Really? They way I see it all Orangitis did was ask for evidence. After all, what good is a conclusion if it's not based on evidence?
And he was directed to the source for that very reason...:rolleyes:
I can agree with someone that car brand A is good and better than car brand B as car review groups or manufacturer groups might say. But that could be my observations. It may be safety or performance and economy related.
I have to say.... I'd like to see some actual numbers providing concrete evidence of the growth in player base here. Not just new players signing up but of those players, how many remain and for what duration? Do they stick around to and beyond lvl 60? Are we counting multiple characters under a single player in these numbers or new accounts only?
There are many ways to plush the numbers and let's be frank - Cryptic, et al, can say whatever they want in interviews regardless of any factual basis as A: no one is going to request the number sot corroborate their story and B: they wouldnt provide them even if requested.
I am not a doomsayer but Cryptic has run STO into the ground. To be blunt, its boring, tedious and frustrating when new content is pushed full of bugs when the existing bugs are left unaddressed. Yes new players may be coming in but will they stay? The current state of the game under Cryptics leadership does not suggest they will. Rather, they will come to STO because of the F2P concept and Star Trek name, but that alone will not be enough to hold a number of them. Especially with other space-combat based games coming out.
I look at a review like this for exactly what it is...marketing fluff piece that they want to see gaming media repeat and report on, verbatim.
Of course one would hope someone in the gaming media would in fact report on it, and call them out on some of the more glaring inaccuracies, perceived or otherwise.
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
Y'know, it could be that more players enjoy what STO is than those who do not. We could be attracting players that don't mind or even prefer long grinds and such.
I could be completely wrong though, but it's a possibility.
In an alternate universe where pink fluffy hippos and purple flying unicorns exist maybe....but not the one we're in.
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
They have some powerful rose-colored glasses at Cryptic....TRIBBLE turns into candy.
Or it could be a combination of their usage stats beating your anecdotes (the plural of which is not data) and some pretty basic marketing of the product that pays their wages.
For the record, not everyone is dissatisfied. While I appreciate that some people have legitimate grievances, threads like these are just obnoxious. I enjoy STO more than most other games available right now and particularly liked the new story content in DR. Just because you feel like [pvp balance / upgrade costs / exp grind time / insert your issue here] is broken doesn't mean that everyone is miserable. It doesn't mean the game is bad, and it doesn't mean many players don't still enjoy it and want to play it.
If your goal is to drag the game down by creating a toxic environment on the forum that discourages actual discussion, keep it up, but don't pretend your viewpoint is unanimous. I don't know where you think dev bashing and mockery really is going to get you, even if you ARE harping on legitimate issues. "Oh yeah, they're making fun of our marketing material, let's table our existing plans and get right down to doing what they're demanding!"
You can kill the goose that lays the golden egg, and you'll eat better than ever in the short term. But you'll just be that much hungrier in the long term once there's no longer any of either left. That's the boat Cryptic got themselves in and unfortunately, they are feeling too validated in the temporary sugar rush to see the long term consequences they have set the stage for.
For the record, not everyone is dissatisfied. While I appreciate that some people have legitimate grievances, threads like these are just obnoxious. I enjoy STO more than most other games available right now and particularly liked the new story content in DR. Just because you feel like [pvp balance / upgrade costs / exp grind time / insert your issue here] is broken doesn't mean that everyone is miserable. It doesn't mean the game is bad, and it doesn't mean many players don't still enjoy it and want to play it.
If your goal is to drag the game down by creating a toxic environment on the forum that discourages actual discussion, keep it up, but don't pretend your viewpoint is unanimous. I don't know where you think dev bashing and mockery really is going to get you, even if you ARE harping on legitimate issues. "Oh yeah, they're making fun of our marketing material, let's table our existing plans and get right down to doing what they're demanding!"
