*Waves* Yeah I honestly don't know how much longer I'm going to last, I already only pop in every few weeks or so on average. Maybe it'll be every new mission or so at this point to play (seldom as they are at this point).. As I mentioned in earlier posting I'm not sure if anyone to blame is on payroll anymore but somewhere in the distant past there was definitely a huge leadership failure and this has near gravely wounded the game. I'll add those missions of yours to my foundry bucket list! Farewell Voporak, it is regretful I never got to really set some things right after these years, but I wish you well out there!
Same to you. I'll probably hop on this weekend to check on the reviews a final time and republish anything that's down, assuming I can still access the editor to do that.
GOODBYE FOUNDERY AND GOODBYE STAR TREK ONLINE!! I am VERY UPSET by this to say the least! To me, the Foundry was perhaps the BEST PART of Star Trek Online!! It was always a personal desire of mine to have a game such as this, where you could create your own Alien Races and have them as friends or enemies, as well as creating your own stories to play in the game! When I first discovered that the foundry existed I WAS OVERJOYED!!! )) I then created a story to play in game and WOW!! It was fun!! How does the saying go "All good things must come to an end" Just as the Title of STNG's final episode, I wonder if this will lead to Star Trek On line's "Last Episode"! With that being said, I am going to be leaving a game that I have enjoyed playing since 2010! I wish for TWO THINGS. First of all, That somehow, someway, someone or perhaps MANY will figure a way to bring the foundry back someday. Secondly, ANYONE reading this post who agrees with me, will either voice their objections to Cryptic, OR do what I am going to do, and leave the game. I have experienced some really sad days in my life, but this news of the Foundry's demise, has to be among the worst! IF and WHEN The Foundry is ever brought back again, then I will be back.
Well, I hate to say this but we are down to 22 people online tonight, I don't remember it being that low since DR and we were a much smaller fleet. Normally we have around 75 online on a Friday evening and up to 12 in Discord, today 22 online and 2 in Discord and I'm not even playing STO atm.
Honestly, i've not logged on at all in a full week, and I'm not even missing doing so. Most fortunately, there are still many other things out there that can still hold my interest.
exactly this for me as well
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Cryptic have never been able to launch enough content to keep people satisfied. The one time they did have a large content release was Legacy of Romulus, which I loved and which added quite a few hours of game play, a new character could easily take a week up to the point they caught up with the existing missions. Since then the expansions have been getting smaller, Delta Rising was reasonable in content but was padded out with boring patrols that had to be replayed over and over to get your character to the new level 60, until they adjusted the XP rate. The total time for Delta Rising was about a third to half that of LoR. Agents of yesterday was shorter again, around a quarter the length of Delta rising. Victory is Life was a similar length to AoY but better quality stories, animations and cut scenes, with a mass of expensive voice actors. Age of Discovery is the shortest to date, just a handful of missions that are updated every few months.
If we look at other MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online is probably one of the best on the market now, their new update in June, Elsweyr, will have around 30 hours of content, much longer than any of STO's updates, and this is followed by another large chapter at year end and carries on from a similarly sized update last year. In between there are DLCs which are free to subscribers that add many more hours of content.
Cryptic are simply unable to compete in terms of content drop rate, I believe their quality has improved vastly since the early days but having to wait a couple of months for an hour of content is ludicrous and is ultimately unsustainable.
This is where the foundry always filled the gaps in production, the Foundry was the glue that kept this game together, removing it is suicide, unless by doing so you can start to increase content drops similar in size and cadence to ESO. So unless Cryptic are taking on hundreds more staff then this seems unlikely, ESO was developed for 7 years before launch, STO was a last minute rush job and it has spent years trying to catch up, in all that time the Foundry has kept loyal fans playing and paying. The more I think about this decision the more I realise that Cryptic haven't got a clue what their own game is about and how they have just shot themselves in the foot big time.
ESO has far more exploration in it than STO and yet Star Trek is supposed to be about exploration of not only the galaxy but the human condition. In the foundry missions people wrote, there were those that were entirely exploration with not a single shot fired, in fact my own V'Ger mission is like that and has the best reviews I've ever seen. Cryptic promised us more exploration, it started well with echoes of light but quickly degenerated into a fire fight. Now, the best exploration in the game has gone, the Foundry.
I implore Cryptic to look at this decision again, I have nothing else to say about this, I think all that could be said has been said in this thread by me and by many more who articulated their feelings better than I ever could. If, after reading this thread and the many other comments on social media, Cryptic still don't get it, then I believe they are on a road to nowhere, unless that is they receive an influx of developers and content creators that equal a team the size of ESO and others to keep people logged in. Personal Endeavors will not do it, all you are doing is pushing people to play content they don't particularly want to play at a time that may not be convenient to gain a very slight increase in stats which will help them imperceptibly to play the content you want them to play - not going to work.
There is now, with the lack of Foundry missions, NO END GAME in STO, no mission in STO provides any kind of challenge for long time vets, I can and have finished the latest missions on normal difficulty in a Delta flyer and on elite in any of my ships all the missions are a cake walk. That's why our fleet has created 50 end game level foundry missions that push even the best players to their limits of performance. With those missions gone why would anyone now bother to upgrade their ships, it's not necessary, we have completed Hive Elite in T3 ships in the fleet, so nobody has a need for ultimate T6 ships with the missions you release, it was only the Foundry that required those ships. You have not only removed the Foundry but with it exploration and End Game content.
Cryptic, think again before it's too late.
There's an obvious difference between ESO and STO with the companies. As far as I know, the company behind ESO is only working on that game, so they have a larger team to build out the content for the game. Cryptic meanwhile is smaller, has employees spread across 4 games. Games that have to share programmers. The only way I feel STO could get enough attention devoted to it would be if they shut down the other games and were to only focus on the game. However, they will not do that. Cryptic will never be a large company.
Another thing the Foundry did that the core game didn't, even though many to this day still want:
It allowed faction specific content. How many times has someone started a thread asking for faction-specific content, only to be told that it won't happen, but if they really wanted it, give foundry a try.
Good job, Cryptic... Good job...
