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This is what it's like to come back to STO
momaw
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
For several months I have been playing another F2P game after STO irritated and bored me to the point that I didn't want to play it anymore. Last week I came back to see what was going on. My impressions on returning are.... not good.
Pretty much the first thing I'm reminded of is the painful F2P implementation. This is a game that actively discourages you from playing once you've reached your dilithium-refining cap for the day. Yes, I have multiple characters, but running them all up to 8K per day is a big part of how I burned out in the first place. This wouldn't be as big a problem if dilithium wasn't used for everything. I understand that their goal is to 'encourage' players to spend zen to get dilithium and overcome the refining cap, but the 'encouragement' in this case is being done with a poisoned nailbat.
Then we have new and improved grind. Another reputation. Meh. Another round of ridiculously complicated stats where you have to compare a 2% chance of this against a once-per-ten-seconds trigger of that on items you don't even want to replace, because obviously it would be insanity to make new items that aren't sets requiring all-or-nothing investments. Far easier to just not even get involved with it. The moment to moment gamplay of STO isn't even that great, which means the long term draw is achieving the perfect build, but doing that is so incredibly boring. It costs not only resources, it costs time to figure these things out. It's like STO goes out of its way to be difficult to follow so that it can wage psychological warframe against its players on multiple fronts (cost:value decoupling via obscurity)
Other grind.... R&D system. Lol? If I'm understanding this properly, it will be months before I can make anything worth making-- well, SAFELY make it without wasting materials, since it appears there's unrecoverable failure modes in the future. I guess the introduction of replicator technology means they forgot how to recycle. So a grind of months, and every single character will need to max it out in order to upgrade their own bound-to-character equipment, and it doesn't appear that you can use one character to pump others like rep "sponsorship".
Lockboxes still as locktastic as ever. Enjoy your 1% chance of getting something you care about or can even sell, and your 99% chance of being forced to grind EC like a robot to buy the thing you didn't get.
It's also clear that Cryptic spends basically no effort at all going back and looking into things. The "known bugs" section of the patch notes is silly. It took me all of ten seconds upon coming back to find a bug that's been outstanding since before I left. And balance changes... Ha! Why adjust anything for balance and instill consumer confidence in your players when you can just introduce new items that are better in every way for as long as their place in the spotlight lasts.
The personal kits are a neat idea, but add grind to get anywhere with them. The changes to Sensor Analysis are cool but science ships still haven't gotten the secondary deflectors that were promised...what, almost a year ago? Probably the only change I can point at that is undeniably positive and allows for new options is removing the shared cooldowns on "teams". Yup. Totally worth coming back for.
Basically the STO experience is that you can come back once per season, play the new missions in an evening, and then forget the game exists. Everything other than that is sadistic levels of grind for almost no purpose or sense of accomplishment, as you nudge your completion times on the same static missions up by fractions of a second at the cost of weeks of effort. The business model and time requirements seem aimed at extracting as much as possible from a core of a few thousand whales, and everybody else... well....
STO is definitely not the game for me anymore.
Pretty much the first thing I'm reminded of is the painful F2P implementation. This is a game that actively discourages you from playing once you've reached your dilithium-refining cap for the day. Yes, I have multiple characters, but running them all up to 8K per day is a big part of how I burned out in the first place. This wouldn't be as big a problem if dilithium wasn't used for everything. I understand that their goal is to 'encourage' players to spend zen to get dilithium and overcome the refining cap, but the 'encouragement' in this case is being done with a poisoned nailbat.
Then we have new and improved grind. Another reputation. Meh. Another round of ridiculously complicated stats where you have to compare a 2% chance of this against a once-per-ten-seconds trigger of that on items you don't even want to replace, because obviously it would be insanity to make new items that aren't sets requiring all-or-nothing investments. Far easier to just not even get involved with it. The moment to moment gamplay of STO isn't even that great, which means the long term draw is achieving the perfect build, but doing that is so incredibly boring. It costs not only resources, it costs time to figure these things out. It's like STO goes out of its way to be difficult to follow so that it can wage psychological warframe against its players on multiple fronts (cost:value decoupling via obscurity)
Other grind.... R&D system. Lol? If I'm understanding this properly, it will be months before I can make anything worth making-- well, SAFELY make it without wasting materials, since it appears there's unrecoverable failure modes in the future. I guess the introduction of replicator technology means they forgot how to recycle. So a grind of months, and every single character will need to max it out in order to upgrade their own bound-to-character equipment, and it doesn't appear that you can use one character to pump others like rep "sponsorship".
Lockboxes still as locktastic as ever. Enjoy your 1% chance of getting something you care about or can even sell, and your 99% chance of being forced to grind EC like a robot to buy the thing you didn't get.
It's also clear that Cryptic spends basically no effort at all going back and looking into things. The "known bugs" section of the patch notes is silly. It took me all of ten seconds upon coming back to find a bug that's been outstanding since before I left. And balance changes... Ha! Why adjust anything for balance and instill consumer confidence in your players when you can just introduce new items that are better in every way for as long as their place in the spotlight lasts.
The personal kits are a neat idea, but add grind to get anywhere with them. The changes to Sensor Analysis are cool but science ships still haven't gotten the secondary deflectors that were promised...what, almost a year ago? Probably the only change I can point at that is undeniably positive and allows for new options is removing the shared cooldowns on "teams". Yup. Totally worth coming back for.
Basically the STO experience is that you can come back once per season, play the new missions in an evening, and then forget the game exists. Everything other than that is sadistic levels of grind for almost no purpose or sense of accomplishment, as you nudge your completion times on the same static missions up by fractions of a second at the cost of weeks of effort. The business model and time requirements seem aimed at extracting as much as possible from a core of a few thousand whales, and everybody else... well....
