Devs please fix STO

sharxtreme · November 2014

1. Amount of specialization points per level is ridiculous
One episode= 1500-3000 SP at lvl60
One specialisation level = 55000 SP

so, roughly you need to play 40 episodes to get just 1 level of 50 specialization levels
Or 2000 episodes for full level
On 1 toon. WHAT????

PvE enemies also bring low SP. 120-140 for a cruiser in patrol, varying and much lower SP for enemies in STFs. On normal.

This is just wrong.
What it does to game is this:

People replaying Argala and other patrols over an over and over.
While PvE queues except Mirror are completely empty. especially Advanced and Elite.
Even if you level up by doing patrol missions you need to play Argala for mind boggling 500 times to just get specialisation levels done.

Vast majority of players cannot even attempt Adv or Elite because they can't level up, or get components because PvE queues are practically empty.

Now lets add to that the amount of time it takes to level up reputation and R&D and you just come to conclusion that it is impossible for 90% of players that log 1-4 hours per day.
Maxing more then one toon is simply impossible in normal gameplay.

News flash: No one enjoys playing patrol missions or leveling up. Even people that pay for ships or dilithium are still looking at leveling up XP and SP for several months at the least from 50-110.

Also PvP needs a large XP/SP boost.
So there is atleast that incentive to play it until people level up.

Fix it fast. This is just wrong

banatine · November 2014

They know, and everyone i know agrees...

They just don't care.

anothervisitor · November 2014

It's called 'the curse of Neverwinter'. They took all the sinks and time-consuming elements from that game and imported them here.

grouchyotaku · November 2014

sharxtreme wrote: »

...

News flash: No one enjoys playing patrol missions or leveling up. Even people that pay for ships or dilithium are still looking at leveling up XP and SP for several months at the least from 50-110.
...

Did you actually think that End Game materials were going to be cheap, fast, and easy ??? A period of several months is short, compared to a group of people in a Fleet trying to advance towards a Tier 5 Fleet Shipyard, which can easily take over a year to accomplish...

hpgibbs · November 2014

Let's do the math (thanks to my friend and fleetie) take the Argala system patrol, on normal difficulty like most people play: 540 runs at approximately 5k points per run. Needing about 2.7 million points to after level 60. High DPS players takes 3-4 minutes, and the average time being around 10 minutes. So on the low end, it'll take 45 hours to fully level a single toon purely grinding.

rsoblivion · November 2014

grouchyotaku wrote: »

Did you actually think that End Game materials were going to be cheap, fast, and easy ??? A period of several months is short, compared to a group of people in a Fleet trying to advance towards a Tier 5 Fleet Shipyard, which can easily take over a year to accomplish...

Doesn't make it right. It's still a screwed up situation. TBH there needs to be a full balance pass from T1 through to T6 for all gear, weapons and missions to rebalance it for more fun.

Fun should be primary, that brings in the dollars freely. Making it a grindathon outside China/Korea/Japan and it just loses customers. Just look at Archeage now compared to it's Western Launch. Game has tanked on western shores due to this very reason and the disinterest of the dev's to fix known issues (some known for a VERY long time).

tekehd · November 2014

As it stands now with all the SP sources I tend to by gaining a SP point on at least one toon every other day. This is between running mission story content, PVE queues and doffing.

cyberpenguin73 · November 2014

anothervisitor wrote: »

It's called 'the curse of Neverwinter'. They took all the sinks and time-consuming elements from that game and imported them here.

I left Neverwinter a while ago for many of those reasons. I felt Neverwinter should be more like STO no the other way around.

Good ole PWE, the beating will continue until moral improves or we empty your wallets.

hojain2020 · November 2014

This game has become a complete waste of time and money. I have made sure to tell all my gaming friends in other games and guilds to never even think about this game in its current state.

sharxtreme · November 2014

hpgibbs wrote: »

Let's do the math (thanks to my friend and fleetie) take the Argala system patrol, on normal difficulty like most people play: 540 runs at approximately 5k points per run. Needing about 2.7 million points to after level 60. High DPS players takes 3-4 minutes, and the average time being around 10 minutes. So on the low end, it'll take 45 hours to fully level a single toon purely grinding.

That is theoretical and practically impossible minimum.

You need to count in warp in, warp out time, finding team etc.
Nobody sane can and will do 550 Argala runs in 48 hrs.

Not to mention that you're not doing anything else.

Math again.
Daily doff/RnD/rep marks/dil + specialisation grind.
If you are on for 1-4 hrs a day you are looking at minimum of 48 days just to spec one toon from 60 to 110 while doing things i mentioned above.

zionlyth · November 2014

I have to say I disagree completely.

