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My thoughts as a returning player...
ravenmorpheus2k
Member Posts: 103 Arc User
Hey all
Just thought I'd offer my thoughts on this game as a player who has returned since having last played in late November 2014.
The grind...
Yep it's still there. It's still just as bad, possibly worse than it was, in 2014. I've been eyeing up stuff in the C-Store (again), about £60 worth of stuff, I totalled up the Dil I'd need (2 million or more), to keep the game FtP for me, to obtain the stuff and concluded it would take me a year of day in day out grinding for Dil.
I've seen loads of people stating do this, do that, do x y and z and Dil just drops in your lap, but it doesn't seem to work like that for me - when I'm not on a "career break" I get on average about 2 hours a day to play video games. And even if I am on a "career break" I have other stuff to do - I can't sit and play STO for 8hrs a day 7 days a week and most of the stuff people tell you to do seems like you need to play it for that long!!
Dailies such as Empire Defense on the KDF side take me an average of 30 minutes per mission, there's 3 of them so that's an average of 90 minutes per mission for 1440x3 Dil. So that's 4320 Dil in 90 minutes. 2000 Dil per day when/if I've got 5 contraband available - it's not like you can go confiscate contraband and then turn it in every day because you don't get 5 in one pop!!
I've then got about another 30 minutes or so to do other stuff in STO given that I get about on average a couple of hours per day to play.
And that's just on one character! Apparently to farm effectively your supposed to use multiple characters. If I do the above on 3 characters that would take me 4.5 hours a day - more than twice the average time I have available for playing STO (or doing any other hobbies)!!
Mk XIII or above items...
I say this as I recently wanted to re-outfit my Sovereign class ship - I bought 6 new beam arrays. I'm at Level 56, so I could (and should) have obtained Mk XIV beam arrays - and I would have if I had 60 million EC or more to spend on the exchange!!!
Again it seems like obtaining that amount of currency quickly is beyond me and unrealistic.
I haven't got into crafting items myself, yet, because of the limited time I usually have to play the game, and crafting/R&D and reputation all seem like something which will see me playing the game for 8hrs a day 7 days a week just to get anywhere.
On the whole it seems that when you start wanting stuff above Mk XII or new ships from the C-Store the game ceases to be FtP - it either costs you hard cash or it takes up too much of your free time.
Having said that if I ignore the fact that I would like some of the C-Store stuff (I don't seem to need most of it anyway), and deal with the fact that I can only realistically obtain Mk XII items (unless I somehow find a quick way of making tens of millions of EC - buying Master keys is one way but costs 42000 Dil, or the equivalent hard cash, to buy 106 Zen (and that's given the current sale!)) the game is still pretty good for being an MMO, with a Star Trek flavour, that I can play on my own.
Having not played since 2014 I have plenty of story missions to go through and I'm sure they will keep me occupied until I get bored, or fed up with grinding for Dil, again and take another hiatus. It is just a shame that the "end game" is so out of reach for those us with limited financial budgets and/or very limited free time.
Just thought I'd offer my thoughts on this game as a player who has returned since having last played in late November 2014.
The grind...
Yep it's still there. It's still just as bad, possibly worse than it was, in 2014. I've been eyeing up stuff in the C-Store (again), about £60 worth of stuff, I totalled up the Dil I'd need (2 million or more), to keep the game FtP for me, to obtain the stuff and concluded it would take me a year of day in day out grinding for Dil.
I've seen loads of people stating do this, do that, do x y and z and Dil just drops in your lap, but it doesn't seem to work like that for me - when I'm not on a "career break" I get on average about 2 hours a day to play video games. And even if I am on a "career break" I have other stuff to do - I can't sit and play STO for 8hrs a day 7 days a week and most of the stuff people tell you to do seems like you need to play it for that long!!
Dailies such as Empire Defense on the KDF side take me an average of 30 minutes per mission, there's 3 of them so that's an average of 90 minutes per mission for 1440x3 Dil. So that's 4320 Dil in 90 minutes. 2000 Dil per day when/if I've got 5 contraband available - it's not like you can go confiscate contraband and then turn it in every day because you don't get 5 in one pop!!
