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Too Much Variation in all the wrong places..?
flash525
Member Posts: 5,441 Arc User
Variation is a wonderful thing, if done right. Good variation for me would be significant differences between the factions, but that's been decided against. Regardless, does anyone else here think that there's too much going on in the game now? Too many different sets, equipment, currencies, species (few of which are playable), unique boffs, playable alien ships etc etc etc
There's got to be variation for sure, else everyone would be flying around kitted out exactly the same as the next person, but is there too much? I've lost count how many sets there are, be that through feature episodes, rep, lobi or otherwise. Then there's all the different variations of ships, some of which aren't all that different from the next.
Am I alone in wanting something a little... simpler?
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I always hated the "vertical" system in games like WoW, where any content was built on top of the previous top content (and to do the latest piece of content and get tier 20 elite stuff you had to have tier 19 elite stuff and so on), horizontal approach is definitely the best. You don't really have to do everything and own every set, just do what you need/want.
However, I still feel sad for anyone entering the game at this point. A new fleet member who is now playing around 2 months recently told me he could not make heads or tails of an episode like Sphere of Influence. Iconian gate I helped uncover? I never was on New Romulus before to begin with! For me, this made sense due to the T5 Rom Rep cutscene. In a while, he will understand too. But now, its all just very vague stuff.
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Luckily for players and fans, there are a lot of Cryptic employees that DO care, who will push for content or additions, and some who even work on this stuff at home just to do something for the people. Other times, Cryptic realizes most people only pop in when something new is dropped, so if they didn't add something people would be forgetting this game existed... or at least would if they didn't have the Star Trek IP.
As such, the game is really just a horrible mess or random odds and ends, with no real direction. Cryptic has no clue what the fans want, but know how to exploit what they love to make money. PWE wants to push them in a different direction to make the game more marketable to their player base in another country. And there are a small group within whom still want to do things that the players would like, appreciate, and enjoy. Imagine a Hometown American Chef (devs), a Chinese Corporate Chef (pwe), and Cryptic as that Gordon Ramsay fellow (but moderately intoxicated, and with a terrible cockney accent). Through a series of bad business decisions, they've all landed in a single kitchen of a famous eating establishment. People are ordering the most popular dish, but each chef has their own way of wanting to prepare it. The Corporate Chef is the owner, so he's making demands of the lead Chef, no matter how unrealistic/foolish/bad they may be. The Ramsay fellow is just yelling at everyone beneath him, interjecting the higher ups ideas, his own ideas, and generally not getting much done aside from yelling and upsetting people. The Hometown Chef is the one who knows the dish, the one actually making it, and the one who knows what the people at the restaurant like, but since the Corporate, owns, and the Fellow manages, Hometown is stuck doing what they say or finding another place to work.
This is how things are with Cryptic games. Too many small (but sometimes great) ideas, tossed in with a lot of bad ideas, and often halfassed or poorly implemented, with nothing to tie them together properly. Rather than fixing things, cleaning it up, optimizing, or streamlining, or really anything to make things better, they just keep tossing in other, unrelated things, trying to cover up the bad. Like a kitty in a sand box, or a hoarder who can't find their cat...
While it's something they SHOULD fix, nothing will be done about it. If champions is any indication, they'll just doing what ever they feel like, regardless of how big a mess it all is. It's how they roll.
However, too many species and unique BOFFs ? No, i disagree with that. Star Trek is about diversity, and STO mirrors this pretty well in my opinion. As for the unique BOFFs, i personally take great pride in my multi-racial bridge : i have every single existing unique BOFF, including the very sought-after Reman and Breen officers from the (far too rare) Feature Episode reruns, as well as a Nausicaan TAC earned through the Diplomacy Commendation system.
Horizontal progression is an illusion. There will always be gear that is best for what you want to do. Part of the learning process in any game is to find out what works best. What you're saying is you dislike homogeneity, which is fair. But IMO there comes a point where the developers should really consider retiring old gear. I was frankly expecting them to retire all the old level 50 stuff(by making it not upgrade-able) then the upgrade system came out and I realized that nothing was really going to change.
Because then you gotta have enough ship to have all space sets, all weapon sets, 300 ship slots, collect all pokemon cards (ships and doff), fleet tier, crafting, upgrading.
