), doing PVP, or repeating a mission. I also used them when I wanted to test new builds and power trays out. I also liked to do them for the non-combat missions that gave diplomacy CXP. Has there been given any thought to that? Not just the diplomacy missions that Jiro gives you but also the non-combat missions that gave you 100 dip CXP per completion? Will we be given non-combat, non-DOff repearable content to get dip CXP?
While I like the quoted part and think it would be a nice addition to the game, I don't think it should be used as a replacement for exploration missions. Nothing against the foundry but I find it very hard to find actual high quality missions, so making that the go to for everything you remove is wrong. Now, there are some good foundry missions, some that I did enjoy and liked. Finding those rare gems that are fun and seem to hold the Star Trek feel is hard, the finder is clunky and not very user friendly.
Oh, lucky us! So what'd you reckon, how long before we log in for 5 mins. to delegate everything in this game to Doff minigames that do everything for me on a 24 hour cooldown, while I play and enjoy something else?
You've just described my current state of affairs with Star Trek Online.
You're just a machine. And machines can be broken.
Make use of the enemy signal contacts. Give us daily Defend X Sector Block for dilithium rewards. The only other things those are good for is to get kill accolades at this moment.
Oh, lucky us! So what'd you reckon, how long before we log in for 5 mins. to delegate everything in this game to Doff minigames that do everything for me on a 24 hour cooldown, while I play and enjoy something else?
Sorry, you can't do this ... new crafting requires you to log in every hour for ~250 days without sleep ... :P
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
I'll be the first to admit that the Exploration clusters are a tad generic and sub par, but at least it was something. I agree with the idea that a Star Trek MMO without exploration isn't Star Trek and I think solving a problem by eliminating it isn't much of a solution.
Are exploration missions really hurting anyone? What about the people who will miss them and the first contact missions. To my knowledge STO doesn't operate based solely on the net worth of its quality and the Delta Volanis Sector isn't so bad that people play it and then never play again.
Pitching the entire concept doesn't help the people who hated it and wanted improvement, and it just disappoints players that were fine with it.
In essence, I'm sad that Cryptic is using the same tactics as the Devidians and just sucking sectors into another realm of existence.
While I appreciate the developers desire to remove substandard content, I feel that removing content like this forces players into repeating the same handful of queued missions, increasing player burnout, and only serves to make the game feel smaller and more linear. That's a terrible thing for an MMO.
You're only making the game smaller and less an MMO.
WE won't be able to change their minds... I think the whole business strategy was laid out perfectly on Risa. Annoy the player into spending more money by forcing them into liner repeatable task. STO is becoming less and less open world, and more of point and grind, or point and pay or you have to grind. I'd gladly be a lifetime member if it was more of an mmo and less of a time-gate / pay-wall... With only 8k Dil a day, you are sooooo forced into taking forever to get stuff or pay for it.
I have spent $30 on this game, and I will go as high as 60, because that's what games cost. Not hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a product I don't physically own.
While we are removing part of the game, we hope that this improves the overall quality of STO.
Wow. That's a statement for the ages right there. "We're admitting our stuff sucks so badly that removing it entirely, with no replacement, is an improvement."
Comments
There no such thing as getting lost false stop, in the star trek universe or the real, it all just exploring and discovering things.
Realistically I think the most intelligent thing that could be done would be to leave them as they currently are however spend the next while communicating with foundry authors and add certain foundry missions directly into the pool of available cluster missions thereby increasing the amount of content available.
Another decent option would be to nuke the cluster sector's go ahead with making it a map object but also add the option to explore the cluster which would trigger one of the typical cluster mission's and possibly foundry one's as well adding a possibility for it to generate map's with crafting node's and a few hostiles could be nice to.
The biggest problem I can see with the current plan is you are removing content granted it might be what would be considered substandard content but its still content. It's akin to suddenly deciding that since the majority of older ships don't preform as well you might as well just remove them all from the game.
Is there really that big of a reason or need to remove the clusters from the game until you actually have a decent replacement for them or indeed a actual realistic plan to improve the game with their removal ?