This is the most fun I've had, and the longest I played sto in a long while? Why? well because I can progress my character for a long time. I usually stop playing when there is nothing left for me to work for. That was usually within a week or two in most of the major updates before DR.

In the past, especially in rom x-pac, I could cap our a character in a matter of days (except for logging in for 2 mins to set a rep project ), then get bored because I have nothing to work towards progression wise. I am not an alt-o-holic and I only play one character. Right now I have progression set for myself for a long time, be-it with specialization or crafting.

I also don't understand the rush.. WHY do you need to have everything maxed on your character with so little effort? It's not like capping your specialization even gives you amazing overpowered things. In every other MMO I've played, capping out a character, be it reputation or equipment, or hell even lvls, could take months and years, yet people are up in arms that they have to spend like 50 hours in patrols to completely finish speccing a character... seriously?

Same with new STFs. I like that they are harder. I like working towards and improving my own skills enough to beat them with my friends. Just don't pug them, and they're not that bad. This would be like people in other games complaining that they cannot raid with random people they picked up in newbie zones. This type of complaining would be called silly in other games.

I don't know... maybe I'm just a jaded old MMO player, but compared to a lot of games I've played, STO is still casual as hell.

noroblad · November 2014

You can get a big piece of your bar daily just by doing DO missions -- focus on 200+ xp ones of course.

Between that and normal play the bar moves right along.

I am not saying its ideal (Its kinda dumb that 5 min of setting up missions and going afk are worth more than a couple of hours of STF play or mission replays etc) but you can move the bar right along every day. I will figure out how far I can move it now that the mirror is over --- I have not been doing anything but mirror and DO missions so my levels slowed down due to alts in MU.

hpgibbs · November 2014

sharxtreme wrote: »

That is theoretical and practically impossible minimum.

You need to count in warp in, warp out time, finding team etc.
Nobody sane can and will do 550 Argala runs in 48 hrs.

Not to mention that you're not doing anything else.

Math again.
Daily doff/RnD/rep marks/dil + specialisation grind.
If you are on for 1-4 hrs a day you are looking at minimum of 48 days just to spec one toon from 60 to 110 while doing things i mentioned above.

Well that's the amount of time, more or less. Doesn't have to be done straight, no one could do that, well no one sane. I didn't factor in duty officer missions or the likes but they do have a large effect; as well as average play time or day for most people. But our math, though different calculations and variables, reach the same conclusion: too danged lon

zionlyth wrote: »

I have to say I disagree completely.

This is the most fun I've had, and the longest I played sto in a long while? Why? well because I can progress my character for a long time. I usually stop playing when there is nothing left for me to work for. That was usually within a week or two in most of the major updates before DR.

In the past, especially in rom x-pac, I could cap our a character in a matter of days (except for logging in for 2 mins to set a rep project ), then get bored because I have nothing to work towards progression wise. I am not an alt-o-holic and I only play one character. Right now I have progression set for myself for a long time, be-it with specialization or crafting.

I also don't understand the rush.. WHY do you need to have everything maxed on your character with so little effort? It's not like capping your specialization even gives you amazing overpowered things. In every other MMO I've played, capping out a character, be it reputation or equipment, or hell even lvls, could take months and years, yet people are up in arms that they have to spend like 50 hours in patrols to completely finish speccing a character... seriously?

Same with new STFs. I like that they are harder. I like working towards and improving my own skills enough to beat them with my friends. Just don't pug them, and they're not that bad. This would be like people in other games complaining that they cannot raid with random people they picked up in newbie zones. This type of complaining would be called silly in other games.

I don't know... maybe I'm just a jaded old MMO player, but compared to a lot of games I've played, STO is still casual as hell.

I actually love the update too, and I'm not saying it should be easy or immediate. Rather, I'm saying that the devs need to use a hint of logic. They kind of screwed over the weekend and rare players over something that a small few of the all day every day players did. (Even then, I don't believe they did anything "wrong" as that was claimed)

calamintha · November 2014

sharxtreme wrote: »

News flash: No one enjoys playing patrol missions or leveling up.

That's... not entirely true. My wife enjoys both so much that she has over 20 characters and she mostly levels up with patrols (since they killed exploration). She won't do the lvl 60+ XP farm though.

zionlyth · November 2014

hpgibbs wrote: »

I actually love the update too, and I'm not saying it should be easy or immediate. Rather, I'm saying that the devs need to use a hint of logic. They kind of screwed over the weekend and rare players over something that a small few of the all day every day players did. (Even then, I don't believe they did anything "wrong" as that was claimed)

It's a two way street. How do you please the content hungry gamers, vs the casual crowd?

