Never played City of Villains myself, but I'd definitely want to be the overlord running the island nation, not an errand boy hired by one of his henchmen to steal candy from babies for teh evulz.
The thing is, it's hard to do evil acts that are neither petty crimes like stealing candies, launching robots on innocent people or things that'd be better in a RTS/management game (cancel healthcare, give credence to conspiracy theory sites, tax the poor, deregulate the market, antagonize justice and other countries, delete welfare, allow industries to destroy the environments, start invading countries with false pretenses, etc.)
I should also mention that we are still awaiting an replacement 'Exploration' system. Should never have gotten rid of it in the first place. Exploration IS Star Trek!!
The exploration system had to go because it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, exploration. Exploration involves learning, which means persistence: In our own history explorers notably made maps while exploring that they returned with.
Our own galaxy has ~200 billion stars in it, dividing it into quadrants gives 50 billion stars per quadrant.
Explorarion was just a term applied to a gameplay element, there's no reason to jump around the word exploration. It was however open-ended endgame content with a random factor (you'd literally meet new life and new civilizations - all of it did the same things though).
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Explorarion was just a term applied to a gameplay element, there's no reason to jump around the word exploration. It was however open-ended endgame content with a random factor (you'd literally meet new life and new civilizations - all of it did the same things though).
Sadly, it also had the random factor of things in space being randomly located with no very good way to find them, and things on the ground being defended by randomly-place enemies - and by "randomly-placed", I mean there was about a 50% chance they'd spawn under the surface of the map, where they could target the player but the player couldn't return the favor.
May give out rewards like candy but there's nothing in either of those that encourages you to be actually online and playing the game. You come online sort out the missions and thats you for the day.
And you highlighted the problem with the lukari plotline, its been going on so long and yet hasn't really got anywhere other than having kumarke go from inquisitive scientist to mildly obnoxious and judgemental when she meets her long lost relatives on new kentar and then back to being the good fairy when she waves her magic wand at the moon.
Martok looks more likely to be tied in with a new thread revolving around the son'a (bracing myself for them breeding an army of white free jem hadar) and if the tzen are as nasty as they've been made out to be I doubt they'd be allying themselves with anyone else. Unless the writers are going to contrive another "it was all the iconians doing" style theme involving the tzen as a new big bad rather than a minor, small, uppity faction.
I'm almost agree with the OP, I was away from the game during a moment; and when I came back, I was a little bit disappointed by: the new competitive stuff, on the paper the idea was very interesting, but the queues are totally empty and the rep rewards add nothing more to the game; no new interesting things for the summer event, a new poor race, the new stuff in the store are not really interesting, however the ship is interesting for the new players.
Personally I have enough ships, I would like to buy parts to customize my current ships, + the possibility to explore more solar systems (the existing solar systems; most of them are unavailable). the ships are a very important part of this game, but always the same queues to use them. the other stfs are almost dead.
i just find it to be criminal that AoY toons can't do more stuffz in the 23c that mirrors more of TOS, thimgs like 'balance of terror' ,for one example....or even episodes that mirror TNG, b/c i am sure that other ships have adventures just as exciting as enterprise or voyager.......anyway my train of thought just went off the rails..............
Yeah, they went to so much work making that new sector space map, and we barely use it....
This game lacks endgame content. I think that much is obvious. It seems there are only two things to do once you've the reached max level and got your gear. Space barbie and dps hunt. But it's not like Cryptic didn't come up with good ideas in the past. The Sompek arena, NWS or Kobayashi Maru have been great additions to the game. It's hard to understand why they would remove this content after only a few days.
It doesn't lack content. Just look at that huge queue list. What it lacks is a meaningful reason to play the content. Except for a few accolades here and there, there's absolutely nothing unique in any non-event queues that would get players into playing specific content. It's all just dilithium grind, so players will inevitably do the math and settle on ones that give the most for the least effort.
Even the release of new reps doesn't make a difference in the queue numbers anymore, with choice marks in the alerts (as if shoveling them like manure out of every event ever wasn't bad enough).