I do very few foundry mission's even though there are a number of them that look rather interesting and some with amazing stories, why do I not bother with them ? the answer is quite simply the interface and current system for accessing them sucks. Adding the foundry missions into something like a pool of possibles through exploration would be a nice way to actually get more people playing them and make better use of what I really believe is a underused resource.
Now granted you would have to have the foundry missions run through and checked out before adding them but I find it difficult to believe that there is no one working for the company who wouldn't be quite happy to get payed for playing the game for X amount of hrs. Hell I would do it gladly for minimum wage.
I have humane mouse traps that work the same way. Put peanut butter at the end of a cube and the mouse has no way of getting out of the only exit he came in.
That being said, sometimes the peanut butter is gone -- and so is the mouse.
Apparently some mice are smarter than humans.
X2 better to be really really awsome, because season 9.5 seems like a major letdown to me as it looks so far.
Original join date: Jul 2008
When I last checked on Tribble, the department heads showed only assignments from the sector block. Furthermore, I've not seen more than 5 assignments in the exploration cluster tab, so I don't think the tab even contains all the assignments that used to be available under "Current Map".
All maps---sector space, system space, and ground---work this way, so I don't see how it can be an exploit.
"With the steadily improving quality of mission content available throughout STO"
At which point the blog lost all credibility.
Irony. You'll still be able to get Exploration Accolades despite the fact that you now cannot explore at all.
You are exploring, you're just delegating it to your crew.
Matriarch of Banished Orion Girls. Neela D'tan
@captaintpol (with many alts)
May we sail and have fun always and forever. LLAP
(PC version NW)
Arwen@captaintpol TR - Tully's of RiverRun
Mai Kelly DC-Tully's of RiverRun
Neela BumKisses HR-
Arya Stark GF-
Sansa Stark CW- Team Fencebane
Crystal Marie OP-
(xbox version NW)
Arwen@Admiral Jazdia TR- Team Fenebane
Mai Kelly DC- " "
Ahsoka Tano CW- " "
Neela BumKisser HR- " "
Basically you've removed part of the game and to fil the gap you expect the players to fill it with their own creations. That's just a really lazy way to fill the game with things for players to do. You are the dev's not us. You get paid to develop this game so actually do it, don't take stuff out and expect the playerbase to do the work for you.
Or if you are happy to swap actual game content for player made stuff, why not go the whole hog and let players design their own ships and uniforms. After all it'll mean you wont need to bother with those either. Then you can concentrate on dreaming up more grindfests and money sinks for us to "enjoy".
I pretty much agree at this point; if the devs are just going to do the bare minimum, they might as well make a single exception to that to enhance tools to be used by PLAYERS, who will actually create BETTER content for FREE. No development time that apparently is always running so short over at Cryptic, no money spent to pay more people. But tons of content. So yeah... Improve the Foundry, improve Foundry accessibility, add more customization, and THEN get back to eliminating features and replacing them with grindable ("repeatable"... hah) content and dilithium sinks. Then people will play more, and have more things to do with the rewards from those grinds and money sinks and C-store items... Thereby keeping more players, and indirectly increasing profit more than any new reputation system or grindy, boring event ever could...
Material gathering is something like mining and it should have an easy interface that's easy to maintain.
Replacing the exploration missions with good quality Foundry may be a good idea.
That does NOT mean that replacing crafting material sources with foundry doors is a good thing.
These are completely different types of game content and not all players will enjoy both.
What the hell are foundry doors ? Places where you start foundry missions ?
W H A T ? ? ?
Just one week ago, some DEV declared the removal of Exploration, because of (easy way to earn) Crafting Materials ... is some crazy conspiracy theory, cause it has NOTHING TO DO WITH IT ... are you f ****** SERIOUS .... at least get your BS straight ...
Eh it needed to be removed and replaced this content is way out dated even the borg stfs are infants compared to this content that is mostly broken especially when you play KDF which are not explorers per canon IP.
Although if it were me I would have took exploration and foundry out until it could be brought up to speed with the rest of the content as well a bunch of that true way and breen stuff that is just way outdated.