The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out.
It seems there is no money for a new engine or as some like to say 'STO 2.0' and that the development system right now is simply only ships.
After all F2P gaming (never really needed actually) is innately flawed in that is plays to the LCD and literally banks on loyalty and hope which pits different player communities together and has always been implemented in such as way as to abuse the loyal and hopeful players to the point of leaving which of course always spells the end because it seems the vast majority of F2P people will never spend any money so it is astonishing to me why the industry ran down this road. I can only figure it is because of the lack of regulations for the gamblebox system trying and companies executives trying to rake in as much cash as possible as soon as possible before the community naturally dies or the laws are finally updated to put a stop to it. Because it is not a viable long-term strategy with games as far as I can tell and I have been doing MMOs since the early 90s; even longer if you count MUDs. In my opinion, developers need to plan long-term with an MMO. It is why WOW still is king because it has going on two decades of development, polish, and lore. Most businesses in general dont think longer than 3-5 years cycles and in the US greed is good above all else mentality that is a paradigm for companies to digest but I digress...
On a personal note, like you I'm one of those that have been from the start and have spent many thousands on STO over the years and still does - hell nearly $1k so far this year all trying to support the game. Sadly the parent company (PWE) is all about grinding maximum money for minimum investment. One cant have a master with that focus and not expect it to greatly impact thing from a quality of life perspective. Nonetheless I still have hope - call me stupid.
I had at one point over 20 friends in my fleet that would have easily paid $100+ per month in a subscription model as well as myself and we were flabbergasted with the F2P announcement when Cryptic never even tried a subscription increase option. All of the quit soon after never to return. I know the ST fan community (not the same as the F2P players) given the right MMO experience, would consider such a very reasonable expense for such service.
Speaking of which, I'm waiting for another company as I dont see Cryptic doing such a thing with PWE as the owner to offer a high quality Star Trek MMO experience on a subscription model for maybe $25-$100 a month or maybe $500-1k per year. Shoot they even a crowd fund seed money to get started so they dont have to sell of the company for funding in an initial deal linked with a followup subscription plan but what do I know as a 40 year Star Trek fan...
As far the argument about the code not being good for the Foundry, maybe I'm ignorant because I'm not a code monkey, but if it uses the same system the devs use then I cant see the how it is not possible to maintain anymore or even extra work but then again we have bugs in the game which have been for years and never seem to get fixed but I digress again...
The star trek optimist in me wants to think maybe they are getting rid of it and other thinks because they are planning on a new engine and need to slim things down as much as possible for the transition but cant say anything publicly yet but hey I have always been a dreamer...
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
+/- There isn't much if any innovation going on. Neither from the tech standpoint nor game design. The engine is old, it's been patched for 15+ years by people most of whom have since churned by now, but there are some things in it from early 2000-s that may or may not have been an OK idea back then but don't work very well today. Such things do get fixed... Eventually... +/- Game design is anything but revolutionary. Not neccesarily a bad thing. Neverwinter is riding the D&D franchise, it's a good game if you like the D&D lore. It gets plastic surgery now and then so the 15+ year old engine doesn't show through as much. Star Trek is pretty much living off selling new ships with every update. -/+ Career-wise, as others have pointed out - not a ton of challenge nor opportunity to create "really awesome cutting edge stuff" - neither art not tech-wise. No running with scissors here.
It seems there is no money for a new engine or as some like to say 'STO 2.0' and that the development system right now is simply only ships.
After all F2P gaming (never really needed actually) is innately flawed in that is plays to the LCD and literally banks on loyalty and hope which pits different player communities together and has always been implemented in such as way as to abuse the loyal and hopeful players to the point of leaving which of course always spells the end because it seems the vast majority of F2P people will never spend any money so it is astonishing to me why the industry ran down this road. I can only figure it is because of the lack of regulations for the gamblebox system and companies executives trying to rake in as much cash as possible, as soon as possible, before the community naturally dies or the laws are finally updated to put a stop to the [bad business] practice. The F2P model is not a viable long-term strategy with games as far as I can tell and I have been doing MMOs since the early 90s; even longer if you count MUDs.
In my opinion, developers need to plan long-term with an MMO. I believe it is why WOW still is king because it has going on two decades of development, polish, and lore. Most businesses in general dont think longer than 3-5 years cycles and in the US with its 'greed is good above all else' mentality that is a a seemingly impossible paradigm for companies to digest but I digress...
On a personal note, like you I'm one of those that have been from the start and have spent many thousands on STO over the years and still do - hell nearly $1k so far this year all trying to support the game. Sadly the parent company (PWE) is all about grinding maximum money for minimum investment. One cant have a master with that focus and not expect it to greatly impact thing from a quality of life perspective. Nonetheless I still have hope - call me stupid.
I had at one point over 20 friends in my fleet that would have easily paid $100+ per month in a subscription model as well as myself and we were flabbergasted with the F2P announcement when Cryptic never even tried a subscription increase option but of course that was due to the PWE purchase. All of them quit soon after never to return. I know the ST fan community (not the same as the F2P players) given the right MMO experience, would consider that amount a very reasonable expense for such service.
Speaking of which, I'm waiting for another company as I dont see Cryptic doing such a thing with PWE as the owner to offer a high quality Star Trek MMO experience on a subscription model for maybe $25-$100 a month or maybe $500-1k per year. Shoot they even a crowd fund seed money to get started so they dont have to sell of the company for funding in an initial deal linked with a followup subscription plan but what do I know as a 40 year Star Trek fan...
As far the argument about the code not being good for the Foundry, maybe I'm ignorant because I'm not a code monkey, but if it uses the same system the devs use then I cant see the how it is not possible to maintain anymore or even extra work but then again we have bugs in the game which have been for years and never seem to get fixed but I digress again...
The star trek optimist in me wants to think maybe they are getting rid of it and other thinks because they are planning on a new engine and need to slim things down as much as possible for the transition but cant say anything publicly yet but hey I have always been a dreamer...
