Hmmm, let's look at what 9.5 actually does, logically.
Removed exploration clusters - they stank and nobody sensible actually used them. There was nothing "exploration" about them. Claiming to miss them, well it's either trolling or a strange person to have liked the very much low quality nature of them.
Replaced an unimpressive and poor crafting system with another unimpressive and poor crafting system which has an added feature to try to get cash from people (catalysts). The thing is though, if you weren't using it before, why care?
Added new uniforms for feds and KDF, including making some of the old versions free. A good thing.
Added a new lockbox. Same old same old.
What SHOULD 9.5 be remembered for? New uniforms and making the old fleet ones free to all.
What WILL 9.5 be remembered for? The 100s of flaming forum ragers doing their nut about the loss of something rubbish, and a crafting system they never used anyway getting replaced with another crafting system they'll never use anyway.
Is 9.5 the worst? Nope, it's just a nothing, it should just be forgotten and remembered as the day they gave feds and KDF a free uniform option, and added new fleet ones. It's not a season, it's not even a half season like 8.5 was, it's a patch is all.
Move on, nothing to see here.
Sure is fun reading the dissent tho.
Ya, I remember the futility of the old crafting system- discovering that even after levelling up to craft the top items in the system it was still just vendor trash but there were a couple nice items to craft. The exploration clusters were a bad joke as far as content goes but were also a loot farm the crafting system lacked. Almost all of my ships mk12 blue and ppl engines came from exploration clusters, as well as hundreds of other uncraftable items I attached and lost to the mail system nerf while my unsold items were sitting in limbo in the player market waiting to be returned because my limit had been reached. DOFF'ing started to peak my interest about S7 and with the STF revamp I had no reason to not get into it heavily- I had just begun to make a serious impression on the upper levels of the DOFF system when S8 hit. That was the last time I logged on.
Now it's S9.5 and I wonder whats left of my account, where my old friends are, and if I should bother to update to see whats changed, until I started reading the latest threads. Will STO be here 2 seasons from now when they got this mess straightened out ? By then I should be able to play on my tablet, then I can see what me account looks like after all the nerfs, revamps, repecs and changes have had time to coalesce.
this is no even a real season is just a good update of some old stuff we have in game just that.
a true real new season is when you have a new chapter about the history is in progress is really disapoint the dev team is going down about ideas of this good game
to be fair, its a half season, as in .5. its not meant to be a groundbreaking release, nor is it meant to continue the story, its just meant to support the season and what was in game..
that's about as close as I get to defending cryptic if you know my other posts.. lol..
Whenever a game company asks for feedback and you start making elaborate excel sheets* or program code, or UI mock-ups, be aware that you will be mostly doing these for your own entertainment, not because you have a chance that the devs will implement any of your suggestions.
It's the same for pretty much every company.
If you want your elaborate work to be included in the game - apply at the game's company for a job in the area you want to work for. Then, once you've learned their inner workings ,t he technology they use, the systems they have in place, you will have a better idea of what it's actually feasible.
More over, when the devs present you with a UI or a game mechanic, feedback that says "do it completely differently" is pretty much useless to them. They are too far along already in the process to rework everything, and there are likely reasons you are not aware of why it looks like it looks. Point out flaws within the framework presented. ("No Doff Filter anymore." "Why do I get a DOFF offered I already used in another DOFF slot of that assignment?")
*) That's what I did a lot for MW:O.
Our entertainment? No sir, not in the slightest. I don't test because it entertains me, I test because it needs to be done.
I critique and give feed back because it needs to be done. I QA because it needs to be done.
Because the vast majority of STO players aren't going to do it.
You think it's fun for me, hell, I'd rather be playing.
No it's not fun, it's a pain in the butt alot of the times, because playing hour after hour of broken system trying to help tweak them, or at least THINKING I'm helping to tweak them is a job, a volunteer job sure, but a job none the less.
So you'll have to forgive me, If the fact that Cryptic puts out Feedback threads, literally asking us for input, and we painstakingly give it to them only to have them just outright ignore it, is a bit of a rub to those of us that do it.
I'm tired of Cryptic ignoring the feedback they poll us for in the first place, so I ask again, Why poll us for info if you not going to use it? What's the point?
It's not like this is some unsolicited suggestion thread like "Oh Cryptic, it would be cool if..." or "Cryptic, you should do this..." these are threads created BY Cryptic for the sake of what I thought was real time community feed back.
Why even go through the motions in the first place?
Bugs I can (kinda) forgive. Removing star clusters and diplomacy I can't. There are very few times I can think of where an MMO actually removed content, and none of them ended well.