Although I've never agreed that foundry content should be what future content comes from totally. To me though I find myself never playing content like this anymore because of how behind and outdated it is its not even fun don't need to buff anything and just instantly wipe through it without any kind of challenge even in elite mode lol.
I think pretty much an exploration/conquest system would be better set in the gamma and delta quadrants if we ever get that. The game is set in a way in a future from where the last prime universe series ended where the alpha/beta quadrant is basically needing/wanting to come together so there needs to expand outward.
/em bloodwine
Indeed.
They're removing the clusters, and adding new ways to earn crafting materials to compensate for the ones we're losing.
Hmm...
Yeah PVE Queues ... sooo ? ... you chose to ignore the point, entirely ? ... 1 week ago Exploration Removal was not supposed to be about Crafting 9.5 at all ... but I guess nobody was stupid enough to believe it ...
Also, as to the client download size as an argument as to why this was done, what? You spent a year or so Dev time to develop your "On-Demand" download system that downloads required client content as needed. If that's working (and it is the default setting as I've had friends recently download the STO client); in what way does removing this content make the base client download bigger, since i would think any of the old 'Genesis system' generated Cluster exploration maps wouldn't be downloaded by the on-demand patch system until needed?
So, yeah, as usual, STO Dev management decided they just wanted to do this (probably because they think it will boost PVE queue content play, and really get new players used to grinding that over and over and over).
IMO - STO has been content light FROM DAY ONE! Removing any content without a clear replacement again makes no sense, unless it's an attempt to force player numbers to increase in other areas of the simple PvE queue grind content so they can claim (via data mining) such content is 'more popular; and be able to devote more dev time to that particular content model.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Oh, lucky us! So what'd you reckon, how long before we log in for 5 mins. to delegate everything in this game to Doff minigames that do everything for me on a 24 hour cooldown, while I play and enjoy something else?
I'm not a fan of the removing exploration missions. I found them as a nice diversion when I don't feel like doing a queue (or while waiting), doing PVP, or repeating a mission. I also used them when I wanted to test new builds and power trays out. I also liked to do them for the non-combat missions that gave diplomacy CXP. Has there been given any thought to that? Not just the diplomacy missions that Jiro gives you but also the non-combat missions that gave you 100 dip CXP per completion? Will we be given non-combat, non-DOff repearable content to get dip CXP?
While I like the quoted part and think it would be a nice addition to the game, I don't think it should be used as a replacement for exploration missions. Nothing against the foundry but I find it very hard to find actual high quality missions, so making that the go to for everything you remove is wrong. Now, there are some good foundry missions, some that I did enjoy and liked. Finding those rare gems that are fun and seem to hold the Star Trek feel is hard, the finder is clunky and not very user friendly.
You've just described my current state of affairs with Star Trek Online.
Sorry, you can't do this ... new crafting requires you to log in every hour for ~250 days without sleep ... :P
Mine Trap Supporter
Are exploration missions really hurting anyone? What about the people who will miss them and the first contact missions. To my knowledge STO doesn't operate based solely on the net worth of its quality and the Delta Volanis Sector isn't so bad that people play it and then never play again.
Pitching the entire concept doesn't help the people who hated it and wanted improvement, and it just disappoints players that were fine with it.
In essence, I'm sad that Cryptic is using the same tactics as the Devidians and just sucking sectors into another realm of existence.
WE won't be able to change their minds... I think the whole business strategy was laid out perfectly on Risa. Annoy the player into spending more money by forcing them into liner repeatable task. STO is becoming less and less open world, and more of point and grind, or point and pay or you have to grind. I'd gladly be a lifetime member if it was more of an mmo and less of a time-gate / pay-wall... With only 8k Dil a day, you are sooooo forced into taking forever to get stuff or pay for it.
I have spent $30 on this game, and I will go as high as 60, because that's what games cost. Not hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a product I don't physically own.
*Blows on my Zelda cartridge*
Wow. That's a statement for the ages right there. "We're admitting our stuff sucks so badly that removing it entirely, with no replacement, is an improvement."
-sigh-