And then it's impossible to play anything else just for fun, because the queues all empty. Even the ones that would be a piece of cake to finish solo, you're still not allowed to start them that way, just because.
I agree yet disagree if that makes any sense. Yes we have a lot of queues and the payout for those are really not worth the time. On the other side all those queues are pretty much the same. Jump in, kill xyz, don't die, and jump out. The rewards suck but so does the "meat" of the content. IMO only of course.
I haven't been doing much in game lately. Mostly just log in and do the summer event for the Vorgon carrier and log off. I'm still kind of annoyed by recent blanket nerf that hurt my favorite build. The changes certainly didn't increase my fun even though that was stated as one of the goals. Additionally, a lot of the people I played with regularly decided to take a break after the nerf and play other games. I'm thinking I might do the same after tomorrow once I pick up the vorgon carrier. Maybe when I come back I won't be so annoyed that my build was nerfed and if I'm lucky some of my friends will have returned by then.
I'm sorry you've lost interest in the game. But I can assure you that "most of the development team" is not dedicated to ships. There are 3 ship artists. We have FX artists, and Systems Designers, who also contribute to ships, but also do many other things. There are 4 Environment Artists and 4 Content Designers doing missions and maps, constantly. There are Animators and Character Artists and Programmers and UI Artists and QA and Production, all of whom are not working on ships.
Seasons don't consist of a single mission, we've just shifted to releasing the missions over the course of the whole season, rather than doing a Netflix style dump of the whole thing at once, with nothing then being released for months after.
Branching Storylines are great, but they take more time and more development, and only a fraction of your players will see any given branch, which makes it a harder sell. We could split the development up to make more branching story, but even if we just had an A and a B, unless we double the number of content developers, that would mean that from the player's perspective, each mission would be shorter, with less to do.
You say that you want us to tackle current global issues in the frame of Star Trek, just like the shows did. I would argue that the Lukari storyline you are less interested in has been doing exactly that.
Edit: FWIW, I've never understood people's fixation that a given MMO should be the only thing they ever play for the rest of their lives. For my part, I will play an MMO for a while, then lose interest or get distracted by some other new game, go play that, and then come back to that MMO again.
We're here, we're free to play, and we're not going anywhere. Try something else for a bit, and then come back and give us another shot.
Well said Taco, I myself have played since launch and love STO. I give it a break from time to time. It's taken 7 years but I FINALLY have my T6 Connie and Connie Refit and wrath of khan phasers and undiscovered country phasers.
I play with true satisfaction after all this time, and yet I keep coming up with new ideas LOL
I'll be posting some of those ideas today in the general board.
Keep up the good work. Also, I think given that STO is free and has been around so long- it now has reached a certain level of maturity that makes me jealous of new players. Oh I long for the days when STO was new to me and exciting. New players who join now get the excitement of a HUGE story line with many emotional moments, not to mention their favorite ships and technology and characters to attain/reach!
The trouble with an episodic story in STO is that it takes so long to get each section out because they are each "featured" for four weeks, Then rather than getting the next part out and carrying on the momentum of the story there's downtime for either an event of somekind or other.
Anyone who's binged a box set will often hit a moment where something happens and they simply have to keep watching to find out what happens next. Game of thrones red wedding is one such trigger and while not really a trek style moment it was such a hook. Hooks like that in STO wouldn't work because the wait between episodes is simply too long, even longer if they decide to let an event like summer run its entire length without any story content.
We last had mirrors and smoke which should have really been two episodes and so much better. The city map was really underused where we could have been doing on planet "trek" stuff like helping the person in the street rather than scanning and leaving them in the gutter. Meeting the ministers and ending part one on the mothership bombing the moon cliffhangar style. Part two would have then be free to do more with rescuing the moon rather than pushing a button and ending with something other than the xenophobic minister trying to kill us. The leader could have been in cahoots with the tzenkethi or created the movement against outsiders to maintain her power by controlling the opposition. So much wasted potential. It was also not a fun episode to run on lowbies because that mothership fight takes so damn long (even if you know the fight) with zero reward as it doesn't die.