However I can think of serveral other online games that did remove unpopular or poor quality content. FPS's especially have a tendency of making unavailable certain gametypes, maps, and other bits and bobs that no longer serve a useful purpose to the game. Of course you usually have the option of offline play for a lot of that but that's merely a difference of technical implementation. This is the equivalent in an MMO. Sure, MMO's generally don't need to prune away their own content but they also generally don't have the same radical contrast between original and new content. Quite frankly the shipping content for STO is no longer comparable to what we are getting now and that difference was most keenly felt with those aspects associated with exploration and crafting.
They needed to either go or completely revamped and this just happens to be the way those choices could be implemented. Probably with future updates we'll have follow ups, but for the time being just keep in mind that what's been added is a long-term feature. Crafting right now is just sort of there but as you rank up and as players learn what they can do with it (ie. make **** on demand) expect it to become at least a bit more substantial.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Notice: Might sound premature, as I have yet to discover and try out the new RnD and 9.5 stuff.
Although I haven't checked out the other gems in Season 9.5, I realised that it mainly focuses on the new Research and Development (RnD) and Duty Officer Assignments (DOFA).
====Duty Officer Assignments Window====
First, let's talk about the DOFA. When I opened up my DOFA, the window looks very foreign to me, the Assignment plans and Completed Assignemnts. While the rest are the old looks. Did anyone feels that big icons are worse than the old and small icons? Don't worry, you aren't the only one.
I did want to reduce the size back to the classic version, but there's no slider for it.
Next, is the assigning of DOFF. I mean, it's great that it assigned by itself, but what happens if you try to swap one of the officers out? You'll get a list of sorted DOFF from every department, and you can't hide one or more of the departments. Plus, can't choose it's rarity like the old assigning of officers.
Despite I like the auto-assign of DOFF, it keeps choosing the best DOFF. What if I want that particular DOFF in another assignment? Ok, 1 assignment shouldn't be tough, but what if there are like 4 assignments, you'll have to manually swap, scroll down the new and horrible search list and click on it--4 times.
====Research and Development Window====
Yes, when I opened up the DOFA window, the RnD tab is on it. Once again, it's just another assignment, and I really dislike the removal of the 'fixed' Rnd weapons. They could work together, the fixed RnD weapons are readily available for anyone to use and the random RnD weapons, is for those who wants to get weapons which are not available in the fixed RnD list.'
Why I called it 'random RnD weapons', well it's now based on chances. So, despite having good duty officers and chances, it likely hood you'll get is a rare weapon, or worse, a uncommon weapon.
This random RnD weapons doesn't help the new players, or existing players who have a new character to start.
====Memory Alpha====
This has been the trend for STO to simply remove a good place and forcing player to use more resource demanding way to get the items.
The best example would be DS9, the Omega Task Force. Previously, DS9 was bustling with chats about Borg, and how to attack/defend against them. Now, DS9 is quiet with players trying to sell stuff. Yet, despite the removal of interaction of NPCs (buy Borg, MACO stuff), they are still there. They might as well replace that room entirely.
Now, they removed Memory Alpha in-System and ground. What were they thinking? However, I suspect that, they have yet to complete the revamped MA, but I wouldn't cling to this hope.
I bet that the next few seasons, ESD will not be accessible, that includes DS9, K7 and basically, I think the entire galaxy will be removed and everything is done with just a simple window to access things like Exchange, Mail, etc. :cool:
Sorry man but you're really mistaken if you think that even 50% of auto-assigned doffs are the best for the job. I am (well used to be) a doff assignment slave until this new UI came out. If they ever fix the sorting in doff'ing try mixing up some of the doffs you would normally use. Yes your fail chance may go up a couple of percent's but your crit chance hugely outweighs a fail.
I have been away for a while, but I don't recall anyone complaining about the DOFF UI. Seems almost like someone was trying to justify their job by cobbling together something new because an exec wanting something new just to have something new.
The new RnD system is nothing but a poorly disguised rep grind (galaxy wide this time instead of contained to a handful of maps). Yea, another Rep grind is exactly what everyone was clamoring for :rolleyes:
And again, Cryptic removes content without doing something to balance it out. We saw this when Fleet Marks were nerfed in what was affectionately called the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" patch, which lead to a 200+ page thread (and the dev response was to ask for Harlem Shake videos).
There is clearly a disconnect between Cryptic and the player base, which I doubt will go away as long as people are too willing to fork over money for mediocrity.