It's right up ulcer alley if you are a whale.
This!
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Combinations” ... you can't disagree with vulcan philosophy. And i think this quote is actualy true
Yeah, this is one of my concerns too, not just new players, but existing players with new characters. There was a time when the game was alt friendly, that certainly isn't the case anymore. Granted the initial level (up to 50) doesn't take all that long to accomplish, but the remaining 10 levels do, and there's the rep duration on top of that, and that's before [said character/person] has played the queues to get the marks to be able to do the projects. Do we really need what is it, 8 or 9 rep systems, no doubt with more to follow..?
I do like choice, yeah. However there is such a thing as too much choice, and I believe there is too much choice with STO, a lot more than is necessary.
I'm also in agreement with the post made by wraithshadow13.
Two things to comment on here, all within the realm of diversity (of which you are right); however as far as species go, there is little diversity to be had. The KDF is practically a carbon copy of the Federation, and the Republic is half of that again. Most of these unique Boffs we can't even customize. Where is that diversity now?
I know STO initially started out with the KDF as a PvP faction, and honestly, I'm wondering whether they should have been left like that, or turned into their own mini faction like the Republic, or better still, some endgame faction (levels 40 - 60 in this case). Cryptics idea of factions is a joke. There's no diversity between them at all. Doesn't truly matter who you're playing as, when it should. Trek is (primarily) about the Federation, and we know that's where most of the interest (and finance) exists. Maybe they should have just stuck with that.
Since we have more choices, I can choose more easily the pieces of sets I need to fully exploit the strengths of my ships AND their roles.
Sorry but when the illusion is better than the reality stick to the illusion, considering its just a game.
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
I couldn't even imagine having to keep up with all systems, just upgrading or leveling alone I gave up on. 4 million dil for an upgraded ship, gear I already bought, no way.
150 patrols for a level yeah no thanks.
But they must be doing something right, giving the whales so much to throw money it where even with dead queues the game is still up.
They're specifically building sets to fight specific enemies, so on the harder difficulties, getting that set is usually a good idea, especially with how content drops. Some times it's frequent, some times it's not at all. They don't really have a clear direction, so they're just kind of flinging TRIBBLE at a wall to see what sticks. The problem is, now look at that wall and how convoluted it's made things.
We see the reputation system as a good example of this variety. Cryptic creates a new reputation and we all swarm the queues or other content that reward those particular marks, at the expense of ignoring other content in the queue. We see people like @borticus who understandably is passionate about the hard work going into various queued mission content. I won't say there isn't a high degree of labor and effort put into queued missions.
But the Progress Trap in STO is that all of that hard work and effort put into particular facets of the game ends up becoming desolate because the players have found a new golden carrot to follow. Maybe you see some people in particular queues, for particular reputation marks. But on the whole, you see a major bias towards the new mission tied to the new reputation.
New players can enjoy the revamped missions Cryptic has put into the game. They can enjoy the storyline and enjoy the system of progression -- for a time. Eventually, they reach the point where they have so many empty reputations that they don't really know what to do, because of so much variety. This was partially addressed with Borg Disconnected where you get a variety of marks at the end, effectively allowing you your daily marks for several reputations when playing it every 30 minutes.
But it doesn't address that there is a lot of content that Cryptic has worked long hours to make, only see it as an empty playground with swings just rocking back and forth in the wind, with a tumbleweed rolling by.
There's a lot of variety, but as a result of game design, it pushes dedicated players into a handful of content until they get sick of it. The new players are stuck at the end waiting for queues to pop just to get their daily marks. By the time you get to T5 in a reputation, you've fought that enemy group so much, that you're sick of seeing them (despite having the equipment that gives you an advantage over them). And players only have so much time in the day, they'll understandably go after what's most popular than to experience other content Cryptic has made.
That's the unforseeable outcome of a Progress Trap. You have so much variety, but you make it linear progression in practice, even if it's not intended. You leave a lot of great stuff behind to focus on the future. And sometimes you fix the great stuff left behind, only to find it's not desirable for a bunch of players focused on something new.
And like so many others have said, most of the variants are worthless. Shiny enough to convince us to buy it but not worth the cost in the end. So my suggestion would be less variations and more useful ones please.