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
> @mattjohnsonva said: > vegeta50024 wrote: » > > mattjohnsonva wrote: » > > @borticuscryptic@ambassadorkael#6946@crypticgeko@jheinig > > Cryptic have never been able to launch enough content to keep people satisfied. The one time they did have a large content release was Legacy of Romulus, which I loved and which added quite a few hours of game play, a new character could easily take a week up to the point they caught up with the existing missions. Since then the expansions have been getting smaller, Delta Rising was reasonable in content but was padded out with boring patrols that had to be replayed over and over to get your character to the new level 60, until they adjusted the XP rate. The total time for Delta Rising was about a third to half that of LoR. Agents of yesterday was shorter again, around a quarter the length of Delta rising. Victory is Life was a similar length to AoY but better quality stories, animations and cut scenes, with a mass of expensive voice actors. Age of Discovery is the shortest to date, just a handful of missions that are updated every few months. > > If we look at other MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online is probably one of the best on the market now, their new update in June, Elsweyr, will have around 30 hours of content, much longer than any of STO's updates, and this is followed by another large chapter at year end and carries on from a similarly sized update last year. In between there are DLCs which are free to subscribers that add many more hours of content. > > Cryptic are simply unable to compete in terms of content drop rate, I believe their quality has improved vastly since the early days but having to wait a couple of months for an hour of content is ludicrous and is ultimately unsustainable. > > This is where the foundry always filled the gaps in production, the Foundry was the glue that kept this game together, removing it is suicide, unless by doing so you can start to increase content drops similar in size and cadence to ESO. So unless Cryptic are taking on hundreds more staff then this seems unlikely, ESO was developed for 7 years before launch, STO was a last minute rush job and it has spent years trying to catch up, in all that time the Foundry has kept loyal fans playing and paying. The more I think about this decision the more I realise that Cryptic haven't got a clue what their own game is about and how they have just shot themselves in the foot big time. > > ESO has far more exploration in it than STO and yet Star Trek is supposed to be about exploration of not only the galaxy but the human condition. In the foundry missions people wrote, there were those that were entirely exploration with not a single shot fired, in fact my own V'Ger mission is like that and has the best reviews I've ever seen. Cryptic promised us more exploration, it started well with echoes of light but quickly degenerated into a fire fight. Now, the best exploration in the game has gone, the Foundry. > > I implore Cryptic to look at this decision again, I have nothing else to say about this, I think all that could be said has been said in this thread by me and by many more who articulated their feelings better than I ever could. If, after reading this thread and the many other comments on social media, Cryptic still don't get it, then I believe they are on a road to nowhere, unless that is they receive an influx of developers and content creators that equal a team the size of ESO and others to keep people logged in. Personal Endeavors will not do it, all you are doing is pushing people to play content they don't particularly want to play at a time that may not be convenient to gain a very slight increase in stats which will help them imperceptibly to play the content you want them to play - not going to work. > > There is now, with the lack of Foundry missions, NO END GAME in STO, no mission in STO provides any kind of challenge for long time vets, I can and have finished the latest missions on normal difficulty in a Delta flyer and on elite in any of my ships all the missions are a cake walk. That's why our fleet has created 50 end game level foundry missions that push even the best players to their limits of performance. With those missions gone why would anyone now bother to upgrade their ships, it's not necessary, we have completed Hive Elite in T3 ships in the fleet, so nobody has a need for ultimate T6 ships with the missions you release, it was only the Foundry that required those ships. You have not only removed the Foundry but with it exploration and End Game content. > > Cryptic, think again before it's too late. > > > > > There's an obvious difference between ESO and STO with the companies. As far as I know, the company behind ESO is only working on that game, so they have a larger team to build out the content for the game. Cryptic meanwhile is smaller, has employees spread across 4 games. Games that have to share programmers. The only way I feel STO could get enough attention devoted to it would be if they shut down the other games and were to only focus on the game. However, they will not do that. Cryptic will never be a large company. > sirsitsalot wrote: » > > Another thing the Foundry did that the core game didn't, even though many to this day still want: > > It allowed faction specific content. How many times has someone started a thread asking for faction-specific content, only to be told that it won't happen, but if they really wanted it, give foundry a try. > > Good job, Cryptic... Good job... > > > > > The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out. > > > > > Sadly you've missed the point of the post you quoted. It's for the very reasons that they are not the size of ESO, have multiple titles and are driven by lock box mechanics rather than charged for content that they should NOT shut down the foundry. The foundry is that part of their product that kept many of the long term vets and whales paying and playing. With it gone, the only content you are going to get is a couple of missions every few months. Let me say that again. > > New content now will be reduced to two missions totaling 90 min every 3 months (if current release dates are maintained). > > Two missions on October 9th 2018 and two missions on Jan 23rd 2019. At that rate sometime in April we will get the next part of Age of Discovery. The missions are of excellent quality but last around 30-45 minutes each, so every 3 months you get 90 minutes worth of new content, that's 6 hours a year. By comparison ESO releases around 100 hours a year by way of DLCs free to subscribers and paid for expansions known as chapters and now has 2100 missions (quests). > > As Cryptic can't or don't want to go down that route their only fall back position for new content was the continual stream of missions created by the fans for the fans. Now, in a few weeks that fall back position will be gone. All that will be left will be to continually repeat the same missions we have, which number 94 replayable missions, it used to be more but Cryptic have removed many of those too. > > In addition, many of those missions cannot be played on a team, which is incredible considering this is an MMO. Finally, when you're sick to death of repeating those small amount of missions, most of which have been played ad nauseam you can fall back on the TFO, rep and endeavour grinds, to increase your stats of your player and ship which is not necessary in any case as there is no content in the game that requires a ship of that power. There used to be, some missions in the foundry would push even the best perfoming players to their limits, but there are none in the general game. > > In one fell swoop, Cryptic have removed exploration and end game content for the vet players (ie those players that have finished all the stories and reached T6 rep on a toon from each faction and have been playing for years).
According to the release schedule they previously released, the next part of AoD will come out in May. But maybe they changed that?