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
This is 100% believabel, apart from the fact this game will never make it to season 12 if the Devs keep on making the same stupid decisions.
On the bright note someone else will hopefully buy the license and make a proper star trek MMO. I vote the guys at Hello Games should get a crack at, imagine a Star trek game running on the No Man Sky engine.
I hope someone will pick up the IP and license, and make a better game--from the continuation of where the failed studio left off.
There is clearly a disconnect between Cryptic and the player base, which I doubt will go away as long as people are too willing to fork over money for mediocrity.
While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think that is the only place that there is a huge disconnect.
I also think that there is a disconnect between what we pay for and what we get.
Let's face it -- most of the money that Cryptic makes through STO comes from Lockboxes.
That by itself is not great, but it is what it is .
The disconnect comes from this :
What does your purchase of Keys for cash / zen tell Cryptic about your thoughts of any of the content that they have delivered outside of the Lockbox ?
What does your shiny new ship tell them about your thoughts about the latest FE or Rep system, or Rep missions .
Simply put, buying lockbox stuff gives no direct feedback... , which reduces our chance to provide feedback and turnes you and me into a number on some players statistics who play or don't play certain content.
Or... as more and more Tribble testers find out, you can leave feedback to be ignored .
While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think that is the only place that there is a huge disconnect.
I also think that there is a disconnect between what we pay for and what we get.
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Of course, and thats the main problem. People KEEP paying, so dont expect good things in return. Its the same story over and over again. If people are willing to pay for anything, after so many months and years of receiveng broken things in return, cryptic will never do anything to improve the game, or make good decisions. As far as the money income goes, they have plenty, so why they will feel the need to make the game better?? knowing that implies to invest time, efforts and money in something else than releasing mediocre content? a company that invest 0 efforts on fixing bugs, for example, says it all. You dont even need to look at what players are willing to pay or not. Specially rich people, who will pay anything at ridiculous ammounts, specially LFS (cant believe people are buying LFS right now.. lol, its really ridiculous). If you want this game to improve, stop buying things. Period. Stop giving cryptic money. Period. And if the game is going to end because people is not buying anything, and cryptic cant figure it out why?? then, i will be really glad that the game servers close. Because a company like cryptic is not worthy of my time lol. This will be in a utopic future, where finally the reason came to and end and the game servers will close. But since the community of players of STO is not really "reasonable", my guess is that we will see even 20 seasons with mediocre content. In the end, only rich people will be the only ones that will left.
Of course, and thats the main problem. People KEEP paying, so dont expect good things in return. Its the same story over and over again. If people are willing to pay for anything, after so many months and years of receiveng broken things in return, cryptic will never do anything to improve the game, or make good decisions.
Or conversely that means that whatever criteria you are using to judge the quality of the updates is not reflected in the general population. Take crafting c-store packs. There's something to be said about "not wanting to have to have to 'pay' for basic materials" but the system does stand in line with the pay-or-play scheme cryptic has been successfully running since the F2P update. People may generally like the option of being able to drop a little bit of dilithium in order to avoid, for example, having to massively grind the ground borg STF's for their specific resource (which thankfully is how my purchases have worked out.)
Anyway you can take the game however you like but do keep in mind that if its demonstrably succesful the fault may not be with cryptic or with other people. It may simply be how you are approaching the situation (ie. with expectations intentionally set too high for a mid-range F2P MMO based on a 1960's [and onward] TV show.) Of course don't buy anything you don't want to, but neither should you blame the rest of the population outright because things aren't how you'd like them to be (that's your own deal.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Or conversely that means that whatever criteria you are using to judge the quality of the updates is not reflected in the general population.
Precisely, im talking in an objecive way. You should read the forums, specially all the threads created after season 9. Its not my personal opinion, it is a general feeling of a lot of players, and a lot of em are veteran players. If you cant see that the quality of almost all of the new thigns cryptic adds/change in the game is really bad (specially when there is no quality control at all, they dont even listen to the testers on tribble, and they launch everything with dozens of bugs) , then you obviously didnt play any other videogame in your life. This must be your only experience so far..
Precisely, im talking in an objecive way. You should read the forums, specially all the threads created after season 9. Its not my personal opinion, it is a general feeling of a lot of players, and a lot of em are veteran players. If you cant see that the quality of almost all of the new thigns cryptic adds/change in the game is really bad, then you obviously didnt play any other videogame in your life. This must be your only experience so far..
