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Getting bored with the game
valenciadean
Member Posts: 2 Arc User
To the Developers: These are just some thoughts on what I would like to see in game in the future. To bring to fruition a change begins with a thought. In my opinion, there has not been any authentic new material for us to play. Although I do agree that the storyline with the Iconians was excellent, the game play was pretty much the same. I have been playing this game almost since it`s inception, and I feel like I am doing the same thing over and over again. Case in point is the reputation system. All of the various factions of the reputation system give the same kind of reward. You add to the reputation until complete, but you are no better off than you were in the beginning. The gear is pretty much the same, and although being balanced all the way across, you do not stand out in any way, shape or form. Aside from adding to the story line here are some things I would like to see:
1. Playable Faction for Borg; Borg should be as formidable as they are portrayed in all the series, perhaps starting off a character being assimilated at some mission. The Borg should be of serious concern if a ship shows up in your neck of the quadrant, requiring large amounts of manpower and resources to defeat them. Right now, a player can crush them in almost any instance. I wanna be able to feel that I must bring my "A" game if I fight a cube and recruit help almost invariably in queue.
2. Ability to to make incursion to an enemy Starbase, Embassy, Dilithium mine and so on. This would probably be one of the most fun aspects of the game. I think a raid should be able to be performed at any hour. Starbases and any other holdings should be able to purchase automated defenses and alerts given out to any players online along with their allies to come to their aid. If the base is destroyed, then a fleet can dedicate manpower, dilithium, EC and resources to repair the Starbase. Even better if an enemy can lay claim to a Starbase for a period of time.
3. Expanded exploration of planets. This would be the embodiment of Gene Roddenberry`s idea of Star Trek...to explore. Perhaps more can be done rendering large maps of already existing maps of planets or adding to the Star Trek universe more explorable planets. One map I would like to see expanded is Bajor. Another would be Earth. There can be resources to be had, expertise in various fields, or maybe even a house to set up.
4. I feel there should be greater rewards for long term players. Zen stipends should be increased over time, ships and gear are appreciated, but nothing says," I will be back to play some more" better that Zen. Veteran players basically equal your loyalty base and should be rewarded accordingly.
5. Expanded and revised economic system. I feel that ANYTHING should be able to be bought and sold in game, nothing should be account bound. An underground market will probably form as a result of this and some runaway pricing as well. But I think all will stabilize over time. I have talked to some players about this and I will digress that some form of checks and balances should be in place, but that is the world of real life economics and life as we know it. In the case of something like this, everyone in game will have at least one Ferengi character who will be able to recite the Rules of Acquisition; or on Earth we say, Bend over. The EC cap should also be increased or eliminated, even for a price.
6. I think a patch once every 6 months should be dedicated to fix/revise/eliminate known issues in game. Clipping issues I can cope with, but the constant DC`s I feel are intolerable, especially while in and STF.
These are just some thoughts. Rebuttal is welcome. Please be respectful.
1. Playable Faction for Borg; Borg should be as formidable as they are portrayed in all the series, perhaps starting off a character being assimilated at some mission. The Borg should be of serious concern if a ship shows up in your neck of the quadrant, requiring large amounts of manpower and resources to defeat them. Right now, a player can crush them in almost any instance. I wanna be able to feel that I must bring my "A" game if I fight a cube and recruit help almost invariably in queue.
2. Ability to to make incursion to an enemy Starbase, Embassy, Dilithium mine and so on. This would probably be one of the most fun aspects of the game. I think a raid should be able to be performed at any hour. Starbases and any other holdings should be able to purchase automated defenses and alerts given out to any players online along with their allies to come to their aid. If the base is destroyed, then a fleet can dedicate manpower, dilithium, EC and resources to repair the Starbase. Even better if an enemy can lay claim to a Starbase for a period of time.
3. Expanded exploration of planets. This would be the embodiment of Gene Roddenberry`s idea of Star Trek...to explore. Perhaps more can be done rendering large maps of already existing maps of planets or adding to the Star Trek universe more explorable planets. One map I would like to see expanded is Bajor. Another would be Earth. There can be resources to be had, expertise in various fields, or maybe even a house to set up.