I've then got about another 30 minutes or so to do other stuff in STO given that I get about on average a couple of hours per day to play.
And that's just on one character! Apparently to farm effectively your supposed to use multiple characters. If I do the above on 3 characters that would take me 4.5 hours a day - more than twice the average time I have available for playing STO (or doing any other hobbies)!!
Mk XIII or above items...
I say this as I recently wanted to re-outfit my Sovereign class ship - I bought 6 new beam arrays. I'm at Level 56, so I could (and should) have obtained Mk XIV beam arrays - and I would have if I had 60 million EC or more to spend on the exchange!!!
Again it seems like obtaining that amount of currency quickly is beyond me and unrealistic.
I haven't got into crafting items myself, yet, because of the limited time I usually have to play the game, and crafting/R&D and reputation all seem like something which will see me playing the game for 8hrs a day 7 days a week just to get anywhere.
On the whole it seems that when you start wanting stuff above Mk XII or new ships from the C-Store the game ceases to be FtP - it either costs you hard cash or it takes up too much of your free time.
Having said that if I ignore the fact that I would like some of the C-Store stuff (I don't seem to need most of it anyway), and deal with the fact that I can only realistically obtain Mk XII items (unless I somehow find a quick way of making tens of millions of EC - buying Master keys is one way but costs 42000 Dil, or the equivalent hard cash, to buy 106 Zen (and that's given the current sale!)) the game is still pretty good for being an MMO, with a Star Trek flavour, that I can play on my own.
Having not played since 2014 I have plenty of story missions to go through and I'm sure they will keep me occupied until I get bored, or fed up with grinding for Dil, again and take another hiatus. It is just a shame that the "end game" is so out of reach for those us with limited financial budgets and/or very limited free time.
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Also sorry you returned while the dil exchange is at the height of absurdity and uselessness
Buying Mk XIV for 60 million? That's the wrong approach. Craft Mk II for free or maybe buy cheap on the exchange if you want to be lazy. "Want" again not "need." Use dil and crafted or exchange Superior Tech Upgrades to level up. Do it on an upgrade weekend to cut dil and upgrade use in half. We've had several weekends this year. The mark level matters much more that the mods -- Mark XIV with Acc x 3 Thrust will still out-dps Mark XII Dmg x 3 Pen.
Admiralty takes maybe 15 minutes a day and gives piles of EC, dil and mats. Your KDF alt(s) can easily get enough contraband for the 2,000 dil daily of Turn In Contraband. Probably enough contraband for your Fed alt to get another 2,000.
If you play smart, then yes: you can still spend 30 minutes - 1 hour a day grinding IF you want (not "need") to get some shinies yet avoid supporting the game by spending any real world money. No one said pure-F2P players will get everything with zero effort.
You say Admiralty only takes 15 minutes a day, and that the KDF can easily get contraband, but that's not my experience (not with contraband at least, I've only just started with Admiralty stuff), despite reading and trying out tons of advice (most of which when found by Google seems to be years old and thus out of date with the current in-game economies).
I also agree that 99.9%, if not 100% of what I was looking at on the C-Store is a want.
However when I join a PVE mission and end up in a group where all of the ships appear to be capable of individually destroying even medium-large ships in less than a minute (I was in one the other day and I may as well not have been there!!) I have to wonder what I'm missing when I'm only pootling around in a Sovereign class starship with Rare (Blue) Mk XII [crtd]x2 phaser banks (plus everything else being Mk XII, and Rare or better, and the appropriate tactical phaser consoles) and a couple of torpedo launchers taking upwards of a minute to destroy the same/similar ships. And that's just my space setup, I haven't even begun to consider how bad or good my ground setup is (although it seems just about adequate in story missions so far).
I am also not trying to imply that FtP players should get everything with zero effort, however the effort, to me, which seems to be required for a lot of the end-game stuff seems to be disproportionate/excessive.
Like I said, as someone on a very limited financial budget, or even putting that aside and purely considering the very limited free time I have, it appears to me, despite having read tons of forum posts with advice, that I would have to play the game day in day out for 8hrs a day (or at least an unfeasible amount of time) just to get anywhere with stuff like crafting/R&D/Fleets etc.