You mean the general feeling of the forums. Multiply a sample size of one by a few dozen (realistically) and you won't have suddenly conquered the problems of subjectivity and reached some sort of statistical truth. You will simply have a group of frustrated people all approaching the situation the same way. That safety in numbers may make the points easier to make, the ideas easier to reinforce (a problem sociologists are noting with web communities), but what you are left with is the same situation of a stable game that's continuing on with "bad" policies seemingly in spite of everything cryptic has done to bring Dooooooooooooom to STO.
You would be thinking objectively if you were trying to assess the game in terms of A. what it is now B. what its' trying to do and C. what it can do given A and B. Whining about how it isn't what you'd like it to be is simply an opinion and even if shared, it can still be off base. Therefore you shouldn't assume that simply because you have a mob, you are right. You still need that bit of objective reasoning in order to provide worthwhile forum feedback which must by nature be detached from what you, I, or anyone else might personally want out of STO. It has to be about the game as a functional entity, which may involve satisfying us but it doesn't need to (some changes may be tough to swallow, but ultimately allow the game to do its job better.)
Also, do keep in mind that you're arguing here that the new FE's, battlezones, ship designs, costumes, gear, and so on are worse in terms of quality (let's just keep this to) than what we've had before (there's certainly something to be said for one UI but that's not equivalent to STO in its entirety). You may question "have I played games before [answer to that: hell yes]" but you yourself appear not to have played this one [sure, you may have logged on, you may have fiddled, ground, and satisfied all the technical requriements of "playing" but I doubt you were really thinking about it.]
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Season of Meh. New uniforms look better than the old Antares ones used as the standard.
It has me half heartedly fiddling with crafting again. Which is better than not at all. Removal of exploration clusters? Not like I visited them for anything other than accolade hunting. I have a little more faith in the foundry authors to make it worth visiting again. New doffing graphics aren`t the best, but I can work with it. The truth is LOR is a tough act to follow, and anything less is only going to disappoint a crowd that uses it as a bar of expectations for new content.
Season of Meh. New uniforms look better than the old Antares ones used as the standard.
It has me half heartedly fiddling with crafting again. Which is better than not at all. Removal of exploration clusters? Not like I visited them for anything other than accolade hunting. I have a little more faith in the foundry authors to make it worth visiting again. New doffing graphics aren`t the best, but I can work with it. The truth is LOR is a tough act to follow, and anything less is only going to disappoint a crowd that uses it as a bar of expectations for new content.
LOR added NOTHING of use to the game. We wanted CONTENT and they added missions and Romulans. WTF where is the CONTENT? They need a new expansion so people can call off the 2014 drought!
NERF CANNONS - THEY NEED A 50% NERF
CRUISERS NEED A 206% HULL BUFF
The biggest problem apart from monetizing the crafting system, is that the DOff system is now jacked up, and this is the backbone of the Commendation system. This may not be a real handicap for some players, but it is a real blow to fleets, which make heavy use of this system as a source of fleet marks for holding projects. Fleets are a big draw for players' longevity on the server, so every damage done to fleet operations is a direct blow to the life of the server overall.
Deleting working content in favor of half-baked renovations is a poor trade-off in any economy. If Cyrptic wants to enhance their bottom line, they may as well close the Tribble server, since it was of no apparent benefit for this last release. Even if they cobble together some new content, if the current mess is not cleaned up at least to the old standard, then I'm also pulling the plug on my Gold subscription...:mad:
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
LOR added NOTHING of use to the game. We wanted CONTENT and they added missions and Romulans. WTF where is the CONTENT? They need a new expansion so people can call off the 2014 drought!
LOL. I don`t think Your definition of the word CONTENT is anything close to mine. I am also glad you have designated yourself as the spokesman for the community at large ,thank you your majesty.:rolleyes:
LOL. I don`t think Your definition of the word CONTENT is anything close to mine. I am also glad you have designated yourself as the spokesman for the community at large ,thank you your majesty.:rolleyes:
Yeah really. I loved LoR! Defense of New Romulus is the most fun I've ever had in a story mission.
I've been playing since May 2012 and 9.5 is by far the worst. When the only thing you are remotely excited about is a uniform colour and NPC's wearing the same thing, you know you've hit a terrible update.
Hmmm, let's look at what 9.5 actually does, logically.
Removed exploration clusters - they stank and nobody sensible actually used them. There was nothing "exploration" about them. Claiming to miss them, well it's either trolling or a strange person to have liked the very much low quality nature of them.
Bologna.
Procedurally Generated content is a powerful enough tool for video game development that No Man's Sky is going to create an entire universe of exploration content using the same idea that Cryptic failed to do anything with in 5+ years.