4. I feel there should be greater rewards for long term players. Zen stipends should be increased over time, ships and gear are appreciated, but nothing says," I will be back to play some more" better that Zen. Veteran players basically equal your loyalty base and should be rewarded accordingly.
5. Expanded and revised economic system. I feel that ANYTHING should be able to be bought and sold in game, nothing should be account bound. An underground market will probably form as a result of this and some runaway pricing as well. But I think all will stabilize over time. I have talked to some players about this and I will digress that some form of checks and balances should be in place, but that is the world of real life economics and life as we know it. In the case of something like this, everyone in game will have at least one Ferengi character who will be able to recite the Rules of Acquisition; or on Earth we say, Bend over. The EC cap should also be increased or eliminated, even for a price.
6. I think a patch once every 6 months should be dedicated to fix/revise/eliminate known issues in game. Clipping issues I can cope with, but the constant DC`s I feel are intolerable, especially while in and STF.
These are just some thoughts. Rebuttal is welcome. Please be respectful.
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Comments
City of Heroes did this sort of thing and as far as I know, it was almost never used. (Supergroup bases actually had lootable assets.) In games like these, cooperation > competition. (In commerce it's different--but this isn't a game about commerce. You want Ferenginar Online, and it hasn't been written yet. Hmm. Pretend I never mentioned that. Nothing to see here--move along!)
The economics changes would boost "pay to win" to levels unimagined in our wildest nightmares. 'Nuff said.
The DCs don't always come from the game server. You know where's an entire network of thousands of miles of wire and fiber optics between the server and you, right? On the rare occasion that DCs come from the server facility, they're more likely to come from hardware than software, and patches won't do a thing about it. (On the other hand, you may be sitting on a megabyte of network traces showing why the DC happened, in which case I'd like to see them for my own analysis.)
No way bro. Playable Borg is just weird and undoable. It makes no sense for you to control a drone that gets to run around and do whatever he wants.
"At the end of the movie, I really care about what happens to the characters … but I’m pretty much missing Gene Roddenberry in J.J.’s interpretation … and at the end of the day, that’s just not OK for me." - Levar Burton
"[OrciTrek] doesn’t have the story heart that the best of my Star Trek had," - William Shatner
"It doesn’t have that element that made … Gene Roddenberry‘s ‘Star Trek,’ what it was." - George Takei
"The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action." - Roger Ebert
Exactly. The concept of no free-wwll makes it completely rediculous to think of players controlling individual spheres and cubes doing their own thing.
Actually, we kinda have those already but not as a faction. A Coop faction could work, but it'd be best done if the best Borg stuff was reserved for LTS.
My character Tsin'xing
I realize it would take a substantial reworking of some elements of the game, but it could also breathe renewed life into STO.
Ive been saying for ages that I want more differences between the factions. It's far too much like choosing your favourite colour right now. Factions should be a choice, careers should be a choice, specialisations should be a choice etc etc etc. It's all getting very bland right now with everything being available to everyone as time goes on.
My character Tsin'xing
2. Making this game 'open 24/7' for PvP attacks would kill the game outright and do nothing but invite more ragers, hackers, thieves and trolls. I've played numerous MMO's where this has been the result of open-ended PvP. The very fact you can't be killed when off-line, or have the stuff you've worked for months to acquire stolen is why this game remains successful AND it's less stressful!
3. Everyone would like more exploration, and granted some people refuse to actually go around everywhere, or put in effort into STF's because they want things handed to them on a platter. A game this maybe, but never should you get something for nothing.
4. This type of 'Generation Entitlement' comment is typical of the younger generation of gamers. You've obviously forgotten about the amount of giveaways and events that you get in this game. The F2P model in this game is nigh-on perfect. If you can't invest a little money, invest some time and you still get rewarded! Of course there is grind here, but it's the same in any MMO.