I am going to repeat my previous statement that i hope that at least some of the excellent foundry missions can be used as system patrols. There are just so many planets in both alpha, beta and delta quadrant with nothing attached and it would be awesome if some of these planets could be used as foundry based system patrols or social zones.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Cryptic have never been able to launch enough content to keep people satisfied. The one time they did have a large content release was Legacy of Romulus, which I loved and which added quite a few hours of game play, a new character could easily take a week up to the point they caught up with the existing missions. Since then the expansions have been getting smaller, Delta Rising was reasonable in content but was padded out with boring patrols that had to be replayed over and over to get your character to the new level 60, until they adjusted the XP rate. The total time for Delta Rising was about a third to half that of LoR. Agents of yesterday was shorter again, around a quarter the length of Delta rising. Victory is Life was a similar length to AoY but better quality stories, animations and cut scenes, with a mass of expensive voice actors. Age of Discovery is the shortest to date, just a handful of missions that are updated every few months.
If we look at other MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online is probably one of the best on the market now, their new update in June, Elsweyr, will have around 30 hours of content, much longer than any of STO's updates, and this is followed by another large chapter at year end and carries on from a similarly sized update last year. In between there are DLCs which are free to subscribers that add many more hours of content.
Cryptic are simply unable to compete in terms of content drop rate, I believe their quality has improved vastly since the early days but having to wait a couple of months for an hour of content is ludicrous and is ultimately unsustainable.
This is where the foundry always filled the gaps in production, the Foundry was the glue that kept this game together, removing it is suicide, unless by doing so you can start to increase content drops similar in size and cadence to ESO. So unless Cryptic are taking on hundreds more staff then this seems unlikely, ESO was developed for 7 years before launch, STO was a last minute rush job and it has spent years trying to catch up, in all that time the Foundry has kept loyal fans playing and paying. The more I think about this decision the more I realise that Cryptic haven't got a clue what their own game is about and how they have just shot themselves in the foot big time.
ESO has far more exploration in it than STO and yet Star Trek is supposed to be about exploration of not only the galaxy but the human condition. In the foundry missions people wrote, there were those that were entirely exploration with not a single shot fired, in fact my own V'Ger mission is like that and has the best reviews I've ever seen. Cryptic promised us more exploration, it started well with echoes of light but quickly degenerated into a fire fight. Now, the best exploration in the game has gone, the Foundry.
I implore Cryptic to look at this decision again, I have nothing else to say about this, I think all that could be said has been said in this thread by me and by many more who articulated their feelings better than I ever could. If, after reading this thread and the many other comments on social media, Cryptic still don't get it, then I believe they are on a road to nowhere, unless that is they receive an influx of developers and content creators that equal a team the size of ESO and others to keep people logged in. Personal Endeavors will not do it, all you are doing is pushing people to play content they don't particularly want to play at a time that may not be convenient to gain a very slight increase in stats which will help them imperceptibly to play the content you want them to play - not going to work.
There is now, with the lack of Foundry missions, NO END GAME in STO, no mission in STO provides any kind of challenge for long time vets, I can and have finished the latest missions on normal difficulty in a Delta flyer and on elite in any of my ships all the missions are a cake walk. That's why our fleet has created 50 end game level foundry missions that push even the best players to their limits of performance. With those missions gone why would anyone now bother to upgrade their ships, it's not necessary, we have completed Hive Elite in T3 ships in the fleet, so nobody has a need for ultimate T6 ships with the missions you release, it was only the Foundry that required those ships. You have not only removed the Foundry but with it exploration and End Game content.
Cryptic, think again before it's too late.
There's an obvious difference between ESO and STO with the companies. As far as I know, the company behind ESO is only working on that game, so they have a larger team to build out the content for the game. Cryptic meanwhile is smaller, has employees spread across 4 games. Games that have to share programmers. The only way I feel STO could get enough attention devoted to it would be if they shut down the other games and were to only focus on the game. However, they will not do that. Cryptic will never be a large company.
Another thing the Foundry did that the core game didn't, even though many to this day still want:
It allowed faction specific content. How many times has someone started a thread asking for faction-specific content, only to be told that it won't happen, but if they really wanted it, give foundry a try.
Good job, Cryptic... Good job...
The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out.
The TOS expansion would like a word with you. When did that come out again? Before or after Delta Rising?
For the love of Apollo, please stop quoting entire walls of text over and over again. Use some editing judgment when replying to a Post. This 20 page Thread could have been perhaps 12-14 instead.
Thank you.
'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.'
After this very bad news I must really overthink my already planned money investments to the game. More and more the best things are removed and now also the Foundry which was more or less one of the last places for exploration. The whole games goes currently to the wrong direction.
I am going to repeat my previous statement that i hope that at least some of the excellent foundry missions can be used as system patrols. There are just so many planets in both alpha, beta and delta quadrant with nothing attached and it would be awesome if some of these planets could be used as foundry based system patrols or social zones.
I think the issue with this is when a new update comes out that breaks those missions, someone has to go and fix them. Cryptic's not going to do that, and they don't want to maintain the editor that lets the author do it. I do agree that it would be a great way to flesh out all of the pointless systems and thousands of fantastic missions are going to waste.
Another thing the Foundry did that the core game didn't, even though many to this day still want:
It allowed faction specific content. How many times has someone started a thread asking for faction-specific content, only to be told that it won't happen, but if they really wanted it, give foundry a try.
Good job, Cryptic... Good job...
The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out.
The TOS expansion would like a word with you. When did that come out again? Before or after Delta Rising?
Funny how all the faction-specific content that's been released since LOR save the Jem'Hadar tutorial has been Starfleet-specific content. A lot of those missions @sirsitsalot spoke of? Were directed at KDF players. Some were even specialized for Romulans. I don't even like Klingons but I can see the value in faction parity, and a lot of those were as good or better than the Klingon leveling missions, which the Klingon fans I've spoken to universally loved (and had to be made on a dev's personal time during LOR).
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I'm just astonished at how many systems experts we have in this thread.
And how many of you, exactly, have ever applied to work at Cryptic? They've been seeking systems programmers for years for this game, it's been on their website right along. I'd think all of you who know exactly how to solve the Foundry issues with just one or two dedicated software engineers would have been actually doing it, for pay, rather than just sniping from behind your keyboards.