I would not mind it if they adjusted episodes to reward like 8k, as they do take a while to play through. They already fixed (buffed?) ship mastery exp, and they could in theory do the same for specialization, I just don't think it's needed.

Take your time people. Play the game for fun, do exactly what you were doing before DR and the exp will come. Heck, I went from 50 to 58 with only DOFFING on a character.

sharxtreme · November 2014

calamintha wrote: »

That's... not entirely true. My wife enjoys both so much that she has over 20 characters and she mostly levels up with patrols (since they killed exploration). She won't do the lvl 60+ XP farm though.

I was talking about farming SP.

Same with new STFs. I like that they are harder. I like working towards and improving my own skills enough to beat them with my friends. Just don't pug them, and they're not that bad. This would be like people in other games complaining that they cannot raid with random people they picked up in newbie zones. This type of complaining would be called silly in other games.

I like that STFs are harder. I did actually mastered all old STF/NWS content before.
What you missed from my post is that STF queues are completely dead because everyone is repeating Argala patrol which gives more SP for less effort and people will fed up with that soon.

zionlyth · November 2014

sharxtreme wrote: »

I like that STFs are harder. I did actually mastered all old STF/NWS content before. What you missed from my post is that STF queues are completely dead because everyone is repeating Argala patrol and people will fed up with that soon.

I guess I can't disagree with that. I think it's more to do with ME than farming patrols though. Once that's done, more people will be hitting regular STFs for marks.

venkou · November 2014

zionlyth wrote: »

I have to say I disagree completely.

This is the most fun I've had, and the longest I played sto in a long while? Why? well because I can progress my character for a long time.

What is progression? If you were to ask that question to ten people, you would walk away with a very subjective and mixed answer.

Character progression through grinding.

-versus-

Character progression though story progression.

Which is rewarding? Which challenges our cognitive abilities?

Cryptic didn't make enough episodes to connect character progression with story progression. If my slow progress was due to a storyline, the goals and rewards would match my efforts. When you become 'apart of the story', emergence, the overall roleplaying experience suddenly changes. Instead of just focusing on reaching level 60, the player is psychologically driven to fulfill a destiny. Once you hit the end of the storyline, your character should be sitting at the level cap.

Here is the conundrum... 'Delta Rising's' missions only give you enough xp to fill one to two tenths of each level. Therefore, you are pulled out of character. Therefore, you are pulled out of the story.

Ironically, Cryptic turned three 'Delta Rising' episodes into patrol missions; thus, the new upgrade has less story progression than what it seems.

I have personally hit a wall. Since I want to challenge my cognitive abilities, while also enjoy a role-playing experience, I have decided it was time to diversify. I am getting ready to jump over to 'Dragon Age: Inquisition'.

I want to: save the world, interact with my npc companions, progress through a storyline, etc...

I want to play a unique role.

"Star Trek: Online" cannot currently give me what I want.

...and, I think I have hit the acceptance stage.

I have achieved illumination.

crusader2007 · November 2014

sharxtreme wrote: »

1. Amount of specialization points per level is ridiculous
One episode= 1500-3000 SP at lvl60
One specialisation level = 55000 SP

so, roughly you need to play 40 episodes to get just 1 level of 50 specialization levels
Or 2000 episodes for full level
On 1 toon. WHAT????

PvE enemies also bring low SP. 120-140 for a cruiser in patrol, varying and much lower SP for enemies in STFs. On normal.

This is just wrong.
What it does to game is this:

People replaying Argala and other patrols over an over and over.
While PvE queues except Mirror are completely empty. especially Advanced and Elite.
Even if you level up by doing patrol missions you need to play Argala for mind boggling 500 times to just get specialisation levels done.

Vast majority of players cannot even attempt Adv or Elite because they can't level up, or get components because PvE queues are practically empty.

Now lets add to that the amount of time it takes to level up reputation and R&D and you just come to conclusion that it is impossible for 90% of players that log 1-4 hours per day.
Maxing more then one toon is simply impossible in normal gameplay.

News flash: No one enjoys playing patrol missions or leveling up. Even people that pay for ships or dilithium are still looking at leveling up XP and SP for several months at the least from 50-110.

Also PvP needs a large XP/SP boost.
So there is atleast that incentive to play it until people level up.

Fix it fast. This is just wrong

It was broken since 10/23 patch and Cryptic will not dissent from its original plan. Remember that ALL exploiters got back specialization points back but ALL players got the biggest NERF ever in the history of STO. They succumb to the exploiters but D'angelo will not budge on the XP nerf. Hence XP nerfed= slow progress including specialization points.