STO is definitely not the game for me anymore.
Post edited by momaw on
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Comments
0.4% actually. That's how they make most of their money.
I'm not blaming them on making money, but I still don't like the gambling. Especially in a videogame. I don't mind having stuff in the cstore, if it's not p2win (which is not ATM), but gambling ? That's basically scamming legally "You want the shiny ? Open the box ! Nothing ? Too bad !". Some naive people spend too much. Yes they are naive, but abusing others naivet
Good gaming to you in whichever game catches your fancy!
Good luck finding fun
I agree with you but for myself I have been in this game for almost four years and I would be lost without it. Did I just say that omg cryptic has brainwashed me into thinking grinding is the only game play to do lol just kidding.
Good luck on your new gamming adventure and remember we'll be here grinding I mean playing if you decide to return. :0
If Cryptic gave away all the shiny good stuff and eliminated "the grind", what would be the point of playing the game? Log in, press a button to get all the best equipment, boffs, doffs etc, hit the "I win" keybind button and you're done? If everyone had all the shiny stuff, it would cease to be shiny.
The enjoyment, at least for me, is to do the best one can with the equipment one has at the time, experiment with builds, character careers and development and slowly improve yourself. For me, this mimics real life, except in STO there are no obsequious bootlicking "yes men" who avoid ginding by sucking up and getting the shinies and such by groveling for promotions rather than earning them through grinding hard work. (I'm not directing that at the OP or anyone else in STO, unless my boss is playing). For me, there is considerable satisfaction in finally achieving a goal with a character. I wouldn't want it to be too easy but I really like that "reputation token" for that sense of mentoring.
Lock boxes? I've bought a few. Sometimes I was happy with what I got and sometimes I wasn't. If one got a ship everytime one opened a lockbox, what would be the point? Unique lockbox ships wouuld cease to be unique. Are lock boxes a form of gambling? I don't consider it so. If someone wants to gamble, they will gamble on anything. They might do it on lock boxes but again, if they have a gambling problem, they will find a way to gamble on anything, not just STO and I don't believe Cryptic is responsible for that. I once saw a group of "problem gamblers" who had a large mat on the ground that had numbers inside of squares on it. They let a chicken run aound on the mat and bet on which number the chicken would TRIBBLE on. I don't blame Cryptic for things like that either. I allow myself to buy no more than 5 lockboxes a month and I get what I get and sell what I don't want on the Exchange. I don't call that gambling, I call it fun.
This is just my opinion and I mean no disrespect to the OP, or anyone else, and I thank him for his post. If the OP doesn't like STO, I would be curious in finding out what game(s) the OP does like so I can see how they compare.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1162461
The OP is not a blind rant filled with vitriol. Nor does it say 'I Quit'.
Instead it is valuable feedback for the developers about how a returning player perceives the current 'state of the game' so to speak. Feedback that could be valuable when your a month away from releasing an expansion hoping to get players to return.
I agree mostly with the OP about the '(cost:value decoupling via obscurity)' comment. Especially as it is being used with the new ship tier and upgrade systems instead of creating a system that would be simple and easy for players to determine what direction they want to go with existing ships vs the new T6 ships.
and 1 person's opinion isn't valuable information. 1 person is 1 person. there's threads on the forum saying something is too powerful and other threads on the forum saying the same something is too weak. they're each 1 person's opinion, and they contradict each other. cryptic can't consider them both to be valid.
i wish more haters had the op's balls and did just quit.
I'd be perfectly willing to play STO if they made some reforms. Look at this more as an ultimatum of lethargy than quitting. I'm not going to delete my account or anything. Just... not sure they are capable of making the reforms needed to keep bringing me back except to see new story missions every few months.
well, bye!
Which is a clear violation of the FCT.
I'm PMing Askray, surprised he hasn't stepped on this yet.
Thankfully I still find some aspects of the game fun. Not enough to ever put money into this game again, but I can avoid the parts I hate quite happily and get anything I do like for free.
Veterans and long term players are not the aim, nor the interest of Cryptic/PWE. It is all about getting that new player in to spend as much as possible, before they realize and potentially leave...
While you're waiting for censorship be delivered, assess how you would think about a hypothetical game where posting valid criticism is not allowed because it apparently comes up too "frequently".
If you don't like the game and want to leave that's fine. the need to make a big show of it isn't.
Perhaps you should, oh I don't know, try reading what he actually said instead of presuming what he said?
Also think some people here should stop trying to play forum police ... not a high school club and you're not in charge, you're nobody
for a start dont have too many characters, swapping characters every 5 minutes is time consuming in itself till you get to the stage all you ever seem to see is a loading screen.
dont worry over dilithium all the time, dilithium is not the be all and end all of playing the game, do things that you enjoy even if there is no dil payout at all, there are more days i dont get anywhere near to my dilithium cap then those i do.
dont fret too much over reputation theres nothing making you do it but its nice to get the big payout at the end, if you dont enjoy playing the thing that the rep is centered arround play somthing that pays choice of marks instead or even fill it by raising birds or epohh during the summer/winter event or dont do it at all if you dont want to.
crafting has always been a waste of time but even more so now, kit is just too hit and miss and the stuff you get from its not that great anyway and never has been any good, i get far better stuff from in game drops and that then i have ever seen thats craftable, i just do the daily mission and i am nearly to lv15 already, once i get there i will never use the thing again.
Basically the STO experience for me is do what i feel like and enjoy and just have fun, no matter if i play for an hour or for most of the day i never get bored and can always find somthing else i want to do in the game, when i have had enough i know how to quit the game and go do something else i enjoy and like, maybe watch a movie, walk the dog or annoy the misses.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Keep grasping for straws...Im sure youll grab one soon.
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
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