Or was my first assessment correct, and all this ignorance is in fact spilling from people who never coded a line in their lives, and wouldn't know a NAND gate from a Nancy strip?
I'm just astonished at how many systems experts we have in this thread.
And how many of you, exactly, have ever applied to work at Cryptic? They've been seeking systems programmers for years for this game, it's been on their website right along. I'd think all of you who know exactly how to solve the Foundry issues with just one or two dedicated software engineers would have been actually doing it, for pay, rather than just sniping from behind your keyboards.
Or was my first assessment correct, and all this ignorance is in fact spilling from people who never coded a line in their lives, and wouldn't know a NAND gate from a Nancy strip?
I don't need to be a professional programmer to tell when something has been poorly programmed any more than I need to be a movie director to tell you that you cheaped out on your special effects and have a plot hole big enough to fly the Enteprise through.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I am going to repeat my previous statement that i hope that at least some of the excellent foundry missions can be used as system patrols. There are just so many planets in both alpha, beta and delta quadrant with nothing attached and it would be awesome if some of these planets could be used as foundry based system patrols or social zones.
I think the issue with this is when a new update comes out that breaks those missions, someone has to go and fix them. Cryptic's not going to do that, and they don't want to maintain the editor that lets the author do it. I do agree that it would be a great way to flesh out all of the pointless systems and thousands of fantastic missions are going to waste.
I think the main problem is in the map template for the foundry which is separate from the map template for the rest of the game. It should be relatively easy to convert one into the other.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Maybe one of the programmers at Cryptic could give some input in this thread and explain how difficult the transition would be. They wouldn't have to cite lines of code (which wouldn't make sense to someone like me, since my programming skills are 40 years old and in BASIC, not C, or Turbo C, or C++, or Python, or Assembly Language, etc.). Just give us a rough/tentative estimate of time needed vs. effort needed vs. programmers needed if sufficient resources *were* available vs. resources as they actually are.
Do the two systems just need gateways (or "doors" as they used to be called back in the days of the BBS) or a bridge to connect Foundry code and non-Foundry code? Surely there has to be *some* code that the two systems share, rather than like comparing ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics without the use of the Rosetta Stone.
I wish I had the programming skills, because I'd be willing to volunteer my help. Sadly I don't.
Maybe there are enough programmers among STO users that could volunteer at least *some* of their free time to help with this (programming-wise, not criticism-wise)? Break down chunks of code and hand each "chunk" to a different volunteer programmer, with email being used (or Reddit or Skype or Discord or whatever) for when consulting between volunteers is needed.
I'm just brainstorming here, so some of these ideas might not be viable. But I'd rather brainstorm than get depressed over what I have no control over or have no skills to offer.
Another thing the Foundry did that the core game didn't, even though many to this day still want:
It allowed faction specific content. How many times has someone started a thread asking for faction-specific content, only to be told that it won't happen, but if they really wanted it, give foundry a try.
Good job, Cryptic... Good job...
The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out.
The Foundry could have been monetized through the sale of resource packs that would allow foundry authors to buy sets of all assets introduced in the latest core game releases. The same way that new ships could have been introduced as NPC elements in core game missions and sold on the C-store for those who wanted them. And they could have switched to a recurring foundry token fee to maintain an unlimited number of foundry mission slots. Foundry tokens could have been sold on the C-store in stacks of different sizes, priced low enough that even the largest stack could easily be affordable with zen purchased on the dilithium exchange in a month. And with the option to tip the author for a good experience, a significant amount of the cost could be mitigated.
Of course, no monetization of the foundry would have flown with so many glaring issues with it, so those would have needed to be fixed, and the foundry functionality improved, and therein lies the problem that brings us back to PWE not willing to allocate funds to hire someone to deal with the foundry. And clearly, it seems that the Cryptic team has shrunk more than we may realize, whether the employees were fired or left on their own is irrelevant. PWE clearly is not willing to authorize the hiring of replacements, choosing to absorb the funds that were paying for the now departed staff into their profits. It is the only explanation.
I do not know of a single dev team that doesn't want their games to be the best they can be. But when the people who sign the paychecks are unwilling to allocate the funds needed for a staff large enough to make that happen, then the dev team is stuck between a rock and a hard place. They do not have someone that is not already working on something else that they can assign to the Foundry, so it cannot be fixed or improved. They cannot hire someone to improve it. Either way, they know it is going to be a broken mess for the foreseeable future, so they had to make a judgment call. Either let it remain a broken mess or eliminate it. It's a lose-lose position. People were raging about it being broken or buggy. Now people will rage that it is gone.
The difference, I'm afraid, is that more people will not bother to play the game going forward than had they just left the foundry as-is. A side effect of so many things the foundry allowed them to experience that the core game does not and likely never will. So I really think that Cryptic shoes the greater of two evils here, and unless they have something in the pipeline that will fill all the voids that the loss of the Foundry will open up, then it could end up impacting the bottom line... Players wh do not play also will not pay...
Except PWE has allowed them to hire people. You know the UI artist Joanna, the one responsible for the Character Creator revamp? She's there on the team at least 6 months now. There are people on the team also that recent. So don't say that PWE isn't willing to authorize hiring people that are needed. They just aren't authorizing people that the customers think should be utilized like programmers.
The devs have stated that sunsetting the Foundry was a hard choice that they all collectively made. There were some devs that did try and fight for the Foundry like CaptainGeko. I think they feel that with the Foundry closed, they can actually focus on the core of the game since they won't have to devote programmers time to fixing the Foundry every time they force it to go down with and update. It probably won't be updates that we want to see most.
I want to say that I've been here through every major decision since 2012 when it comes to the game. Not once did any of these decisions make me say, "this is the last straw, I'm quitting!" every time that something that we had in game was removed. I soldiered on. I may not be a paying player, but what keeps me logging into the game is that I have unfinished characters and story arcs. When I play, I usually hop on my main character which is my Tactical Delta Recruit (from the first run) and play through the story that is current, then figure out where I want to go from there. If there's an easy to do endeavor, the I'll do whatever is needed for that day, because I'm about playing through content, even if it's repeated. I support the game as a fan.