5. The very fact your 'Account-Bound' items can't be TRIBBLE or stolen from your account is probably one of the best features of security. It also helps keep people's characters in check, especially from the 'Unique' items aspect. I hope your proposal NEVER comes to fruition! There is nothing wrong with the economy.
6. The issues that you claim to be Cryptic's, just plain aren't. I see many people claim it's Cryptic, but how is it that I never have the amount of DC's and SNR's you claim to be having? From my observations, it's the US's infra-structure that's the issue, as we in the UK rarely ever get these problems!
There are certain core mechanics in the game that no matter what are going to always be very evident and show themselves in missions and so on. To bring to fruition a change takes far more than just thought which I believe you're vastly underestimating. To bring something from a thought to fruition takes resources, time, and manpower. When working with code it's not as simple as just flipping switches and done. If one little tiny thing in a computer code is out of place the entire thing can come crashing down. In terms of gear like what you're talking about there's only so much variation you can have in shields as one example. at the end of the day a shield is a shield that's designed to protect your ship. there's only so much variation you can make with those and what they do. I wouldn't be opposed to a different variety of set bonuses that have offensive or defensive ability.
If you want game breaking this is the way you do it. adding a ship or something to a game is one thing, adding an entire faction is a whole different ballgame. something like the Borg being playable is something I don't think we should have in game. playing as a liberated drone is one thing, but an entire faction is just a vast amount of work for something that's not needed. to add a faction you have to put in missions for them to level up with, doffs for them to use, queues based on their new faction and so on. what you're asking for is pretty much equivalent to an expansion. while i'm not opposed to expansions this is something that's not needed. the borg can be made threatening without something like this. ultimately it also depends on the ability of the player to suspend disbelief.
A problem with this, what if the fleets in question do not wish to participate in events like this and open their holdings to things such as this? Would you force them to participate anyways? If so then that would be forcing your play style on others which is not cool. With that aside at the moment suppose for example a fleet's Spire is "destroyed" or taken over. Now suppose a person needs to get a Spire console in that time. Would they have to retake or repair their Spire before they could do it? If so this would do nothing but place unnecessary obstructions in the way of those players that don't need to be there. As for resources to repair, how much resources are you talking, how long would it take to repair, how long can a base be held by an enemy, are all a few of the questions that you must answer to even begin putting something like this to work. As for the dilithium, this comes off to me as a waste of resources. People already are hesitant to donate dilithium to their fleet projects as is, this will just make that even worse. Why would they donate to a project if their work could potentially be undone and them locked out of their holdings by a person who decided to raid their base? What of the big fleets as well. their holdings being larger or even completed would make the t5 fleets big time targets. This overall is one of those things that may seem cool on paper but in reality would not work in a game like this. There's alot more that goes into this that you're not thinking of. I myself have a background in map making and modding which has on occasion included a bit of programming. I'm by no means on the level of skill as the Cryptic devs but the overall concept is the same. I'm not trying to bash you but trying to get you to see it's not as easy as you think it is.
Again this takes resources, time and manpower. While I think it would be cool to see more exploration stuff again, this is something that would take a ton of time to develop. I'll admit I miss the old nebula exploration stuff that we had. Did a couple missions in those and was cool. As for the house idea, why would we need houses when we already have our starships? while again it may look good on paper it's something that's not needed.
When you total up what the value of everything is they give you for going lifetime/gold (gold being unlocked over time) you get quite a bit of stuff and it actually pays for itself. Assuming you were able to buy the lifetime/1000 day ships that's a total value of 16,500 zen for just those ships. that doesn't count the other stuff that they give you. It's not like you're getting shafted. If anything after you've been lifetime for 6 months I believe it is, it gets into a loss for Cryptic on its face. We already are able to convert zen from dilithium and so on. If I desperately need more zen I can buy it or convert for it. If they wanted to up the rewards I'm not opposed to that, but it's not going to bother me if they don't either.