I mean undiscovered in the truest sense. There are two ways a developer can choose to build a free-roaming video-game world. One is to have a team of design artists build every single object and environment in the game, as in Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto series or Bethesda Game Studios Skyrim. The other way is to hand over creative duties to the computer AI, a process called procedural generation. Hello Games refers to No Mans Sky as an infinitely procedural universe.
It works like this: Hellos design team writes code for, say, a horselike animal, and then the AI uses that code as a template to create a variety of similar-looking animals of varied size, shape, and color. Think of it as a computer approximating the way members of a given species look different on an individual level but are always recognizable as being the same kind of animal. Then they scale that process up to create whole species of plants and animals inhabiting entire procedurally generated landscapes on procedurally generated planets in a procedurally generated solar system nestled somewhere in a vast procedurally generated galaxy within an entire procedurally generated universe. Imagine that and you may begin to understand why people are so excited about what Hello Games just might be able to accomplish.
Look at that. The Genesis System was attempting to do the same, though with lesser tools and 5 years prior.
See if this sounds almost Star Trek like in its approach:
This method of world creation means the game contains things that no one not even the games creators has ever seen. Recently we were demoing the game to some press and one of the journalists secretly grabbed the controller and started to play, Hello Games founder and No Mans Sky programmer Sean Murray told me over email. He kept turning to us saying things like, If I follow this river, whats down there? and we were like I genuinely dont know. You could feel this buzz as everyone watched, like literally we dont know whats out there and were just watching someone explore a whole planet that no one has ever visited before.
It's not the tool. It's people at Cryptic who didn't do anything WITH the tool that make this a failure.
One company is trying to take this style of sandbox gaming to a whole new level.
The other company decided to remove it from their game in favor of lockboxes and a crafting grind.
Claiming that removing exploration and the tools to utilize random mission content is a good thing is what's actually trolling or strange.
You're giving the company the green light to destroy one of the key things that made Star Trek Online STAR TREK. And you're antagonizing the people who liked the idea of exploration.
Buying into the laziness that Cryptic has used to justify its removal is just sad. The concept is sound and other companies are doing more with it than Cryptic seems willing to do. Companies that are even smaller than Cryptic with less budget and aren't even profitable like PWE is.
It's disturbing that you'd fall for their bologna and then add your own bologna on top of it.
But whatever.
Hope you enjoy maxing out your crafting schools. Time well spent, I'm sure.
Procedurally Generated content is a powerful enough tool for video game development that No Man's Sky is going to create an entire universe of exploration content using the same idea that Cryptic failed to do anything with in 5+ years.
And Mass Effect 3 is going to have 200 unique endings that will change depending on if you coughed while exploring the Citadel four years ago.
Not saying it's unimpressive, but I'll believe it when I see it, not when marketing tells me about it.
They changed a UI and everyone hates it because it's new.
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That . . . And the fact the UI is terrible . . . And the previous version worked fairly well . . . And the player base did not ask for the change . . . And Cryptic's time would have been better spent fixing something else.
Not saying it's unimpressive, but I'll believe it when I see it, not when marketing tells me about it.
Oh, I'm not singing the praises of the game. It could fail. It could absolutely fail.
What I'm pointing out is that the same basic idea (procedurally generated content) is being utilized as a tool for video game development. By a team smaller than the team currently working on this game.
Pass or fail, they've shown that they can use this tool better than Cryptic can.
And that, to me, shoots a ton of holes through the "explanation" given for why Cryptic just gave up on the idea of exploration and removed chunks of game content.
This isn't about "Oh this game is going to be sooo much better than STO."
No. This is about the idea of the exploration system being a sound idea even 5 years ago. And the developers not doing enough with it.
Oh, I'm not singing the praises of the game. It could fail. It could absolutely fail.
What I'm pointing out is that the same basic idea (procedurally generated content) is being utilized as a tool for video game development. By a team smaller than the team currently working on this game.
Pass or fail, they've shown that they can use this tool better than Cryptic can.
And that, to me, shoots a ton of holes through the "explanation" given for why Cryptic just gave up on the idea of exploration and removed chunks of game content.
This isn't about "Oh this game is going to be sooo much better than STO."
No. This is about the idea of the exploration system being a sound idea even 5 years ago. And the developers not doing enough with it.
