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Are expansions hurting STO ?
aelfwin1
Member Posts: 2,896 Arc User
The thought behind this thread comes from my impressions regarding content distribution in STO .
My idea is this :
Take the last expansion (30 something missions & 15 + ships) and subdivide it with 12 months.
I don't know about you, but I got 2.5 missions per month .
Anyone who's looking at the 5-6 months between FE's, and the forward crawl of the story in general might for a second think that getting 2-3 missions per month might be a nice idea ... -- but then they'll hit the "how will Cryptic make money off off this ?" wall .
To that I have two answers :
- I had no answer to that question until seasons 9 and 9.5 came .
- My answer is this :
Season 9 was shortened for the sake of X2.
Season 9.5 could have been a Lockbox only, and more ppl would have been less upset with the game.
In short, I'm getting more and more convinced that the "awesome" expansions are nothing more then a hype and they only serve Cryptic's bottom line, and not the welfare of the player experience .
I know... nothing shocking there .
Still I find it kind of sad ... when I think about the buzz this game could have from both it's podcasts and it's community.
My idea is this :
Take the last expansion (30 something missions & 15 + ships) and subdivide it with 12 months.
I don't know about you, but I got 2.5 missions per month .
Anyone who's looking at the 5-6 months between FE's, and the forward crawl of the story in general might for a second think that getting 2-3 missions per month might be a nice idea ... -- but then they'll hit the "how will Cryptic make money off off this ?" wall .
To that I have two answers :
- I had no answer to that question until seasons 9 and 9.5 came .
- My answer is this :
Season 9 was shortened for the sake of X2.
Season 9.5 could have been a Lockbox only, and more ppl would have been less upset with the game.
In short, I'm getting more and more convinced that the "awesome" expansions are nothing more then a hype and they only serve Cryptic's bottom line, and not the welfare of the player experience .
I know... nothing shocking there .
Still I find it kind of sad ... when I think about the buzz this game could have from both it's podcasts and it's community.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Since LoR panned out pretty well, we are, in essence, trying it again. Who knows. Could be a huge flop. Could be a huge boon. We won't know until it's out.
I certainly wish the team luck with it, although I really think that they need to avoid new grind as much as possible. We have plenty of that as it is and the last couple of grinds to hit brought a lot of negativity on their heels.
ERMG its the TACO!!!
So um....you guys plan on doing anything for us Romulans? Its been like a year since we saw anything of note... just saying...come check out our flotilla and gameplay section...think we been asking for new uniforms and ships since....um ...ever....:P
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
I actually look forward to the expansion. I recently started a Romulan character for the first time and I have to say I enjoy the experience. But I can understand peoples negativity towards some of the choices made regarding gameplay. Though in general I understand that a F2P model doesnt mean money isnt supposed to be exchanged. And it seems like thats what many players on these forums have forgotten. That without some grind, people wont turn to the C-Store, and if they arent buying anything from there. Or charging Zen. Than this game wouldnt be operational. So lets hope the next Expansion is as successful as the last.
Anyways... Taco is right. It was a gamble. In fact... any major expansion for any game can be considered a gamble.
And I doubt a Cardassian faction is coming ever. I think I saw something about them not doing a faction when their main ship is available to all in a lockbox.
But you're not really trying it again.
Legacy of Romulus debuted playable Romulans.
The one thing we have been told about the new expansion is no new faction.
So what is it you're trying again? Not LOR.
But my point is that the big hook of LOR was Romulans. So I think the obvious is being missed here.
I'm not saying the new expansion has to debut a new faction. I don't care either way.
But I am saying that they're not trying to do LOR again. Because they're not including the biggest hook of LOR that made it the big thing that it turned out to be.
A new story arc was nice. But people came to make Romulans.
That is in essence what every expansion is. An attempt to see a spike in sales and usage. Most MMOs dont have the regular loyalty of WoW.
Maybe it's been your opinion, but there are some people who think the ONE expansion was the best thing that this game has had. I tend to be one of those people. Sure, the Romulans that people wanted to play ended up not being the ones that we ended up getting to play, but that stems from the fact that the classic Romulans end up becoming part of the big lurking enemy. Cryptic obviously didn't want us playing the bad guys as it goes against the story that they were setting up.
This...
If X2 is content with very little or no grind, you (Cryptic) may end up scoring big... if it's just another grind... Well... I have bags and bags of popcorn.
It spiked and died did it?
No, no it didn't, at least not as much as on a normal season update.
It seems to me that PWE did finance the expansion (an investment that paid off), but without the expansion, it may simply not have happened and the nunmber of missions added in the same time frame would be much less.
It doesn't really seem to me like the seasons itself are actually smaller than previous seasons.
In fact, even just the half seasons seem to compete strongly with the previous full seasons (if we think back to Season 1 or 2 for example).