As per Cryptic...dissent does not happen and NOTHING too see here :mad:

banatine · November 2014

zionlyth wrote: »

It's a two way street. How do you please the content hungry gamers, vs the casual crowd?.

You please the content hungry gamer by, y'know, CREATING content!

Not by padding out the entire Delta Rising Story with patrol missions, forcing player to stop for an hour or more between mission to grind the extra level you need to progress, which will generally be repeating the same patrols you just did in the last story mission...

And then when you finish the story, hope you like playing the exact same patrol hundreds of times over for an almost imperceptible gain each time.

But hell, you can always just buy XP boosts from the Z-store to make the process almost bearable...

i don;t mind a long progression, but they deliberately reduced the xp rewards of EVERYTHING in order to stop people from levelling faster that they wanted. If they hadn't moved the goalposts so much, there wouldn't have been half as many complaints.

humblesheep · November 2014

zionlyth wrote: »

It's a two way street. How do you please the content hungry gamers, vs the casual crowd?

I would not mind it if they adjusted episodes to reward like 8k, as they do take a while to play through. They already fixed (buffed?) ship mastery exp, and they could in theory do the same for specialization, I just don't think it's needed.

Take your time people. Play the game for fun, do exactly what you were doing before DR and the exp will come. Heck, I went from 50 to 58 with only DOFFING on a character.

I agree, it's a difficult balance. But for me, it's too slow to be called fun, so if left as it is, I wont be bothering.

50 to 58 is very good, most of my farmers are just hitting 54 and I doff once per day. Thing is, I don't care what level they are, it's my mains who are progressing so slowly.

Now, after doffing and doing the MUI I often sit looking at my characters thinking what do I want to play? I used to do a few STFs to wind down before going to bed, now I just stare at the screen for a while, then log off.

Oh, and I'd love to do exactly what I was doing before DR. I miss it a great deal.

zionlyth · November 2014

venkou wrote: »

What is progression? If you were to ask that question to ten people, you would walk away with a very subjective and mixed answer.

Character progression through grinding.

-versus-

Character progression though story progression.

Which is rewarding? Which challenges our cognitive abilities?

I have personally hit a wall. Since I want to challenge my cognitive abilities, while also enjoy a role-playing experience, I have decided it was time to diversify. I am getting ready to jump over to 'Dragon Age: Inquisition'.

I want to: save the world, interact with my npc companions, progress through a storyline, etc...

I want to play a unique role.

"Star Trek: Online" cannot currently give me what I want.

...and, I think I have hit the acceptance stage.

Illumination.

That's a completely different subject however. I sure as hell would also like more story progression, but expecting an MMO to pump it out as fast as we consume it is not realistic. It takes us an hour to play through an episode. It takes a hell lot longer to produce one, especially when you have voice actors and such. Heck, they just put out a new episode today so it's not like they're not trying to bring us more story content. However, having things to 'grind' towards while we wait for the next one if a good thing to me.

I also think it's unfair to compare an MMO to a single player rpg like DA. And if you're looking for story content only, you're better off playing playing single player games, as no current, or future MMO would be able to offer you what you want. Heck, SWTOR should in theory be EXACTLY what you're looking for. 100% of lvling is through interactive story quests. But after you finish them? Well you'll have to wait a few months for new story content, or raid/pvp.

kenthend · November 2014

tekehd wrote: »

As it stands now with all the SP sources I tend to by gaining a SP point on at least one toon every other day. This is between running mission story content, PVE queues and doffing.

This is the same for me. Sometimes it may take a few days to get a spec point.

tekehd · November 2014

noroblad wrote: »

You can get a big piece of your bar daily just by doing DO missions -- focus on 200+ xp ones of course.

Between that and normal play the bar moves right along.

I am not saying its ideal (Its kinda dumb that 5 min of setting up missions and going afk are worth more than a couple of hours of STF play or mission replays etc) but you can move the bar right along every day. I will figure out how far I can move it now that the mirror is over --- I have not been doing anything but mirror and DO missions so my levels slowed down due to alts in MU.

Yes, I do DOffing quite a bit to level. Have on toon at 60, one at 59, one at 57 and two at 53 right now. The 53's are purely from doffing work, the 60,59 and 57 is combined DOFF'ing queues and missions.

venkou · November 2014

zionlyth wrote: »

I also think it's unfair to compare an MMO to a single player rpg like DA.

When it comes to my subjective approach, I think its perfectly fair to compare MMOs and single player rpgs. Its all about my personal style and tastes.