IMO, the problem with the exploration system and procedurally generated content is complexity. Star Trek requires complexity to their missions while I don't think No Man's Sky would have any real complexity to their procedurally generated missions and it will take years before a game comes out with procedurally generated content that satisfies the complexity required for Star Trek missions. Star Trek episodes aren't just kill this group of people or take readings of this weird anomaly. Therefore, we have to rely on Foundry authors and devs to create Star Trek missions.
This style of content might be fine for No Man's Sky, but not Star Trek.
Comments
lmao - still hurting. If the dev's would really play STO this game would be much better by now.
Sure is fun reading the dissent tho.
Ya, I remember the futility of the old crafting system- discovering that even after levelling up to craft the top items in the system it was still just vendor trash but there were a couple nice items to craft. The exploration clusters were a bad joke as far as content goes but were also a loot farm the crafting system lacked. Almost all of my ships mk12 blue and ppl engines came from exploration clusters, as well as hundreds of other uncraftable items I attached and lost to the mail system nerf while my unsold items were sitting in limbo in the player market waiting to be returned because my limit had been reached. DOFF'ing started to peak my interest about S7 and with the STF revamp I had no reason to not get into it heavily- I had just begun to make a serious impression on the upper levels of the DOFF system when S8 hit. That was the last time I logged on.
Now it's S9.5 and I wonder whats left of my account, where my old friends are, and if I should bother to update to see whats changed, until I started reading the latest threads. Will STO be here 2 seasons from now when they got this mess straightened out ? By then I should be able to play on my tablet, then I can see what me account looks like after all the nerfs, revamps, repecs and changes have had time to coalesce.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
a true real new season is when you have a new chapter about the history is in progress
For turning the Doff-system, a not-perfect, but somewhat working little minigame into a pile of ****e...
that's about as close as I get to defending cryptic if you know my other posts.. lol..
Our entertainment? No sir, not in the slightest. I don't test because it entertains me, I test because it needs to be done.
I critique and give feed back because it needs to be done. I QA because it needs to be done.
Because the vast majority of STO players aren't going to do it.
You think it's fun for me, hell, I'd rather be playing.
No it's not fun, it's a pain in the butt alot of the times, because playing hour after hour of broken system trying to help tweak them, or at least THINKING I'm helping to tweak them is a job, a volunteer job sure, but a job none the less.
So you'll have to forgive me, If the fact that Cryptic puts out Feedback threads, literally asking us for input, and we painstakingly give it to them only to have them just outright ignore it, is a bit of a rub to those of us that do it.
I'm tired of Cryptic ignoring the feedback they poll us for in the first place, so I ask again, Why poll us for info if you not going to use it? What's the point?
It's not like this is some unsolicited suggestion thread like "Oh Cryptic, it would be cool if..." or "Cryptic, you should do this..." these are threads created BY Cryptic for the sake of what I thought was real time community feed back.
Why even go through the motions in the first place?
However I can think of serveral other online games that did remove unpopular or poor quality content. FPS's especially have a tendency of making unavailable certain gametypes, maps, and other bits and bobs that no longer serve a useful purpose to the game. Of course you usually have the option of offline play for a lot of that but that's merely a difference of technical implementation. This is the equivalent in an MMO. Sure, MMO's generally don't need to prune away their own content but they also generally don't have the same radical contrast between original and new content. Quite frankly the shipping content for STO is no longer comparable to what we are getting now and that difference was most keenly felt with those aspects associated with exploration and crafting.
They needed to either go or completely revamped and this just happens to be the way those choices could be implemented. Probably with future updates we'll have follow ups, but for the time being just keep in mind that what's been added is a long-term feature. Crafting right now is just sort of there but as you rank up and as players learn what they can do with it (ie. make **** on demand) expect it to become at least a bit more substantial.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Sorry man but you're really mistaken if you think that even 50% of auto-assigned doffs are the best for the job. I am (well used to be) a doff assignment slave until this new UI came out. If they ever fix the sorting in doff'ing try mixing up some of the doffs you would normally use. Yes your fail chance may go up a couple of percent's but your crit chance hugely outweighs a fail.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Change for the sake of change.
I have been away for a while, but I don't recall anyone complaining about the DOFF UI. Seems almost like someone was trying to justify their job by cobbling together something new because an exec wanting something new just to have something new.
The new RnD system is nothing but a poorly disguised rep grind (galaxy wide this time instead of contained to a handful of maps). Yea, another Rep grind is exactly what everyone was clamoring for :rolleyes:
And again, Cryptic removes content without doing something to balance it out. We saw this when Fleet Marks were nerfed in what was affectionately called the "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" patch, which lead to a 200+ page thread (and the dev response was to ask for Harlem Shake videos).