So no, I don't think that the expansions are really hurting STO. You can always argue about whether you like what the expansions included, but they don't seem to cut down the actual content we get - they increase it.
Setting LOR aside, what were the things you (and others) liked about the OTHER expansions for STO?
Actually, let's start with the basics. What were their names?
Poor design choices from Systems remain poor decisions, however you package them. I just can't believe rommies needed to be as op as they were at release, for people to enjoy the mini-faction.
the long-term consequences of such decisions are more power creep, less balance, and less player retention.
Oh and Geko being at his finest on podcasts. At least he has chuzzpah going for him.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
The two things that really are hurting is the overmonitization (greed), and the excessive grinding. Because it's driving away the players. PWE (whom I assume is ones responsible) has pushed the community past their breaking point, even the most loyal are now leaving in droves. People just can't take the day-to-day mindless grind anymore with little or no actual reward. This new Crafting system is a prime example of breaking the camel's back.
Could Expansion 2 fix it? Probablly, but I think the damage has been done.
Let's hope the best, but if the 2nd expansion's quality is on par with or better than LoR, I have no worries
Only problem I see with expansions is, well, they EXPAND the game instead of improving existing systems. These things, like a crafting update, have to be squeezed into half-seasons or get pushed back like the BOff-training and skill-revamps...
For me, the game has several BIG construction sites wrt to already existing systems:
1) The entire BOff-system, including training, ranks, department heads.
2) PvP.
3) The Foundry and any new "exploration" system that might be dependent on it.
4) Revamp of sector space. Realistically it does not serve a real purpose at all. It is a design-dead-end. One sector to rule them all would not improve on that. A 2D-navigation map could transport the same information, and would allow the players to better focus on DOffs, R&D, Reputation, Fleet etc. while auto-navigating.
5) More "minor" things, e.g., melee combat and more voiceover for exisiting, ealrier missions, i.e. Klingon War, Romulan Mystery, Fek'lhri Return, etc. etc.
STOWiki admin.
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Reply in one!
You are great!
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
The latest FE, the one where ESD got destroyed. We should have had 1 mission showing how the borg are gonna use this to their advantage. Another explaining the plans of the Federation and how their gonna combat the threat. Another (this more than any) explaining how the Romulans are gonna get involved, maybe even bring in the Tal shiar to help fight the Iconians. I can go on and on. It should have had way more story than what we got.
Alot of games hook their players on the epic story. Sto shouldn't be any diffrent. On top of that coming up with storys that hook you from the star trek universe should be easy. Space conbat and exploration, alien races, the survival of the human race, and thats just the tip of the iceberg. Instead with a game that's number 1 draw should be its storys. STOs storys are one of its worst features, in a MMO even. I hate doing this but, just look at wow's story. Its not merly a story of Human vs orc. I'm not even gonna try to go into wows mythology it would take up 50 pages of text. Whats more important is, its a good read and pulls you in. Thats what STO needs.
As the game stands right now. I think it needs 2 things. 1, the story needs a massive update/upgrade and 2, I think we need more 5 man space STFs that require a little more thinking and class diversity. Not to take away from the pew pew but, to make the pew pew more enjoyable.
I have not claimed that LoR was not successful , nor have I said that it did not bring in players & money .
What I did say was that all that came at a cost -- namely a serious lack of new content enbetween expansions .
The most simplistic metaphore I can think of would be :
Would you like to have ice cream in bigger lumps 2-3 times a year and one giant lump once a year, or would you like to have smaller lumps of ice cream 2-3 times a month?
And while you're pondering your answer consider that you are living in the desert .;)
PLUS make this game more like Star Trek is meant to be, exploring vast space instead of just making it just WoW in tiny space. There is even a daily mission to race around every known sector of space in less than 15 minuets!!??? That just tells me this isn't really a space 'adventure' game at all is it? Grinding to make your ship more powerful means nothing if all you do is the same instance missions over and over and over again tring to accumulate purple rocks or what not. Make space BIG as it should be. Make chance meetings with other ships and unknows in deep space exciting because something came up on your scanners unexpected as you were out in deep space, looking for those purple rocks. Something like that. Make your sensors something you really need and use!! Make both PvP and PvE meetings possible in deep space. But for the love of Star Trek, make this game true to the whole idea of it. People would FLOCK to play a Star Trek game like that. You would not need anything else to try to sell it. (rant off)
firstly your thread title is misleading the point, there has only been one expansion and it worked out without any real troubles minus a few who want tovan khev to die and rom minifaction... such and such, how has it hurt sto? according to what you state you want the dev teams to do more to get more content out. they could do it, but their timetable may not allow it at all. as far as i am concerned, what they do is their own business as long as the community is nofiied through the proper avenues not just social trollworking sites.
LoR was a success, it added the romulans. the one thing that worked well was the complete adventure from colonist nobody to romulan admiral of dilithium farming :P. i cant see how expansion 2 could harm the game at all.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.