test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
General Direction Game Design STO
johnsteward
Member Posts: 1,073 Arc User
dear devs and fellow players:)
TL;DR:
Current direction of game development in sto as shows by event and game design is going in a complete player unfriendly direction
Long winded version:
Thing is if we take a look at what kind of mission/event was collectively enjoyed by the players say a year ago and we then go and compare that to the kind of event/missions we got since then there seems to be a large disparity in style/design.
The missions most ppl enjoyed say early 2014 were borg-stfs, crystalline, nws and at least a few enjoyed ground play here and there. One thing all those missions had in common was a good reward/time-quotient - NO time gates - and a kind of freedom in the strategy.
Now all we get are time gated boring missions with basically no freedom in how we go about doing the mission or they remove them completely as say did with nws.
Its the same as with mirror universe invasion thing its propably coming back as a time gated boring event that comes and goes.
While I do understand that you have your metrics and expectations of how many marks/dil/reward_xyz a player should earn in a given amount of time but you seem to forget that players just arent mechanical play robots that exist only to make you money and keep your game running.
Sure there are some who enjoy episode replays and time gated missions with no challange at all and sometimes nothing to do at all but me and my guys arent and I suspect a lot of others arent as well.
Thing is I personally enjoy playing the game (or did when it was playable/not lagging) and I also strangely enough enjoy spending money on this game but recently there seems to be no reason to do so.
No more nws no elite stfs (yet) and all new missions are so stupidly easy. Take GGA for example: there are points where you can park your ship and just keep pressing f when a radiation gate spawns for 10minutes or whatever while this guy keepd yelling "transports on the way" every 5 seconds till you have to deactivate sound.
Pls do realize that buying/playing for/ finding new stuff to get better is basically the main idea behind all kinds of mmos out there. It makes no sense where being better at playing or habing better geat than others has no influence on how effective you are in farming stuff.
The devs seem to be focussed on making us play the game they want it to be played. Whatever the reason behind this direction the game took is pls rethink it. Episode replays and time gated missions is surely okay for a bit but at some point there needs to be different kind of missions again.
If there is no way to actually profit ingame from beimg better there is no reason to play except standing on ESD or taking a tour through sector space before logging off.
Instead of trying to make us play the game you want maybe you could take a second look at what kind of mission is played the most and build new ones in that same style/setup. Noone minds special events or addition rewards for less played mission, just make sure to model new missions after the ones played without "extra incentives".
Sure its your game and you can ruin it all you want but make sure thats really what you want.
TL;DR:
Current direction of game development in sto as shows by event and game design is going in a complete player unfriendly direction
Long winded version:
Thing is if we take a look at what kind of mission/event was collectively enjoyed by the players say a year ago and we then go and compare that to the kind of event/missions we got since then there seems to be a large disparity in style/design.
The missions most ppl enjoyed say early 2014 were borg-stfs, crystalline, nws and at least a few enjoyed ground play here and there. One thing all those missions had in common was a good reward/time-quotient - NO time gates - and a kind of freedom in the strategy.
Now all we get are time gated boring missions with basically no freedom in how we go about doing the mission or they remove them completely as say did with nws.
Its the same as with mirror universe invasion thing its propably coming back as a time gated boring event that comes and goes.
While I do understand that you have your metrics and expectations of how many marks/dil/reward_xyz a player should earn in a given amount of time but you seem to forget that players just arent mechanical play robots that exist only to make you money and keep your game running.
Sure there are some who enjoy episode replays and time gated missions with no challange at all and sometimes nothing to do at all but me and my guys arent and I suspect a lot of others arent as well.
Thing is I personally enjoy playing the game (or did when it was playable/not lagging) and I also strangely enough enjoy spending money on this game but recently there seems to be no reason to do so.
No more nws no elite stfs (yet) and all new missions are so stupidly easy. Take GGA for example: there are points where you can park your ship and just keep pressing f when a radiation gate spawns for 10minutes or whatever while this guy keepd yelling "transports on the way" every 5 seconds till you have to deactivate sound.
Pls do realize that buying/playing for/ finding new stuff to get better is basically the main idea behind all kinds of mmos out there. It makes no sense where being better at playing or habing better geat than others has no influence on how effective you are in farming stuff.
The devs seem to be focussed on making us play the game they want it to be played. Whatever the reason behind this direction the game took is pls rethink it. Episode replays and time gated missions is surely okay for a bit but at some point there needs to be different kind of missions again.
If there is no way to actually profit ingame from beimg better there is no reason to play except standing on ESD or taking a tour through sector space before logging off.
Instead of trying to make us play the game you want maybe you could take a second look at what kind of mission is played the most and build new ones in that same style/setup. Noone minds special events or addition rewards for less played mission, just make sure to model new missions after the ones played without "extra incentives".