There is clearly a disconnect between Cryptic and the player base, which I doubt will go away as long as people are too willing to fork over money for mediocrity.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I hope someone will pick up the IP and license, and make a better game--from the continuation of where the failed studio left off.
While I agree with your sentiment, I don't think that is the only place that there is a huge disconnect.
I also think that there is a disconnect between what we pay for and what we get.
Let's face it -- most of the money that Cryptic makes through STO comes from Lockboxes.
That by itself is not great, but it is what it is .
The disconnect comes from this :
What does your purchase of Keys for cash / zen tell Cryptic about your thoughts of any of the content that they have delivered outside of the Lockbox ?
What does your shiny new ship tell them about your thoughts about the latest FE or Rep system, or Rep missions .
Simply put, buying lockbox stuff gives no direct feedback... , which reduces our chance to provide feedback and turnes you and me into a number on some players statistics who play or don't play certain content.
Or... as more and more Tribble testers find out, you can leave feedback to be ignored .
Of course, and thats the main problem. People KEEP paying, so dont expect good things in return. Its the same story over and over again. If people are willing to pay for anything, after so many months and years of receiveng broken things in return, cryptic will never do anything to improve the game, or make good decisions. As far as the money income goes, they have plenty, so why they will feel the need to make the game better?? knowing that implies to invest time, efforts and money in something else than releasing mediocre content? a company that invest 0 efforts on fixing bugs, for example, says it all. You dont even need to look at what players are willing to pay or not. Specially rich people, who will pay anything at ridiculous ammounts, specially LFS (cant believe people are buying LFS right now.. lol, its really ridiculous). If you want this game to improve, stop buying things. Period. Stop giving cryptic money. Period. And if the game is going to end because people is not buying anything, and cryptic cant figure it out why?? then, i will be really glad that the game servers close. Because a company like cryptic is not worthy of my time lol. This will be in a utopic future, where finally the reason came to and end and the game servers will close. But since the community of players of STO is not really "reasonable", my guess is that we will see even 20 seasons with mediocre content. In the end, only rich people will be the only ones that will left.
Or conversely that means that whatever criteria you are using to judge the quality of the updates is not reflected in the general population. Take crafting c-store packs. There's something to be said about "not wanting to have to have to 'pay' for basic materials" but the system does stand in line with the pay-or-play scheme cryptic has been successfully running since the F2P update. People may generally like the option of being able to drop a little bit of dilithium in order to avoid, for example, having to massively grind the ground borg STF's for their specific resource (which thankfully is how my purchases have worked out.)
Anyway you can take the game however you like but do keep in mind that if its demonstrably succesful the fault may not be with cryptic or with other people. It may simply be how you are approaching the situation (ie. with expectations intentionally set too high for a mid-range F2P MMO based on a 1960's [and onward] TV show.) Of course don't buy anything you don't want to, but neither should you blame the rest of the population outright because things aren't how you'd like them to be (that's your own deal.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Precisely, im talking in an objecive way. You should read the forums, specially all the threads created after season 9. Its not my personal opinion, it is a general feeling of a lot of players, and a lot of em are veteran players. If you cant see that the quality of almost all of the new thigns cryptic adds/change in the game is really bad (specially when there is no quality control at all, they dont even listen to the testers on tribble, and they launch everything with dozens of bugs) , then you obviously didnt play any other videogame in your life. This must be your only experience so far..
You mean the general feeling of the forums. Multiply a sample size of one by a few dozen (realistically) and you won't have suddenly conquered the problems of subjectivity and reached some sort of statistical truth. You will simply have a group of frustrated people all approaching the situation the same way. That safety in numbers may make the points easier to make, the ideas easier to reinforce (a problem sociologists are noting with web communities), but what you are left with is the same situation of a stable game that's continuing on with "bad" policies seemingly in spite of everything cryptic has done to bring Dooooooooooooom to STO.
You would be thinking objectively if you were trying to assess the game in terms of A. what it is now B. what its' trying to do and C. what it can do given A and B. Whining about how it isn't what you'd like it to be is simply an opinion and even if shared, it can still be off base. Therefore you shouldn't assume that simply because you have a mob, you are right. You still need that bit of objective reasoning in order to provide worthwhile forum feedback which must by nature be detached from what you, I, or anyone else might personally want out of STO. It has to be about the game as a functional entity, which may involve satisfying us but it doesn't need to (some changes may be tough to swallow, but ultimately allow the game to do its job better.)