And now it seems that rather than continuing the lukari story we're going to start on martok one. Makes me worried that it'll be another squandered opportunity of a series getting squished into a handful of forgettable moments. Hopefully they won't turn him into another sela who keeps coming back like a bad smell, even though survivor did end with a decent speculative cutscene I kind of hope we've locked her up for good.
Event burnout has probably hit a lot of folk, myself I'm only logging in to keep R&D ticking over and maybe doing an patrol run on alts to slowly level ships and get some marks for dil. Can't be bothered even queueing for the red alerts at the moment partly due to the borg reward nerf.
The Lukari storyline is likely going to be one that is overarching for a while. If you remember, they were introduced in Sunrise mainly to direct the course of Season 11 to the Temporal Cold War.
- In "Sunrise", they were part of the plot to tie in Kal Dano in with the Tox Uthat. In the story blogs, they become a big player in helping to try and negotiate with the Na'kuhl.
- After the Temporal Cold War stuff is done, we get back to helping them break out into a galaxy that they have yet to fully explore, which we learn why later. They help lead us into a new arc in which they play a bigger role in.
- In "Of Signs and Portents" we're fully engaged with the Tzenkethi storyline (and the Lukari-Kentari substory that will follow) as we are intent to stop the Tzenkethi from blowing up any more worlds like the one that K-13 is orbiting now.
- "Mirrors and Smoke" finally gives us an advancement on the Lukari-Kentari subplot and ties into the Tzenkethi plot with them trying to wipe out the Kentari because of those damned crystals.
- The subplot is likely going to stay around a bit longer since we're still got the main plot which is the Tzenkethi to deal with.
May give out rewards like candy but there's nothing in either of those that encourages you to be actually online and playing the game. You come online sort out the missions and thats you for the day.
And you highlighted the problem with the lukari plotline, its been going on so long and yet hasn't really got anywhere other than having kumarke go from inquisitive scientist to mildly obnoxious and judgemental when she meets her long lost relatives on new kentar and then back to being the good fairy when she waves her magic wand at the moon.
Martok looks more likely to be tied in with a new thread revolving around the son'a (bracing myself for them breeding an army of white free jem hadar) and if the tzen are as nasty as they've been made out to be I doubt they'd be allying themselves with anyone else. Unless the writers are going to contrive another "it was all the iconians doing" style theme involving the tzen as a new big bad rather than a minor, small, uppity faction.
I see the upcoming story episode to be one that ties into the whole thing with the fact that the Klingons have the most experience against the Tzenkethi and Martok knows the reason why they are doing what they are. I bet the Son'a will likely enter the fray as a smaller bad guy like the Kentari were.
This game lacks endgame content. I think that much is obvious. It seems there are only two things to do once you've the reached max level and got your gear. Space barbie and dps hunt. But it's not like Cryptic didn't come up with good ideas in the past. The Sompek arena, NWS or Kobayashi Maru have been great additions to the game. It's hard to understand why they would remove this content after only a few days.
It doesn't lack content. Just look at that huge queue list. What it lacks is a meaningful reason to play the content. Except for a few accolades here and there, there's absolutely nothing unique in any non-event queues that would get players into playing specific content. It's all just dilithium grind, so players will inevitably do the math and settle on ones that give the most for the least effort.
Even the release of new reps doesn't make a difference in the queue numbers anymore, with choice marks in the alerts (as if shoveling them like manure out of every event ever wasn't bad enough).
And then it's impossible to play anything else just for fun, because the queues all empty. Even the ones that would be a piece of cake to finish solo, you're still not allowed to start them that way, just because.
I agree yet disagree if that makes any sense. Yes we have a lot of queues and the payout for those are really not worth the time. On the other side all those queues are pretty much the same. Jump in, kill xyz, don't die, and jump out. The rewards suck but so does the "meat" of the content. IMO only of course.
What else are they going to do? Every time there's any hint of content that would require players to rub more than two braincells together, people cry it's too hard. So shooting and pressing F at things it is.