Sure its your game and you can ruin it all you want but make sure thats really what you want.
Post edited by johnsteward on
0
Comments
I'm not sure they want to ruin it , but I'm not sure that their choices have been registered yet as "bad" , even over a year since things have gone bad for players .
Observe their "solutions" :
- Crafting sux ? Here , have some upgrade tokens sprinkled in sparsely ingame .
- Specialization Trees suck ? Yeah , have some more trees and we'll give you a few spec points ingame (see upcoming FE award).
- XP sucks ? Well , we'll just use some fuzzy maths to reconfigure the whole thing , but whole comment was meaningless because there were no hard numbers attached to the statement and it ended up being mostly a pretty big nerf. They still haven't implemented the half of it that would have benefited us. The part about increasing the overall base EXP gain for killing ships.
- EC ? LOL .
- Power creep ? See above .
- HP as a solution to difficulty ? See above .
... but you want moar T6 ships , right ? That they can do ... , heck they even polled P1 for the costs ...
To me most of the "nerfs" and "tiemgates" have penalized farmers while rewarding non-farmers like me. Casuals get more dil and shinies, farmers get less dil to dump on the exchange.
The crafting system is much better than the old one, even with random mobs and timegates. Sure it could be better, but if you aren't just a Doomster you should admit that.
Despite all the initial doomsaying, the new boff training method and stations with skills you can change with a couple of clicks is great. Do you give Cryptic any credit for that?
The Delta Recruit event was a fun excuse to create a new alt -- fun not work since I didn't grind out 20 of them to farm.
I've enjoyed the DR season and S10 so far.
Depends on perspective.
Your typical casual player, the type who'd activate a single account, roll a single captain and jump in to play the stuff and maybe buy a few bits before leaving again - STO is the perfect game.
Everything is quick and easy. Most content requires no teams or fleets to play. Endgame gear is simple to earn with quick dailies, and of course the choice to not bother is there. Doffing and R&D and other such alternative gaming systems are 'fire and forget'.
The grind with EXP, traits, spec points and all that other stuff is purely there to hang onto such players enough to try and tease a sale before they get fed up enough to leave. Short term solutions not really designed to satisfy your typical MMO player.
It's not an MMO anymore. I can't be sure it ever was to begin with.
this is the main thing that drove me away from STO. With time gates, refinement limits, queued missions, I just felt like a mouse running in a maze to get a little token as a prize with the devs timing me to see how long it took. then nerfing things, if I did not perform as they expected. It just gets boring and not make me want to long in. There is no doubt Cryptic is still spending development resources on STO. They are just not developing things I would like to play or spend money on. The Devs need to focus on things players want, not what they want. Let me and my fleet really build a star base, not just drop tokens in bucket. Let me build the interior of my ship. Let me explore the galaxy not just kill enemy ships for 15 mins and then rinse and repeated.
I am not saying STO is doomed. Not at all. it will chough on for a few more years as long as the money comes in. It just won't be any of my money. Hey , if you like the game now, great. When , STO first came out, I really loved it too because I saw all the potential the game had. I used to consider it "my Star Trek Online." Now, I don't see that anymore. Now, it's " Al Rivera's Star Trek Online."
... and good luck with that.
"Here are a few things I don't like so much. I would welcome if you change them."
I mean, there is nothing wrong with the latter. There is a lot to like and not like, and it's good to explain what is what and how it might be addressed. But still, the titles come across a bit pretentious.
Ultimately, it's hard to believe that a lot of people would argue for having to grind longer, spend more Dilithium on stuff, or Dilithium on stuff that wasn't there before, or what you have. So it's not really that insightful.
I think for Cryptic it really only becomes relevant if it manifests in the "bottom line". And it could be interesting if you propose genuine alternatives that could still achieve their (as Borticus put it once I believe?) "equity" goals.
Don't forget to ask if you can haz their stuffs! lol
Right. I've barely noticed any of these so-called "nerfs".
I don't craft or R&D so I am unqualified to comment on this one.
Agreed! I love that new system. When they bring out a similar system for skills/traits, I will be in heaven.
Yup! Did one alt, ran it through, collected rewards. I'm all good.
I also find it humorous that people always seem to have an opinion of how it could be done better, despite not being involved in the gaming industry in general or STO specifically.
"There... are... four... lights!" ~Jean Luc Picard
Thanks to being based on a super hero game engine we have vastly more flexibility and options compared to a boring trinity game. Those who want to can run all damage and do things faster. Those who don't can do all kinds of other things. This is good. More balance and rewards for non damage behavior would be better, but let's not ruin what we do have.
Please, let's just treat the trinity like the embarrassing cousin whos on the sexual offender database and lock it in the shed out back and refuse to discuss it.
In a trinity you have no reason to learn other playstyles. DPS can't tank. Tanks can't Heal. Heals can't tank or DPS.