Also, do keep in mind that you're arguing here that the new FE's, battlezones, ship designs, costumes, gear, and so on are worse in terms of quality (let's just keep this to) than what we've had before (there's certainly something to be said for one UI but that's not equivalent to STO in its entirety). You may question "have I played games before [answer to that: hell yes]" but you yourself appear not to have played this one [sure, you may have logged on, you may have fiddled, ground, and satisfied all the technical requriements of "playing" but I doubt you were really thinking about it.]
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
It has me half heartedly fiddling with crafting again. Which is better than not at all. Removal of exploration clusters? Not like I visited them for anything other than accolade hunting. I have a little more faith in the foundry authors to make it worth visiting again. New doffing graphics aren`t the best, but I can work with it. The truth is LOR is a tough act to follow, and anything less is only going to disappoint a crowd that uses it as a bar of expectations for new content.
LOR added NOTHING of use to the game. We wanted CONTENT and they added missions and Romulans. WTF where is the CONTENT? They need a new expansion so people can call off the 2014 drought!
CRUISERS NEED A 206% HULL BUFF
Deleting working content in favor of half-baked renovations is a poor trade-off in any economy. If Cyrptic wants to enhance their bottom line, they may as well close the Tribble server, since it was of no apparent benefit for this last release. Even if they cobble together some new content, if the current mess is not cleaned up at least to the old standard, then I'm also pulling the plug on my Gold subscription...:mad:
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
LOL. I don`t think Your definition of the word CONTENT is anything close to mine. I am also glad you have designated yourself as the spokesman for the community at large ,thank you your majesty.:rolleyes:
Why change?
and would they change it back??
Worst season ever? Still season 4.....
My character Tsin'xing
Bologna.
Procedurally Generated content is a powerful enough tool for video game development that No Man's Sky is going to create an entire universe of exploration content using the same idea that Cryptic failed to do anything with in 5+ years.
Look at that. The Genesis System was attempting to do the same, though with lesser tools and 5 years prior.
See if this sounds almost Star Trek like in its approach:
It's not the tool. It's people at Cryptic who didn't do anything WITH the tool that make this a failure.
One company is trying to take this style of sandbox gaming to a whole new level.
The other company decided to remove it from their game in favor of lockboxes and a crafting grind.
Claiming that removing exploration and the tools to utilize random mission content is a good thing is what's actually trolling or strange.
You're giving the company the green light to destroy one of the key things that made Star Trek Online STAR TREK. And you're antagonizing the people who liked the idea of exploration.
Buying into the laziness that Cryptic has used to justify its removal is just sad. The concept is sound and other companies are doing more with it than Cryptic seems willing to do. Companies that are even smaller than Cryptic with less budget and aren't even profitable like PWE is.
It's disturbing that you'd fall for their bologna and then add your own bologna on top of it.
But whatever.
Hope you enjoy maxing out your crafting schools. Time well spent, I'm sure.
No they wont change it back, however for the assignment page they want to add a list mode, that makes it more like the old one
It's like how people complain whenever Facebook or Youtube change things. In a few months nobody will remember/care.
Hopefully, this is the slow update season leading to the expansion at the end of the year.
And Mass Effect 3 is going to have 200 unique endings that will change depending on if you coughed while exploring the Citadel four years ago.
Not saying it's unimpressive, but I'll believe it when I see it, not when marketing tells me about it.
That . . . And the fact the UI is terrible . . . And the previous version worked fairly well . . . And the player base did not ask for the change . . . And Cryptic's time would have been better spent fixing something else.
Oh, I'm not singing the praises of the game. It could fail. It could absolutely fail.
What I'm pointing out is that the same basic idea (procedurally generated content) is being utilized as a tool for video game development. By a team smaller than the team currently working on this game.
Pass or fail, they've shown that they can use this tool better than Cryptic can.
And that, to me, shoots a ton of holes through the "explanation" given for why Cryptic just gave up on the idea of exploration and removed chunks of game content.
This isn't about "Oh this game is going to be sooo much better than STO."
No. This is about the idea of the exploration system being a sound idea even 5 years ago. And the developers not doing enough with it.
IMO, the problem with the exploration system and procedurally generated content is complexity. Star Trek requires complexity to their missions while I don't think No Man's Sky would have any real complexity to their procedurally generated missions and it will take years before a game comes out with procedurally generated content that satisfies the complexity required for Star Trek missions. Star Trek episodes aren't just kill this group of people or take readings of this weird anomaly. Therefore, we have to rely on Foundry authors and devs to create Star Trek missions.
This style of content might be fine for No Man's Sky, but not Star Trek.