I like the game the way I want to play it which is not the way they want me to play it. I enjoy Tau Dewa, Aiding the Deferi, New Romulus, and Defera Invasion. I do not like DQ Patrols. I do them regardless of the push to play where and how they want me to play. For that, I am penalized. To say I am dissatisfied is only to say half truth. I am satisfied with how I play but I am not overly loving it to be falling more and more behind for playing that way.
And as expected, any voice not declaring, nay celebrating, the imminent demise of STO is shouted down with ad hominem arguments or simple denial that any point other than "we're going down in flames, chumps!!" could possibly be correct.
The sole cold comfort you can take in that position is that inevitably, one day, you will be correct; the unstoppable workings of entropy take their time on us all, and one day, months, years, decades, or geological eras from now, the servers will go offline, whether due to financial collapse, technological obsolescence, alien invasion, or the heat-death of the Universe. Nothing is eternal, after all.
But in normal human terms, this game doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, which fact seems to really rankle some of you.
^ This guy's obviously a developer on a fake account
Lol, not sure if this statement is made ironically or genuinely? I am certainly not a STO developer, but I have developed for online games before and have some appreciation of the difficulty of pleasing all audiences in an aging game. STO isn't perfect, or even amazing, but it is still fun for me. I'm willing to forgive a fair amount, especially from a smaller team. You want super polished, this is obviously not where to find it. :P
I like Delta Rising, that said there are three things that irk me about the game in general.
1. Instance runs for material grinds end in failure quite often. This is more of a player issue then a Cryptic issue I think for some of the advance and elite requirements when it comes to PUGs.
2. Client crashes since Delta Rising. They've slowly seemed to get worse for me and I notice a lot of people in instance runs disconnecting regularlly.
3. The lack of balance in Tier 6 offerings between factions. I can totally fault Cryptic/PWE for not having a balanced ship selection for all three factions and all three Captain career paths. They clearly favored Federation players on this and left Romulan Fed/KDF/ and Romulan KDF players out to pasture when it comes to equal number of ship offerings with the Delta Rising pack and other Tier 6 ship releases.
That being said the story for the expansion has been really enjoyable. The leveling inbetween missions is somewhat of a bugger but not as bad when you do full duty officer assignment runs each day mixed with a little grinding.
And as expected, any voice not declaring, nay celebrating, the imminent demise of STO is shouted down with ad hominem arguments or simple denial that any point other than "we're going down in flames, chumps!!" could possibly be correct.
The sole cold comfort you can take in that position is that inevitably, one day, you will be correct; the unstoppable workings of entropy take their time on us all, and one day, months, years, decades, or geological eras from now, the servers will go offline, whether due to financial collapse, technological obsolescence, alien invasion, or the heat-death of the Universe. Nothing is eternal, after all.
But in normal human terms, this game doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, which fact seems to really rankle some of you.
I don't expect it to magically disappear. Just like some venereal diseases, they don't quite disappear either.
What can happen is for a nuking of the playerbase and community. Now, let me say first off, no multiplayer community in videogaming these days is all nice and touchy-feely friendly with each other. Even in the best of times, the forums here have had its fair share of flame threads.
With that out of the way, you can't deny how slow the queues are. I had always looked at the queues as a sign of health. You know full well that the average STO player is not into some special channel. Most don't even know they can form a private instance. The PUGs forming out there are a sign of the average STO players' activity. And those public queues are quite dead except for the very few less than handful exceptions (Bug Hunt, Borg Disc, Crystalline Catastrophe). It's gotten worse since DR hit and time has gone on.
A game can linger quite a long time with the catastrophic nuking of its playerbase. Example? SOE's Star Wars Galaxies. The devs themselves nuked the living **** out of that game and the vast majority of players left. No rollback ever occurred. The departed players were never replaced in numbers. This happened in 2005 and the game continued on until Dec 2011. A game can live on with the largest portion of players having left.