You don't have to pay attention to others in a trinity either. If the tank can't tank, you wipe. If the healer can't heal, you wipe. If the DPS can't do enough, you wipe.
CoH did quite well without needing the trinity to do something. Could you run a trinity? Yes. Was it required? Hell no*.
How often did you see the Enterprise needing support ships? A ship in the middle of deep space all by its lonesome should be able to take care of all three roles.
*until Posi gave into the lure of the WoW endgame with his incarnate trials.
isntead of nerfing all xp gained by missions, just lower their repeatetly played value.
instead of nerfing all patrols to the ground, why not make it have a dminishing return?
like first mission labeled as "typical sector patrol" rewards 10 times the exp it does now, and then every consecutive "patrol" like mission (no matter if its tau dwa or in deltaq) will always be halfened in rewarding xp.
that would still encourage playing them at all.
would reinforce playing "different things" not only running all patrols all day
yet it would totally block repetitive xp grinding.
so playing japori would grant 50k xp, heading directly to beta toridar would give oyu only 25k xp then, heading directly to argala again, would give you 12500 xp and so on.
after 3 missions you would have the decision: either playing patrols, gaining less and less reward, or switching to other fun things, like STFs or mission replays.
I used to beat borg cubes not easily but i could do it but now i cant even whittle them down since they are nothing more then HP sponges and since im no DPS master im just fodder.
The games used to be fun before DR but since DR the direction this game is taking and where its headed idk if cryptic is trying to chase away the more casual gamers or what but it looks like that.
Nope.
If your game has only dps role, then the fights are DPS checks. Eg, every scrub in the PUG need to pull its weight, otherwise the fight will fail. This is just another kind of teamplay.
Also games relying on RPG trinity, usually tend to be low on tanks and healers.
But as plasma pointed out, many players run hybrids, especially so they can solo better, and because everything runs smoother when the whole team does more damage and you have a backup if something goes wrong (healer steps wrong and dies, someone stops attacking and keeps the tank alive until the healer is rezzed, then back to usual spots).
That said, most trinity games, including wow, heavily reward specialization and do not teach proper builds. The community in the game does that. Same as here.
Where is the diversity?
I direct you to the star fleet battles group. Or to any of the science captains who love their drain builds. I dare you to try and convince lucho his drainer doesn't work. Or perhaps vel aka mastajdog the highest damage tank in sto (also a super helpful and generally awesome guy). Or the ausmonauts and other groups like then who run end game content in tier 1 ships. Or any of the many rp fleets.
There is quite a bit of diversity. People just are wise enough to avoid the hate farm that is pugging and most also avoid the forums.
Adding "needed" roles is exactly what makes the trinity bad. Sitting in queue with 4 people waiting for a healer is lame. Trying to solo missions as a healer is even worse. Neverwinter has this. Wow has this. Everquest, all the trinity games do. It sucks.
By contrast, here we have goals. Accomplish them however you like. Need to stop the nanite from healing? Do DPs. Or use gravity well. Or temporal back step. Or warp plasma. Or the barrier shield. Or this. Of that. Or that other thing.
Need to protect a crowd of civilians from salt vampires? Heal them. Or kill the vamps. Or use incite chaos and seduce to get the vampsmfighting each other. Or use turrets/pets. Or this or that or the other thing.
Please. What we have is better.
The big problem is that it over rewards damage. The solution is not to throw out everything and add a trinity. The solution is to reward other things or set challenges where damage is not the only solution.
This can be done without limiting it to three fixed roles. And it can be done without making anything mandatory or needed.
1) Using the upgrade system as a means of ingame advancement rather than a way to (optionally) upgrade older gear to be usable in endgame content. Before, you could open your rep panel, create a torpedo, then immediately equip it and fly off into the action. Now, after you make your torpedo, you have to upgrade it once to Mk XIII, then again to Mk XIV, and then (if you're insane) try to brute-force the quality up to orange. Each of these upgrade attempts of course comes with a Farmville timer. Once that's done, only THEN are you ready to "fly off into the action."
Had the upgrade system been created solely for boosting up older items, it would've been an amazing addition to the game instead of the mess it is now.
2) Leveling from 50 to 60 is horrible compared to 1 to 50, but that's not even the worst of it. The specialization system was likely meant as a sort of ongoing reward for playing at 60, but the benefits are so good that it becomes more of a necessity than a bonus. A necessity obtained through long, drawn-out grinding.
The specialization system pretty much killed the alt-friendliness this game was once known for, and at this point, the only real solution is to shift it into an account-wide system.
3) Queued mission rewards seem to be rather lacking which makes it hard to justify even doing them. Sure, I could run Brotherhood of the Sword for a quick lump of daily Iconian marks + datacore, risking the possibility of a fail team etc, or I could spend a fraction of that time on Kobali Prime, bouncing back and forth between the final 2 open missions which are pretty much impossible to fail at.