I'm sorry but I actually laughed when I saw this one. By no means is what I'm about to say meant as a swipe at you nor was my previous statement (seen stuff like this ALOT) but, you have no understanding of what the effects of this proposal would be. The underground market for things already exists in game in the form of items that are sold outside of the exchange. One of the big things that drives things is supply and demand, just as it does in real life economics. If the demand for a ship is high but the supply is low, prices will go up. If the demand goes lower and supply stays the same or increases, prices will drop. If demand stays the same but supply goes up, prices will drop. If you made nothing account bound that would destroy far more than you know with the economy. If you could sell lobi on the exchange for example, that would destroy the value of lobi items and royally tank the value of keys. Not to mention it would tank the value of ships and a ton of other items in addition to costing Cryptic money in lost key sales. That's just a few of the things off the top of my head. The EC cap is in place for a reason as it's meant to prevent one person from having all of the EC in game and meant to limit the EC one person can hold to protect the value. One can argue effectiveness when someone can just make new toons to hold it all. still at the end of the day even if they do that, they'll always have to make more and more toons if they hit that cap. While it helps to protect the value it's not enough. The only EC cap that needs to be changed is the exchange cap needs to go back to 1b ec so it will pull those 750m+ ships back onto the exchange where they belong.
As it sits right now I do agree it's far too easy for certain people to manipulate the market, which is part of why the exchange has been as unstable as it has been, market manipulation. If you want to see market manipulation go to an all time high, or the value of EC tank even harder, eliminate the caps.
Cryptic already patches various bugs and so on. In fact a few bugs that I personally have reported I've seen patches fix. As I touched on above, fixing things and adding things to the game isn't as simple as just flipping a switch and done. It takes time to fix things and come up with a solution. First you must identify what's causing the bug, then you have to figure out how to fix it without something else going wrong or making it worse. That rings true but it in simple mods and maps like what I do, to full on massive mmos like what Cryptic does. As for the DC's I feel your frustration I do, but there's only so much that can be done. A DC isn't always on your end or on theirs but can be somewhere between. There's a ton of wires and cables and the such that are between your computer and their servers. If you're having trouble trying routing your connection through a different route. There's different things you can try to reduce the DC's. I can't go into details or anything but trust me, alot more gets done than what you often times see. I'm always on the lookout for bugs as is the rest of the Bug Hunters.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
My character Tsin'xing
Actually, if you want a playable Borg faction, I'd have to point you to Progress Quest. And here's why; you have no control over your actions. Once you start up the game, the computer choses your actions for you, leaving you to watch in horror as you execute uncountable amounts of animals, monsters and people.
It's the perfect representation of being Borg.
There have been numerous threads about starbase raids and so on and far better ideas thrown around as to how to improve the game and so on. The Devs haven't gone for simple ideas like separating PvP and PvE (despite PvE using PvP code, check the chat box when you queue up) they won't go for complicated ones. Even something as simple as separating the factions. Despite there not being enough Klingons, all you'd need to do is a bit of math and code to add a resistance buff to the side with less players during a raid. Not that Klinks would need it, they've always been ahead of the curve when it comes to PvP and the Feds have only caught up in the past 3 years when PvP was rapidly dying.
1. yeah, like players with cubes and tactical cubes are not going to be op
2. what would be the point? pvp is a prehistoric creature that has in effect become the nercrotic beast. it is like pulling an old thread up over a month old to life once again and trying to keep it alive, even the mods have the good sense to keep it dead. pvp is not far from having the same fate and honestly? "you're already dead, just lie down!" - hk51, said it best. it should not rise again.
3. no. this isnt second life and besides cryptics version of exploration is an insignificant first contact primarily focused on combat. if there is to be exploration, then it should be exploration alone otherwise they should focus their resources on other projects.
4.no.
5.no. and removing the cap will increase inflation to a silly amount because of player greed, that wont ever change.
6.huh, if i had a penny for everytime someone says "cryptic will fix X"... the honest truth is that cryptic only fix the most urgent bugs, there are still a laundry list of bugs in the game and some that have existed since before f2p and every bug ignored up to this point. I doubt cryptic can do any bug fixing, probably because of their taskmasters in china tell them otherwise and a business needs to make money even at the overall expense of the quality of the product.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.