Or perhaps the "average" STO player, weary unto death of being chewed out for being a "noob" because s/he didn't already know the flow of the instance inside-out, has refused to queue for any more PUGs and is instead quietly playing the storyline of the game. You remember the storyline?
I've only queued up once in my years here, and that wasn't exactly a pug - that was when a number of us fanfic writers happened to be on Risa at the same time during the summer event, and decided on a whim to queue up. Other than that, I've never touched the stuff, and don't plan to. Am I alone in this? Hard to say, but I find it unlikely.
Meanwhile, in your very first paragraph, you beautifully illustrate exactly the sort of attitude I discussed. Bravo!
There are many ways to plush the numbers and let's be frank - Cryptic, et al, can say whatever they want in interviews regardless of any factual basis as A: no one is going to request the number sot corroborate their story and B: they wouldn’t provide them even if requested.
I agree, broadly speaking.
I work in IT and am one of the people in my department that helps devise metrics. Metrics can be very deceiving if not properly devised. My suspicion is that what they are measuring does not rationally lead to the conclusions they are making.
Of course, I can only go on suspicion because Cryptic has not really revealed what it is they are measuring, much less the results. I cannot provide unimpeachable evidence of this game's decline because I do not have any means of accessing the raw data needed to devise proper metrics. My suspicion that all is not well in STO is based on the following-
1) My own personal experience of the game. 50-60 really sucked. I cannot believe there is a large audience for the grind. That is not to say there is not an audience at all. I used to play City of Heroes and there was a prolific forum-goer who defended the working of Force Field defenders (originally, you had to refresh the bubble on each team member every 2 minutes of game play...which got tedious and repetitive). As it turns out, he admitted he had Aspberger's Syndrome. So congratulations devs: you've won over an audience who actually enjoy grinding repetition, and likely a larger proportion of them than the general populace have a form of autism.
2) My own personal experience of the game is echoed by many, many posts on the forum.
3) My fleet is dead. For a solid two and a half years we could rely on low double-digit numbers of people in TeamSpeak playing the game together. All are gone, at least have been for a couple months. I've still been connecting to our fleet TS, but I've been playing other (better) games for the most part.
4) The queues are empty. How can numbers be healthy yet the queues dead? Even if the numbers are healthy, dead queues means more people are likely playing this MMO either solo or in closed groups. That's healthy? No. Not for an MMO, not by definition.
I am not a doomsayer but Cryptic has run STO into the ground. To be blunt, it’s boring, tedious and frustrating when “new” content is pushed full of bugs when the existing bugs are left unaddressed. Yes new players may be coming in but will they stay? The current state of the game under Cryptic’s leadership does not suggest they will. Rather, they will come to STO because of the F2P concept and Star Trek name, but that alone will not be enough to hold a number of them. Especially with other space-combat based games coming out.
But 'bridge officer specializations,' what are those?!
My guess is more types of hybrid Bridge Officers. So right now we have Intelligence/X Bridge Officers. I assume that for every Primary Specialization, they will add a new hybrid Bridge Officer and Kit modules to go with it.
Hopefully, they will adjust the non-Intel Tier 6 ships to be Generic Hybrid seats so I could fit an Intel Bridge Officer or the new type in my Guardian Cruiser.
Or perhaps the "average" STO player, weary unto death of being chewed out for being a "noob" because s/he didn't already know the flow of the instance inside-out, has refused to queue for any more PUGs and is instead quietly playing the storyline of the game. You remember the storyline?
I've only queued up once in my years here, and that wasn't exactly a pug - that was when a number of us fanfic writers happened to be on Risa at the same time during the summer event, and decided on a whim to queue up. Other than that, I've never touched the stuff, and don't plan to. Am I alone in this? Hard to say, but I find it unlikely.
Meanwhile, in your very first paragraph, you beautifully illustrate exactly the sort of attitude I discussed. Bravo!
You're underestimating the average STO player more than I am. Because outside of a few nifty free items like Solanae, there's absolutely NOTHING to gain in storyline play
XP? LOL!