Queued events need to be worth the time and effort. Especially normal. Aside from once or twice to learn the ropes, there seems to be no reason or incentive to queue for normal difficulty.
While I disagree that it's "the worst possible game design," I will agree that it really has no place in STO unless players can freely flow between the 3 roles. At this point in the game, it would be too jarring to players for Cryptic to suddenly say, "okay tacs, you're a pure dps class. Engineers, you're tanks. Sci? Sorry suckers, you're going to be healing everyone else on their way to glory."
Yeah I play science on my main, and I'd be pretty pissed if I was suddenly shoehorned into "the healer role" with no option to do much of anything else.
I would say true Hybrids are actually anti-Trinity.
Hybrids are what our ships are here.
Even then a resto druid isn't going to be DPSing like a cat nor tanking like a bear.
A feral isn't going to have the mana to throw more than a few heals.
So Censoredcraft still enforces the Trinity while players can still use Hybrids to get equipment for all the roles on one character. Switching roles between combats is a completely different beast from being able to swap them in combat and maintain effectiveness and endurance.
And generally, when someone comes up with a way to break the trinity in a way that's actually advantageous it gets smacked down with extreme prejudice. See lock tanking for an example.
But the best things in life comes in threes
3 scoops are better then one
3 cents is far better then one cent or like me having no sense at all
3 disco balls in one instance causing the borg to dance
having a 3 way .....er....i think i need to use my inner voice on that one hadnt eye :eek:
You do know in a true trinity you can't heal or tank your way through a mission at any speed isn't measured in geological timeframes.
You can go pure healer and be just as effective here as you would be in a trinity game.
What you don't get here is everyone else's need of your pure healer.
Well here are a few comments:
First of all to the guy who thinks its funny when ppl have opinions.. You dont know what I donfor work so pls keep your "only game developer opinions count"-argument to yourself. I'm quite sure if gecko ever posted his opinion on another game in that games forum there will be at least 3 guys just like you that tell him his opion doesnt count cause hes no dev and never worked in the gsming industry.
I worked on game design and game balancing for over 3 years so I feel quite able to make a good argument and analysis. Sure - I dont have all the data but that doesnt mean i am wrong:)
Secondly this was supposed to be about mission/event design pls take your trinity discussion somewhere else^^
Back to topic:
I was talking about mission design and freedom of play. As someone suggested earlier: every player at least those with a love for trek have certaik expectations what they would like to do. sure thats different for everybody but i bet most of it falls in a fee number of categories and the game feels better the more of those things can actually be done ingame.
The simple thing is that the game is going in a direction where we keep getting content with no freedom at all to be better to be worse to do them differently asf. I dont what to feel like on a devs string but I do. While I understand metrics and expected dil per hour stats that are set by devs but I dont see the need to enforce them which is what they do.
If stfs like ise before dr got done faster and faster it was because of power creep and missing real elite missions. Noone really gets hurt if a few can do it faster. If all missions had time gates noone would have a need to get better at the game or to buy the latest ships because the mission takes 15minutes regardless and if you could do it faster you habe to sit around waiting like in mirror invasion for several minutes just waiting.
If you really want to call that game design in a direction you like go ahead - I dont.
Nothing about star trek supports it
Trinity holds this game back more than anything else
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
As we moved towards F2P (and later as we moved away from the conversion) , one of the not exactly scientific terms I've heard used was "Cryptic were putting on the big boys pants" , as far as changes in development, development priorities , the welfare of the fanbase , communication with the fan base (or the sudden lack there of) & communication with the media (more structured & focused) .
In other words, they went from a ... slightly meandering , open, avantgarde studio , with an 'indie' self image , to ... something I don't have the exact words to define .... .
... despite the many words coming to mind ... .
Except the science vessels, the combat vessels and the cruisers that were in the shows .
So you're supporting more 'classes', less 'classes', or something totally different ?
... you're not being very clear ...
Did the science vessels have no shields and phasers?
Were cruisers incapable of destroying a foe?
Obviously the Defiant was totally incapable of shielding itself...
Imagine for a second engis could use there transfer power thing ability to power up old turrets that are near positions playerd usually fight mobs in said mission to help with the fight or even turn hostile turrets against the enemy - just by beimg eng.
Or say a sci in an infected could stop the generators from healing the transformer just by using a sub nuke on it.
With stuff like that every team would welcome engs or scis because they had cool ways of helpng with the mission that would otherwise not be available to the team.
Not just closing rifts faster in mirror invasion - stuff that only can be done by a certain captain type.
That would not only help the player being eng or sci feel like eng or sci but actually help with the mission. As it stands only tacs are really "helpful" when played right.
Not really they all pretty much did they same things on the shows.