I guess it depends on what type of computing system is most popular in Asia right now. Which might not be desktop PCs or laptops anymore. It might just be tablets, cell phones, and consoles. After all, what works in Asia should work in the rest of the world, right? We're all humans. Why *shouldn't* we do everything the same way? Because ... um ... being an individual is better than being part of a collective? Didn't anyone at PWE learn *anything* from the fictional Borg? I guess not.
In any case, I guess that there's enough hole-filling material to keep the STO colander from sinking this year. (Provided they don't keep punching more holes in it.)
Or was my first assessment correct, and all this ignorance is in fact spilling from people who never coded a line in their lives, and wouldn't know a NAND gate from a Nancy strip?
You're very high and mighty in your repeated statement of this point with basically no variety. But all it is a straw man that only claims the current state is unavoidable while failing to even consider the far more important errors Cryptic made that resulted in that current state.
Just for clarity, I am a professional programmer, and I know that good code isn't like walking the dog. But I also know the difference between a good shop that defines reasonable goals, is properly funded to achieve them, has excellent project management, excellent coding processes, and the ability to adjust to a changing market place- and those that don't. Such things are obvious even from outside a company.
Cryptic has always been "those that don't", and it's no mystery at all how they've now reached the point where they can't support elements of their game.
Comments
Same to you. I'll probably hop on this weekend to check on the reviews a final time and republish anything that's down, assuming I can still access the editor to do that.
exactly this for me as well
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Dozens, if not hundreds, of people creating content for your game.
For free.
And you tell them to go pound sand.
This claim is so ridiculous that it makes it impossible to believe a word of anything else.
"Months of work for each individual mission" ... riiight.
There's an obvious difference between ESO and STO with the companies. As far as I know, the company behind ESO is only working on that game, so they have a larger team to build out the content for the game. Cryptic meanwhile is smaller, has employees spread across 4 games. Games that have to share programmers. The only way I feel STO could get enough attention devoted to it would be if they shut down the other games and were to only focus on the game. However, they will not do that. Cryptic will never be a large company.
The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out.
It seems there is no money for a new engine or as some like to say 'STO 2.0' and that the development system right now is simply only ships.
After all F2P gaming (never really needed actually) is innately flawed in that is plays to the LCD and literally banks on loyalty and hope which pits different player communities together and has always been implemented in such as way as to abuse the loyal and hopeful players to the point of leaving which of course always spells the end because it seems the vast majority of F2P people will never spend any money so it is astonishing to me why the industry ran down this road. I can only figure it is because of the lack of regulations for the gamblebox system trying and companies executives trying to rake in as much cash as possible as soon as possible before the community naturally dies or the laws are finally updated to put a stop to it. Because it is not a viable long-term strategy with games as far as I can tell and I have been doing MMOs since the early 90s; even longer if you count MUDs. In my opinion, developers need to plan long-term with an MMO. It is why WOW still is king because it has going on two decades of development, polish, and lore. Most businesses in general dont think longer than 3-5 years cycles and in the US greed is good above all else mentality that is a paradigm for companies to digest but I digress...
On a personal note, like you I'm one of those that have been from the start and have spent many thousands on STO over the years and still does - hell nearly $1k so far this year all trying to support the game. Sadly the parent company (PWE) is all about grinding maximum money for minimum investment. One cant have a master with that focus and not expect it to greatly impact thing from a quality of life perspective. Nonetheless I still have hope - call me stupid.
I had at one point over 20 friends in my fleet that would have easily paid $100+ per month in a subscription model as well as myself and we were flabbergasted with the F2P announcement when Cryptic never even tried a subscription increase option. All of the quit soon after never to return. I know the ST fan community (not the same as the F2P players) given the right MMO experience, would consider such a very reasonable expense for such service.
Speaking of which, I'm waiting for another company as I dont see Cryptic doing such a thing with PWE as the owner to offer a high quality Star Trek MMO experience on a subscription model for maybe $25-$100 a month or maybe $500-1k per year. Shoot they even a crowd fund seed money to get started so they dont have to sell of the company for funding in an initial deal linked with a followup subscription plan but what do I know as a 40 year Star Trek fan...
As far the argument about the code not being good for the Foundry, maybe I'm ignorant because I'm not a code monkey, but if it uses the same system the devs use then I cant see the how it is not possible to maintain anymore or even extra work but then again we have bugs in the game which have been for years and never seem to get fixed but I digress again...
The star trek optimist in me wants to think maybe they are getting rid of it and other thinks because they are planning on a new engine and need to slim things down as much as possible for the transition but cant say anything publicly yet but hey I have always been a dreamer...
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
Thank you to all the great foundry authors who made real Star Trek content possible, I love you all
It seems there is no money for a new engine or as some like to say 'STO 2.0' and that the development system right now is simply only ships.
After all F2P gaming (never really needed actually) is innately flawed in that is plays to the LCD and literally banks on loyalty and hope which pits different player communities together and has always been implemented in such as way as to abuse the loyal and hopeful players to the point of leaving which of course always spells the end because it seems the vast majority of F2P people will never spend any money so it is astonishing to me why the industry ran down this road. I can only figure it is because of the lack of regulations for the gamblebox system and companies executives trying to rake in as much cash as possible, as soon as possible, before the community naturally dies or the laws are finally updated to put a stop to the [bad business] practice. The F2P model is not a viable long-term strategy with games as far as I can tell and I have been doing MMOs since the early 90s; even longer if you count MUDs.
In my opinion, developers need to plan long-term with an MMO. I believe it is why WOW still is king because it has going on two decades of development, polish, and lore. Most businesses in general dont think longer than 3-5 years cycles and in the US with its 'greed is good above all else' mentality that is a a seemingly impossible paradigm for companies to digest but I digress...