Loot? Worth TRIBBLE, esp after the EC nerf of Engines, Deflectors, Shields.
Reputation or Fleet Marks? NONE.
Eventually, the average STO player realizes he has this thing called "Reputation" and hears about some of the cool things that are locked away there under each Rep and their associated tiers. He learns that certain instances give you the marks and rep tokens (BNPs, APCs, etc) required to make those reputation purchases.
Now, your remark that I'm sure you're proud about to say to me actually supports my cause.
Average Joe decides that he needs to work on Omega Rep. He wants his MACO Space Set! Not knowing any better, he joined an Advanced or possibly even Elite Omega STF. Doesn't go well, performance sucks, failed victory conditions and failed mandatory-optional conditions. He may get flack from the other players because of how bad he is (and you KNOW the average STO player is pretty bad). So he tries Normal and queues it. Even then, success can be iffy with those PUGs. Eventually Average Joe finds out he's not getting the Rep Tokens he needs to buy the MACO gear he wants. He's slowly getting marks, slowly getting dil, but he's NOT GETTING THE BNP's. Average Joe doesn't want to go through all the TRIBBLE of Advanced or Elite STFs.
Average Joe is discouraged, and guess where that may lead?
Hey may strive to be better and actually be better.
Or he may struggle some more and eventually quit.
Or he may just immediately quit.
And then again, I point to you, our fabulous PVE Queues. Of course, low participation in them may indeed just be a Reporting Error!
And as expected, any voice not declaring, nay celebrating, the imminent demise of STO is shouted down with ad hominem arguments or simple denial that any point other than "we're going down in flames, chumps!!" could possibly be correct.
The sole cold comfort you can take in that position is that inevitably, one day, you will be correct; the unstoppable workings of entropy take their time on us all, and one day, months, years, decades, or geological eras from now, the servers will go offline, whether due to financial collapse, technological obsolescence, alien invasion, or the heat-death of the Universe. Nothing is eternal, after all.
But in normal human terms, this game doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, which fact seems to really rankle some of you.
Allow me to clarify. I neither wish nor celebrate the demise of STO. I fear it.
I would love nothing more than for STO to get the care and upkeep it (and we) deserve. I'd be quite happy with less "new" content in leiu of a determined and focused bughunt/squash campaign. Quite simply, fix what is alrady broken before adding fuel to the fire.
Back in the day before STO was F2P it was simple, but it was good. Sure, there were things that needed to be addressed but it was still new and the company at the time were active in trying to address what was "wrong" with it in order to make it "right". Sadly, many here feel Cryptic, and in a larger part, PWE, have little to no interest in addressing what is broken. Rather, they merely want to push even MORE broken content on top of the pile.
Yes, inevitably, the game will fail and end, as do all games, shows, franchises, etc. It will fall to the new generation and the new interest that generation shares. Cryptic and PWE can either choose to do nothing more than hand out buckets on a sinking ship while they look for other endeavours or they can try to fix the ship.
Seeing as the path is unavoidable and the cost is lower for them to avoid the fixes, the buckets will continue to come until it is all we have left.
How about fun? How about the simple joy of interacting with an unfolding story, learning where it's going (and, on later playthroughs, how you can alter it by your actions), seeing what becomes of the various characters you encounter?
Why must everything be rewarded by stuff? What's wrong with just enjoying yourself? Do you refuse to watch television unless the producers pay you? Do you avoid any sporting events where you don't have actual money riding on the outcome? Do you only like songs you're getting royalties for?
Why can't entertainment simply be, well, entertaining?
I'm having a heck of a time, myself. If you're not, well, sorry for ya.
(Oh, by the way, "NONE" on the Rep Marks? My 500 Delta Marks would beg to differ...)
So, if people don't play it for the same reason as you, they are wrong.