Which is really ironic for a franchise focused on super-science, having fans that fail at kids' games and elementary school math.
Never played City of Villains myself, but I'd definitely want to be the overlord running the island nation, not an errand boy hired by one of his henchmen to steal candy from babies for teh evulz.
The thing is, it's hard to do evil acts that are neither petty crimes like stealing candies, launching robots on innocent people or things that'd be better in a RTS/management game (cancel healthcare, give credence to conspiracy theory sites, tax the poor, deregulate the market, antagonize justice and other countries, delete welfare, allow industries to destroy the environments, start invading countries with false pretenses, etc.)
What's so hard about it? The evil is in the writing. Gameplay in villain-protagonist games is pretty much the same as in heroic ones, it's all about who your opponents are.
Petty videogame evil exists because the plot in most games isn't written for real evil by the player. The actual villain is the Final Boss you need to be defeating...so you're stuck pickpocketing peasants and doing random violence for points on the evil-o-meter on your way to saving the world, if you want to play a "villain."
I will agree that many of the recent missions feel formulaic, but I still enjoy the game. I enjoy flying new ships and working on my build, playing with some of the new weapons, etc that come out. I've been playing the game since the closed beta and I've enjoyed it every step of the way, though I did take a long hiatus a few years back. Taking a break actually got me more invested into the game, by the time I returned there were a couple seasons worth of content and new ships, weapons, etc to collect. I got to explore the storyline again and play through the new missions. Something else I've done to aid replayability is run back through the old missions to check out the updates and changes that the developers have made to the game.
I would like to see some of the timed events like Mirror Universe and Kobayashi Maru to come back more often, but beyond that I can't think of much that disappoints me about the game anymore. Oh, there is one thing that I really do miss... Starbase 24. That was so much fun back at launch, 20 people flying around fighting masses of Klingon ships.
Actually this Thread seems boring and uninspiring.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
The kentari weren't bad guys though, they may have been xenophobic and have the very predictable "betrayal" by whathisface but that was just an excuse for the writers to have combat filler before the (potentially) longwinded & otherwise dull mothership fight.
I say dull because its another of those ones where you have allies that do sod all during it, even less if you go into threatening stance to keep it facing the right way.
Another reason why that episode should have been in two parts, give the writers a chance to flesh out their hatred rather than have them scream death to the lukari and hope noone wonders how they recognise kumaarke as one after so many years apart. Yes, they might have been told by minister obviousbetrayer but she's as part of a group so death to the outsiders or death to the aliens would have made more sense.
Never played City of Villains myself, but I'd definitely want to be the overlord running the island nation, not an errand boy hired by one of his henchmen to steal candy from babies for teh evulz.
The thing is, it's hard to do evil acts that are neither petty crimes like stealing candies, launching robots on innocent people or things that'd be better in a RTS/management game (cancel healthcare, give credence to conspiracy theory sites, tax the poor, deregulate the market, antagonize justice and other countries, delete welfare, allow industries to destroy the environments, start invading countries with false pretenses, etc.)
oh wait, thats all stuff thats happened in the U.S b/c of the republicans
Comments
The exploration system had to go because it was not, by any stretch of the imagination, exploration. Exploration involves learning, which means persistence: In our own history explorers notably made maps while exploring that they returned with.
Our own galaxy has ~200 billion stars in it, dividing it into quadrants gives 50 billion stars per quadrant.
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And who can forget the Third Borg Dynasty?
And you highlighted the problem with the lukari plotline, its been going on so long and yet hasn't really got anywhere other than having kumarke go from inquisitive scientist to mildly obnoxious and judgemental when she meets her long lost relatives on new kentar and then back to being the good fairy when she waves her magic wand at the moon.
Martok looks more likely to be tied in with a new thread revolving around the son'a (bracing myself for them breeding an army of white free jem hadar) and if the tzen are as nasty as they've been made out to be I doubt they'd be allying themselves with anyone else. Unless the writers are going to contrive another "it was all the iconians doing" style theme involving the tzen as a new big bad rather than a minor, small, uppity faction.