On a personal note, like you I'm one of those that have been from the start and have spent many thousands on STO over the years and still do - hell nearly $1k so far this year all trying to support the game. Sadly the parent company (PWE) is all about grinding maximum money for minimum investment. One cant have a master with that focus and not expect it to greatly impact thing from a quality of life perspective. Nonetheless I still have hope - call me stupid.
I had at one point over 20 friends in my fleet that would have easily paid $100+ per month in a subscription model as well as myself and we were flabbergasted with the F2P announcement when Cryptic never even tried a subscription increase option but of course that was due to the PWE purchase. All of them quit soon after never to return. I know the ST fan community (not the same as the F2P players) given the right MMO experience, would consider that amount a very reasonable expense for such service.
Speaking of which, I'm waiting for another company as I dont see Cryptic doing such a thing with PWE as the owner to offer a high quality Star Trek MMO experience on a subscription model for maybe $25-$100 a month or maybe $500-1k per year. Shoot they even a crowd fund seed money to get started so they dont have to sell of the company for funding in an initial deal linked with a followup subscription plan but what do I know as a 40 year Star Trek fan...
As far the argument about the code not being good for the Foundry, maybe I'm ignorant because I'm not a code monkey, but if it uses the same system the devs use then I cant see the how it is not possible to maintain anymore or even extra work but then again we have bugs in the game which have been for years and never seem to get fixed but I digress again...
The star trek optimist in me wants to think maybe they are getting rid of it and other thinks because they are planning on a new engine and need to slim things down as much as possible for the transition but cant say anything publicly yet but hey I have always been a dreamer...
ingame: @.Spartan
Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
The Glorious, Kirk’s Protegè
> vegeta50024 wrote: »
>
> mattjohnsonva wrote: »
>
> @borticuscryptic @ambassadorkael#6946 @crypticgeko @jheinig
>
> Cryptic have never been able to launch enough content to keep people satisfied. The one time they did have a large content release was Legacy of Romulus, which I loved and which added quite a few hours of game play, a new character could easily take a week up to the point they caught up with the existing missions. Since then the expansions have been getting smaller, Delta Rising was reasonable in content but was padded out with boring patrols that had to be replayed over and over to get your character to the new level 60, until they adjusted the XP rate. The total time for Delta Rising was about a third to half that of LoR. Agents of yesterday was shorter again, around a quarter the length of Delta rising. Victory is Life was a similar length to AoY but better quality stories, animations and cut scenes, with a mass of expensive voice actors. Age of Discovery is the shortest to date, just a handful of missions that are updated every few months.
>
> If we look at other MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online is probably one of the best on the market now, their new update in June, Elsweyr, will have around 30 hours of content, much longer than any of STO's updates, and this is followed by another large chapter at year end and carries on from a similarly sized update last year. In between there are DLCs which are free to subscribers that add many more hours of content.
>
> Cryptic are simply unable to compete in terms of content drop rate, I believe their quality has improved vastly since the early days but having to wait a couple of months for an hour of content is ludicrous and is ultimately unsustainable.
>
> This is where the foundry always filled the gaps in production, the Foundry was the glue that kept this game together, removing it is suicide, unless by doing so you can start to increase content drops similar in size and cadence to ESO. So unless Cryptic are taking on hundreds more staff then this seems unlikely, ESO was developed for 7 years before launch, STO was a last minute rush job and it has spent years trying to catch up, in all that time the Foundry has kept loyal fans playing and paying. The more I think about this decision the more I realise that Cryptic haven't got a clue what their own game is about and how they have just shot themselves in the foot big time.
>
> ESO has far more exploration in it than STO and yet Star Trek is supposed to be about exploration of not only the galaxy but the human condition. In the foundry missions people wrote, there were those that were entirely exploration with not a single shot fired, in fact my own V'Ger mission is like that and has the best reviews I've ever seen. Cryptic promised us more exploration, it started well with echoes of light but quickly degenerated into a fire fight. Now, the best exploration in the game has gone, the Foundry.
>
> I implore Cryptic to look at this decision again, I have nothing else to say about this, I think all that could be said has been said in this thread by me and by many more who articulated their feelings better than I ever could. If, after reading this thread and the many other comments on social media, Cryptic still don't get it, then I believe they are on a road to nowhere, unless that is they receive an influx of developers and content creators that equal a team the size of ESO and others to keep people logged in. Personal Endeavors will not do it, all you are doing is pushing people to play content they don't particularly want to play at a time that may not be convenient to gain a very slight increase in stats which will help them imperceptibly to play the content you want them to play - not going to work.
>
> There is now, with the lack of Foundry missions, NO END GAME in STO, no mission in STO provides any kind of challenge for long time vets, I can and have finished the latest missions on normal difficulty in a Delta flyer and on elite in any of my ships all the missions are a cake walk. That's why our fleet has created 50 end game level foundry missions that push even the best players to their limits of performance. With those missions gone why would anyone now bother to upgrade their ships, it's not necessary, we have completed Hive Elite in T3 ships in the fleet, so nobody has a need for ultimate T6 ships with the missions you release, it was only the Foundry that required those ships. You have not only removed the Foundry but with it exploration and End Game content.
>
> Cryptic, think again before it's too late.
>
>
>
>
> There's an obvious difference between ESO and STO with the companies. As far as I know, the company behind ESO is only working on that game, so they have a larger team to build out the content for the game. Cryptic meanwhile is smaller, has employees spread across 4 games. Games that have to share programmers. The only way I feel STO could get enough attention devoted to it would be if they shut down the other games and were to only focus on the game. However, they will not do that. Cryptic will never be a large company.
> sirsitsalot wrote: »
>
> Another thing the Foundry did that the core game didn't, even though many to this day still want:
>
> It allowed faction specific content. How many times has someone started a thread asking for faction-specific content, only to be told that it won't happen, but if they really wanted it, give foundry a try.
>
> Good job, Cryptic... Good job...
>
>
>
>
> The devs do not want to do faction specific content. To do faction specific content means that they devote time to missions that only a portion of the player base would end up being able to play and split the playerbase. By keeping faction agnostic, they can provide content to all and not leave anyone out.