The definition of a rewarding experience means different things to different people. Seems more than a bit condescending to disparage people who play games for the fun of collecting things they need to build up thier characters, ships, abilities, etc. and have *fun* in their own way.
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And he was directed to the source for that very reason...:rolleyes:
I can agree with someone that car brand A is good and better than car brand B as car review groups or manufacturer groups might say. But that could be my observations. It may be safety or performance and economy related.
You want the data? Go to the source.
Frankly, everyone here who has nothing but hatred in their heart for Cryptic when they go to bed should get the hell out of my game.
There are many ways to plush the numbers and let's be frank - Cryptic, et al, can say whatever they want in interviews regardless of any factual basis as A: no one is going to request the number sot corroborate their story and B: they wouldnt provide them even if requested.
I am not a doomsayer but Cryptic has run STO into the ground. To be blunt, its boring, tedious and frustrating when new content is pushed full of bugs when the existing bugs are left unaddressed. Yes new players may be coming in but will they stay? The current state of the game under Cryptics leadership does not suggest they will. Rather, they will come to STO because of the F2P concept and Star Trek name, but that alone will not be enough to hold a number of them. Especially with other space-combat based games coming out.
Tell that to the PvE queues...
I look at a review like this for exactly what it is...marketing fluff piece that they want to see gaming media repeat and report on, verbatim.
Of course one would hope someone in the gaming media would in fact report on it, and call them out on some of the more glaring inaccuracies, perceived or otherwise.
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
Delta Rising is the Best Expansion Ever and the Players Love It.
In an alternate universe where pink fluffy hippos and purple flying unicorns exist maybe....but not the one we're in.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Or it could be a combination of their usage stats beating your anecdotes (the plural of which is not data) and some pretty basic marketing of the product that pays their wages.
But 'bridge officer specializations,' what are those?!
If your goal is to drag the game down by creating a toxic environment on the forum that discourages actual discussion, keep it up, but don't pretend your viewpoint is unanimous. I don't know where you think dev bashing and mockery really is going to get you, even if you ARE harping on legitimate issues. "Oh yeah, they're making fun of our marketing material, let's table our existing plans and get right down to doing what they're demanding!"
^ This guy's obviously a developer on a fake account
What game are you playing? cause you didnt describe STO.
Fleet leader Nova Elite
Fleet Leader House of Nova elite
@ren_larreck
I like the game the way I want to play it which is not the way they want me to play it. I enjoy Tau Dewa, Aiding the Deferi, New Romulus, and Defera Invasion. I do not like DQ Patrols. I do them regardless of the push to play where and how they want me to play. For that, I am penalized. To say I am dissatisfied is only to say half truth. I am satisfied with how I play but I am not overly loving it to be falling more and more behind for playing that way.
If it wasn't for the Star Trek name, STO would have died in its first year. It was that bad.
There are examples in video gaming where an IP name doesn't do anything for a product or saves it. STO is in the latter.
The sole cold comfort you can take in that position is that inevitably, one day, you will be correct; the unstoppable workings of entropy take their time on us all, and one day, months, years, decades, or geological eras from now, the servers will go offline, whether due to financial collapse, technological obsolescence, alien invasion, or the heat-death of the Universe. Nothing is eternal, after all.
But in normal human terms, this game doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, which fact seems to really rankle some of you.
Lol, not sure if this statement is made ironically or genuinely? I am certainly not a STO developer, but I have developed for online games before and have some appreciation of the difficulty of pleasing all audiences in an aging game. STO isn't perfect, or even amazing, but it is still fun for me. I'm willing to forgive a fair amount, especially from a smaller team. You want super polished, this is obviously not where to find it. :P
1. Instance runs for material grinds end in failure quite often. This is more of a player issue then a Cryptic issue I think for some of the advance and elite requirements when it comes to PUGs.
2. Client crashes since Delta Rising. They've slowly seemed to get worse for me and I notice a lot of people in instance runs disconnecting regularlly.