As I said though this is just my thoughts and experience, based on having played the game again after an 18 month or so break, and also having read tons of forum posts with advice, mostly via Google, which either are out of date thus don't seem to apply now, or just don't seem to work for me.
I don't find much has changed re. the state of the game to be honest, not that I've noticed at least. It's been tweaked and adjusted (not that I could state how) and some things are done a little differently (boff skills for example), but I'm not sure there's been any noticeable major changes that greatly affect the state of the game (in 2014 I hadn't started to look at crafting, R&D, fleets, Admiralty etc., although I did start to look at reputation and found that seemed to require an excessive grind).
I jumped back in the other day, found there was more content than in 2014, but didn't find the game any better or worse than it was in 2014, apart from the grind seemingly have become even more of a grind.
And the grind does appear to be an overriding factor of this game unless you mostly stick to story missions, which can get a bit boring and repetitive themselves.
There are people who spend hundreds of dollars / pounds on buying every ship to get all of the mastery traits, then add other captain traits from lock boxes, then spend huge amounts of time and money crafting weapons that are 5% better than what you'd get from upgrading those Mk XII phasers to XIV with a few tech upgrades,
They also pile on expensive active space doffs, and Superior Romulan Operative boffs.
Yes, you aren't going to match those people. But you don't need to match them to do any of the story episodes or to be "good enough" for advanced queues.
Just upgrade those blue phasers to mark XIV and learn to use your boff powers well and you'll be fine for anything except maybe elite queues.
Honestly the only thing you are missing is the GHASTLY amounts of time, dilithium, and often real life cash these people have dumped into their obsession to deal out insane DPS the game was never designed to handle. To give you an idea during the last CCE someone posted a video of his group, from the time the first weapon fired to the death of the Entity was 17 seconds.
Getting to that point requires a neurosis level obsession, no sense, and a fat wallet. You're better off not jumping into that pool of insanity. Keep PUGing, you'll soon find the other end of the spectrum, people in t6 badasses and not able to complete even the simplest STFs or doin so little damage you feel like the badass uber DPSer.
I'm slowly upgrading to Mk XIV as I go, waiting for upgrade weekends.
However, Mk XII is 'good enough' for most story content. What others have said is true. I don't have all of the ship mastery traits, only the ones from ships I've gotten 'for free' plus a few I've managed buy from the c-store. Sure, I kill things. And blow up more often than others with their dps monster ships, but I have fun doing it. I kill things on ground too, and 'die' more often than others again, but I have fun doing it. I don't mind taking longer than a few minutes to kill things, it makes the game less boring when I'm not one-shotting the enemy.
So, play the game, find what you like and have fun! That's what games should be, fun!
I also don't have the piles of dilithium/ec that others seem to get with no effort at all, but I still manage with what I have.
Well, the best advice I can give you is that this is a F2P game, e.g. you don't need to buy the game, expansions and sub. *But* for this the devs expect you to log on every day for at least a few minutes. Most daily tasks take only a few minutes. And for that you are given free T6 ships, dil, mats.
But yeah if you leave the game and come back from an extended leave and want to get back in the thick of game right away then yes you need a credit card like in a sub game.
So patience young padawan (pardon my french). the game is free, you need to only put in time or the equivalent amount of cash...
Against my better judgment I stayed around though and the past 18 month witnessed how much cryptic did to turn STO into a relaxed game again.
XP adjustments, Armadas, Admiralty, considerable FE rewards, constant events, giveaways, recruitments with huge account benefits, infinity lock box, power creep…
Using that to my advantage I managed to earn myself a smother progression curve than I ever had before DR. Key elements are a solid Doff roster, a good deck of Admiralty cards and some decent DPS builds.
As it stands atm I need some 15 minutes a day per character to reach hard cap on progression (Dil refinement). Sure cryptic can take it all away again but from my understanding this would be unwise as it would lead to another exodus of players they can’t afford. If I would encounter a hard time in STO, averages would not stand a chance.
So in short, no OP. In the middle of 2016 STO is not grind at all. As a matter of fact it was never as less of a grind as it is today and I’m around since spring 2012.
Game is easy for those who play it.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Feds get mostly for R&D high grade raws.