Personally I have enough ships, I would like to buy parts to customize my current ships, + the possibility to explore more solar systems (the existing solar systems; most of them are unavailable). the ships are a very important part of this game, but always the same queues to use them. the other stfs are almost dead.
Hard to be inspired when you are forced to crank out the next lockbox junk to make money.
Absolutely well said and thats what I feel the game has become.
Change can happen - Tier 6 Galaxy... Believe in yourself...
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I agree yet disagree if that makes any sense. Yes we have a lot of queues and the payout for those are really not worth the time. On the other side all those queues are pretty much the same. Jump in, kill xyz, don't die, and jump out. The rewards suck but so does the "meat" of the content. IMO only of course.
original join date 2010
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Well said Taco, I myself have played since launch and love STO. I give it a break from time to time. It's taken 7 years but I FINALLY have my T6 Connie and Connie Refit and wrath of khan phasers and undiscovered country phasers.
I play with true satisfaction after all this time, and yet I keep coming up with new ideas LOL
I'll be posting some of those ideas today in the general board.
Keep up the good work. Also, I think given that STO is free and has been around so long- it now has reached a certain level of maturity that makes me jealous of new players. Oh I long for the days when STO was new to me and exciting. New players who join now get the excitement of a HUGE story line with many emotional moments, not to mention their favorite ships and technology and characters to attain/reach!
I'll see you guys n gals in space!
The Lukari storyline is likely going to be one that is overarching for a while. If you remember, they were introduced in Sunrise mainly to direct the course of Season 11 to the Temporal Cold War.
- In "Sunrise", they were part of the plot to tie in Kal Dano in with the Tox Uthat. In the story blogs, they become a big player in helping to try and negotiate with the Na'kuhl.
- After the Temporal Cold War stuff is done, we get back to helping them break out into a galaxy that they have yet to fully explore, which we learn why later. They help lead us into a new arc in which they play a bigger role in.
- In "Of Signs and Portents" we're fully engaged with the Tzenkethi storyline (and the Lukari-Kentari substory that will follow) as we are intent to stop the Tzenkethi from blowing up any more worlds like the one that K-13 is orbiting now.
- "Mirrors and Smoke" finally gives us an advancement on the Lukari-Kentari subplot and ties into the Tzenkethi plot with them trying to wipe out the Kentari because of those damned crystals.
- The subplot is likely going to stay around a bit longer since we're still got the main plot which is the Tzenkethi to deal with.
I see the upcoming story episode to be one that ties into the whole thing with the fact that the Klingons have the most experience against the Tzenkethi and Martok knows the reason why they are doing what they are. I bet the Son'a will likely enter the fray as a smaller bad guy like the Kentari were.
Which is really ironic for a franchise focused on super-science, having fans that fail at kids' games and elementary school math.
Petty videogame evil exists because the plot in most games isn't written for real evil by the player. The actual villain is the Final Boss you need to be defeating...so you're stuck pickpocketing peasants and doing random violence for points on the evil-o-meter on your way to saving the world, if you want to play a "villain."
I would like to see some of the timed events like Mirror Universe and Kobayashi Maru to come back more often, but beyond that I can't think of much that disappoints me about the game anymore. Oh, there is one thing that I really do miss... Starbase 24. That was so much fun back at launch, 20 people flying around fighting masses of Klingon ships.
STO Beta Test and Launch Veteran
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I say dull because its another of those ones where you have allies that do sod all during it, even less if you go into threatening stance to keep it facing the right way.
Another reason why that episode should have been in two parts, give the writers a chance to flesh out their hatred rather than have them scream death to the lukari and hope noone wonders how they recognise kumaarke as one after so many years apart. Yes, they might have been told by minister obviousbetrayer but she's as part of a group so death to the outsiders or death to the aliens would have made more sense.
Actually, BOTH sides are doing that.
Actually, it goes waaaay back to the time of Mr. Johnson of the 60's, at least
Anyhow, per game, I am having a blast.