3. The lack of balance in Tier 6 offerings between factions. I can totally fault Cryptic/PWE for not having a balanced ship selection for all three factions and all three Captain career paths. They clearly favored Federation players on this and left Romulan Fed/KDF/ and Romulan KDF players out to pasture when it comes to equal number of ship offerings with the Delta Rising pack and other Tier 6 ship releases.
That being said the story for the expansion has been really enjoyable. The leveling inbetween missions is somewhat of a bugger but not as bad when you do full duty officer assignment runs each day mixed with a little grinding.
DELTA RISING IS THE BEST EXPANSION EVER AND THE MOANING MINNIES LOVE IT (mainly down to the fact they obviously don't have real lives).
On a different note....
I'm looking forward to see what 2015 brings us in STO :cool:
I don't expect it to magically disappear. Just like some venereal diseases, they don't quite disappear either.
What can happen is for a nuking of the playerbase and community. Now, let me say first off, no multiplayer community in videogaming these days is all nice and touchy-feely friendly with each other. Even in the best of times, the forums here have had its fair share of flame threads.
With that out of the way, you can't deny how slow the queues are. I had always looked at the queues as a sign of health. You know full well that the average STO player is not into some special channel. Most don't even know they can form a private instance. The PUGs forming out there are a sign of the average STO players' activity. And those public queues are quite dead except for the very few less than handful exceptions (Bug Hunt, Borg Disc, Crystalline Catastrophe). It's gotten worse since DR hit and time has gone on.
A game can linger quite a long time with the catastrophic nuking of its playerbase. Example? SOE's Star Wars Galaxies. The devs themselves nuked the living **** out of that game and the vast majority of players left. No rollback ever occurred. The departed players were never replaced in numbers. This happened in 2005 and the game continued on until Dec 2011. A game can live on with the largest portion of players having left.
I've only queued up once in my years here, and that wasn't exactly a pug - that was when a number of us fanfic writers happened to be on Risa at the same time during the summer event, and decided on a whim to queue up. Other than that, I've never touched the stuff, and don't plan to. Am I alone in this? Hard to say, but I find it unlikely.
Meanwhile, in your very first paragraph, you beautifully illustrate exactly the sort of attitude I discussed. Bravo!
I agree, broadly speaking.
I work in IT and am one of the people in my department that helps devise metrics. Metrics can be very deceiving if not properly devised. My suspicion is that what they are measuring does not rationally lead to the conclusions they are making.
Of course, I can only go on suspicion because Cryptic has not really revealed what it is they are measuring, much less the results. I cannot provide unimpeachable evidence of this game's decline because I do not have any means of accessing the raw data needed to devise proper metrics. My suspicion that all is not well in STO is based on the following-
1) My own personal experience of the game. 50-60 really sucked. I cannot believe there is a large audience for the grind. That is not to say there is not an audience at all. I used to play City of Heroes and there was a prolific forum-goer who defended the working of Force Field defenders (originally, you had to refresh the bubble on each team member every 2 minutes of game play...which got tedious and repetitive). As it turns out, he admitted he had Aspberger's Syndrome. So congratulations devs: you've won over an audience who actually enjoy grinding repetition, and likely a larger proportion of them than the general populace have a form of autism.
2) My own personal experience of the game is echoed by many, many posts on the forum.
3) My fleet is dead. For a solid two and a half years we could rely on low double-digit numbers of people in TeamSpeak playing the game together. All are gone, at least have been for a couple months. I've still been connecting to our fleet TS, but I've been playing other (better) games for the most part.
4) The queues are empty. How can numbers be healthy yet the queues dead? Even if the numbers are healthy, dead queues means more people are likely playing this MMO either solo or in closed groups. That's healthy? No. Not for an MMO, not by definition.
+1 point for you, good sir.
My guess is more types of hybrid Bridge Officers. So right now we have Intelligence/X Bridge Officers. I assume that for every Primary Specialization, they will add a new hybrid Bridge Officer and Kit modules to go with it.