>
>
>
>
> Sadly you've missed the point of the post you quoted. It's for the very reasons that they are not the size of ESO, have multiple titles and are driven by lock box mechanics rather than charged for content that they should NOT shut down the foundry. The foundry is that part of their product that kept many of the long term vets and whales paying and playing. With it gone, the only content you are going to get is a couple of missions every few months. Let me say that again.
>
> New content now will be reduced to two missions totaling 90 min every 3 months (if current release dates are maintained).
>
> Two missions on October 9th 2018 and two missions on Jan 23rd 2019. At that rate sometime in April we will get the next part of Age of Discovery. The missions are of excellent quality but last around 30-45 minutes each, so every 3 months you get 90 minutes worth of new content, that's 6 hours a year. By comparison ESO releases around 100 hours a year by way of DLCs free to subscribers and paid for expansions known as chapters and now has 2100 missions (quests).
>
> As Cryptic can't or don't want to go down that route their only fall back position for new content was the continual stream of missions created by the fans for the fans. Now, in a few weeks that fall back position will be gone. All that will be left will be to continually repeat the same missions we have, which number 94 replayable missions, it used to be more but Cryptic have removed many of those too.
>
> In addition, many of those missions cannot be played on a team, which is incredible considering this is an MMO. Finally, when you're sick to death of repeating those small amount of missions, most of which have been played ad nauseam you can fall back on the TFO, rep and endeavour grinds, to increase your stats of your player and ship which is not necessary in any case as there is no content in the game that requires a ship of that power. There used to be, some missions in the foundry would push even the best perfoming players to their limits, but there are none in the general game.
>
> In one fell swoop, Cryptic have removed exploration and end game content for the vet players (ie those players that have finished all the stories and reached T6 rep on a toon from each faction and have been playing for years).
According to the release schedule they previously released, the next part of AoD will come out in May. But maybe they changed that?
The TOS expansion would like a word with you. When did that come out again? Before or after Delta Rising?
Thank you.
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 think the issue with this is when a new update comes out that breaks those missions, someone has to go and fix them. Cryptic's not going to do that, and they don't want to maintain the editor that lets the author do it. I do agree that it would be a great way to flesh out all of the pointless systems and thousands of fantastic missions are going to waste.
Funny how all the faction-specific content that's been released since LOR save the Jem'Hadar tutorial has been Starfleet-specific content. A lot of those missions @sirsitsalot spoke of? Were directed at KDF players. Some were even specialized for Romulans. I don't even like Klingons but I can see the value in faction parity, and a lot of those were as good or better than the Klingon leveling missions, which the Klingon fans I've spoken to universally loved (and had to be made on a dev's personal time during LOR).
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
And how many of you, exactly, have ever applied to work at Cryptic? They've been seeking systems programmers for years for this game, it's been on their website right along. I'd think all of you who know exactly how to solve the Foundry issues with just one or two dedicated software engineers would have been actually doing it, for pay, rather than just sniping from behind your keyboards.
Or was my first assessment correct, and all this ignorance is in fact spilling from people who never coded a line in their lives, and wouldn't know a NAND gate from a Nancy strip?
I don't need to be a professional programmer to tell when something has been poorly programmed any more than I need to be a movie director to tell you that you cheaped out on your special effects and have a plot hole big enough to fly the Enteprise through.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I think the main problem is in the map template for the foundry which is separate from the map template for the rest of the game. It should be relatively easy to convert one into the other.
As Kosh once said... "Yes"
Do the two systems just need gateways (or "doors" as they used to be called back in the days of the BBS) or a bridge to connect Foundry code and non-Foundry code? Surely there has to be *some* code that the two systems share, rather than like comparing ancient Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphics without the use of the Rosetta Stone.
I wish I had the programming skills, because I'd be willing to volunteer my help. Sadly I don't.
Maybe there are enough programmers among STO users that could volunteer at least *some* of their free time to help with this (programming-wise, not criticism-wise)? Break down chunks of code and hand each "chunk" to a different volunteer programmer, with email being used (or Reddit or Skype or Discord or whatever) for when consulting between volunteers is needed.
I'm just brainstorming here, so some of these ideas might not be viable. But I'd rather brainstorm than get depressed over what I have no control over or have no skills to offer.
Except PWE has allowed them to hire people. You know the UI artist Joanna, the one responsible for the Character Creator revamp? She's there on the team at least 6 months now. There are people on the team also that recent. So don't say that PWE isn't willing to authorize hiring people that are needed. They just aren't authorizing people that the customers think should be utilized like programmers.
The devs have stated that sunsetting the Foundry was a hard choice that they all collectively made. There were some devs that did try and fight for the Foundry like CaptainGeko. I think they feel that with the Foundry closed, they can actually focus on the core of the game since they won't have to devote programmers time to fixing the Foundry every time they force it to go down with and update. It probably won't be updates that we want to see most.
I want to say that I've been here through every major decision since 2012 when it comes to the game. Not once did any of these decisions make me say, "this is the last straw, I'm quitting!" every time that something that we had in game was removed. I soldiered on. I may not be a paying player, but what keeps me logging into the game is that I have unfinished characters and story arcs. When I play, I usually hop on my main character which is my Tactical Delta Recruit (from the first run) and play through the story that is current, then figure out where I want to go from there. If there's an easy to do endeavor, the I'll do whatever is needed for that day, because I'm about playing through content, even if it's repeated. I support the game as a fan.
In any case, I guess that there's enough hole-filling material to keep the STO colander from sinking this year. (Provided they don't keep punching more holes in it.)
*sighs and walks away*
You're very high and mighty in your repeated statement of this point with basically no variety. But all it is a straw man that only claims the current state is unavoidable while failing to even consider the far more important errors Cryptic made that resulted in that current state.
Just for clarity, I am a professional programmer, and I know that good code isn't like walking the dog. But I also know the difference between a good shop that defines reasonable goals, is properly funded to achieve them, has excellent project management, excellent coding processes, and the ability to adjust to a changing market place- and those that don't. Such things are obvious even from outside a company.
Cryptic has always been "those that don't", and it's no mystery at all how they've now reached the point where they can't support elements of their game.