I am also approaching 'STO' from a 'Star Trek' fan perspective. Unlike many of the other MMOs, I am attracted to 'STO' in a different manner. I am expecting a story driven 'Star Trek' experience. I am not expecting a 'fill up the buckets' experience.

As I said in my original post, the one you partially quoted, I have hit a certain level of illumination. I came to accept that 'Star Trek: Online' will never-ever evolve into 'Dragon Age: Origins' and 'Skyrim'. As a result of hitting that level of acceptance, I have decided to temporarily leave 'STO' behind. I am looking for a more fulfilling role-playing experience.

'Delta Rising' is going 50% into the right direction and 50% into the wrong direction. If Cryptic had flooded the upgrade with episodes, I would have not felt the daunting grind and leveling. Story progression keeps you distracted, so that you are not fully focused on grinding. Cryptic should have held back on creating another battleground; thus, the developer should have focused on making a mess of episodes.

'Delta Rising' is trying to go into too many directions. Its a mess.

talonxv · November 2014

reyan01 wrote: »

My primary issue with post Delta Rising STO is how Alt-unfriendly it is.

I've levelled ONE character to 60. I have another at 53. I can't even bring myself to log into the remaining three.

I've got one at around 57, 2 at 51, and haven't TOUCHED my other alts, for the simple reason I don't want to invest that much time to play nor do I want to buy XP from PWE.

Getting silly now.

venkou · November 2014

talonxv wrote: »

I've got one at around 57, 2 at 51, and haven't TOUCHED my other alts, for the simple reason I don't want to invest that much time to play nor do I want to buy XP from PWE.

Getting silly now.

I am kind of in a similar boat. I have one avatar at level 57. My second avatar is at level 50. Since my progression is taking too long, I am not even looking at leveling another avatar. I might not even get my first avatar up to level 60. I am so bored with: playing repetitive missions, the slow level progression, and lack of substantial rewards. If there was a continuous storyline to work through, the whole experience would have been drastically different.

I am starting to think that this game stinks.

I was a raving fan when Season Five, Six, and Seven hit.

Now, I think 'STO' is just garbage.

I don't think 'Star Trek: Online' is currently worth saving.

talonxv · November 2014

venkou wrote: »

I am kind of in a similar boat. I have one avatar at level 57. My second avatar is at level 50. Since my progression is taking too long, I am not even looking at leveling another avatar. I might not even get my first avatar up to level 60. I am so bored with: playing repetitive missions, the slow level progression, and lack of substantial rewards. If there was a continuous storyline to work through, the whole experience would have been drastically different.

I am starting to think that this game stinks.

I was a raving fan when Season Five, Six, and Seven hit.

Now, I think 'STO' is just garbage.

I don't think 'Star Trek: Online' is currently worth saving.

Well many have said creating content takes a hell of a lot longer to do than players to play through it but good god.

How long did they have this expansion in development, they had PLENTY of time to get enough content in so it didn't feel like an XP sink, over and over grind.

Sorry WG screwed the pooch on this one.

ursusmorologus · November 2014

Leveling is a crutch mechanic used by Geko because he's unable to make gameplay interesting enough for people to login on their own

venkou · November 2014

ursusmorologus wrote: »

Leveling is a crutch mechanic used by Geko because he's unable to make gameplay interesting enough for people to login on their own

Cryptic needs a whole new set of developers, directors, producers, and managers. I truly believe "Star Trek: Online" needs an entirely new crew. Complacency and lack of creative vision are a serious problem.

sharxtreme · November 2014

Problem with this direction, not only in STO, but in other games as well is what I call the "minecraft-farmville" sindrome.

"Popular social games" are not about gaming anymore, not everyone can be a successful game developer or story writer so they start using tricks.
Tricks that bite back so hard when people get fed up with constant dumbing down, farming, grinding and collecting. Was easy buck for some devs that could discard a franchise at moments notice.

I play STO because

a) i like Star Trek, space exploration and space fighting gameplay
b) i like challenges in gameplay which in STO meant only doing better and better runs of STFs but mainly PvP
c) i also found group effort of managing/leveling a starbase/fleet to be fun until we long time ago hit max levels

Last time they did expansion with LoR, you could easily level up your toon by doing missions, and you got great bridge officers to go along with it.

Now you get nothing, you get less and less XP the more you need it, and there is no challenge because people are in Argala or mirror event and everything is empty.

Those few that try anything more then Normal PvE find themselves with completely new players that just don't know mission and gameplay mechanics, see that XP is way lower then farming patrol missions and they just don't even bother queueing up.

Devs please fix STO

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