Hopefully, they will adjust the non-Intel Tier 6 ships to be Generic Hybrid seats so I could fit an Intel Bridge Officer or the new type in my Guardian Cruiser.
You're underestimating the average STO player more than I am. Because outside of a few nifty free items like Solanae, there's absolutely NOTHING to gain in storyline play
XP? LOL!
Loot? Worth TRIBBLE, esp after the EC nerf of Engines, Deflectors, Shields.
Reputation or Fleet Marks? NONE.
Eventually, the average STO player realizes he has this thing called "Reputation" and hears about some of the cool things that are locked away there under each Rep and their associated tiers. He learns that certain instances give you the marks and rep tokens (BNPs, APCs, etc) required to make those reputation purchases.
Now, your remark that I'm sure you're proud about to say to me actually supports my cause.
Average Joe decides that he needs to work on Omega Rep. He wants his MACO Space Set! Not knowing any better, he joined an Advanced or possibly even Elite Omega STF. Doesn't go well, performance sucks, failed victory conditions and failed mandatory-optional conditions. He may get flack from the other players because of how bad he is (and you KNOW the average STO player is pretty bad). So he tries Normal and queues it. Even then, success can be iffy with those PUGs. Eventually Average Joe finds out he's not getting the Rep Tokens he needs to buy the MACO gear he wants. He's slowly getting marks, slowly getting dil, but he's NOT GETTING THE BNP's. Average Joe doesn't want to go through all the TRIBBLE of Advanced or Elite STFs.
Average Joe is discouraged, and guess where that may lead?
Hey may strive to be better and actually be better.
Or he may struggle some more and eventually quit.
Or he may just immediately quit.
And then again, I point to you, our fabulous PVE Queues. Of course, low participation in them may indeed just be a Reporting Error!
Allow me to clarify. I neither wish nor celebrate the demise of STO. I fear it.
I would love nothing more than for STO to get the care and upkeep it (and we) deserve. I'd be quite happy with less "new" content in leiu of a determined and focused bughunt/squash campaign. Quite simply, fix what is alrady broken before adding fuel to the fire.
Back in the day before STO was F2P it was simple, but it was good. Sure, there were things that needed to be addressed but it was still new and the company at the time were active in trying to address what was "wrong" with it in order to make it "right". Sadly, many here feel Cryptic, and in a larger part, PWE, have little to no interest in addressing what is broken. Rather, they merely want to push even MORE broken content on top of the pile.
Yes, inevitably, the game will fail and end, as do all games, shows, franchises, etc. It will fall to the new generation and the new interest that generation shares. Cryptic and PWE can either choose to do nothing more than hand out buckets on a sinking ship while they look for other endeavours or they can try to fix the ship.
Seeing as the path is unavoidable and the cost is lower for them to avoid the fixes, the buckets will continue to come until it is all we have left.
How about fun? How about the simple joy of interacting with an unfolding story, learning where it's going (and, on later playthroughs, how you can alter it by your actions), seeing what becomes of the various characters you encounter?
Why must everything be rewarded by stuff? What's wrong with just enjoying yourself? Do you refuse to watch television unless the producers pay you? Do you avoid any sporting events where you don't have actual money riding on the outcome? Do you only like songs you're getting royalties for?
Why can't entertainment simply be, well, entertaining?
I'm having a heck of a time, myself. If you're not, well, sorry for ya.
(Oh, by the way, "NONE" on the Rep Marks? My 500 Delta Marks would beg to differ...)
Now dont argue with cryptic and pwe on this matter
we all know that
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever
and the players love it.
So, if people don't play it for the same reason as you, they are wrong.
The definition of a rewarding experience means different things to different people. Seems more than a bit condescending to disparage people who play games for the fun of collecting things they need to build up thier characters, ships, abilities, etc. and have *fun* in their own way.