test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
I don't understand the "let it rot" theory of design
mattingly1
Member Posts: 206 Arc User
Power creep is unavoidable in a game like STO. New mechanics are introduced; the community gradually comes to establish knowledge of a meta; certain stats are just inherently imbalanced against others. Frankly, I'm fine with power creep overall - it means you're dealing with a product and a playerbase that has fully maturated.
What I am NOT okay with - and it is a behavior that Cryptic is wildly guilty of - is leaving older ships, weapons, etc. in a non-competitive state once the tide has rolled out. No, PvP isn't a big deal in STO, and yeah, the endgame is kind of a joke. But, IMO, that's all the more reason that it's completely unacceptable to leave dozens upon dozens of ships in a state of deficiency - you're asking people to essentially make their own content, and for a lot of us, that boils down to min-maxing builds and trying to throw big numbers. Broken or badly-designed starships don't fit into that equation.
So many of the ships - on the C-store, on the fleet vendor, or from lockboxes - are either outright garbage or a hair's breadth from being in that state. Worse, a large portion of these are still 'for sale' in one way or another. Cryptic is literally asking the same money for a Gegarin as they are a Europa - and people (many of them too new to understand the difference [especially since the game does such an outright horrid job explaining how nearly all its systems function]) throw hundreds or even thousands of dollars after vessels that are woefully out of date, with no hope of them ever being brought closer to par.
I just think it's silly that more of an effort isn't made to occasionally do a pass over on some of these older products in order to clean them up a bit, or to reconcile them with ships that would be released in the present day. Cryptic doesn't have to spend hundreds of hours re-texturing models, nor do they have to tackle the massive pile of antiquated boats all at once - just pick one or two dated ships a month, move a few consoles around, check the boffs, add or exchange a mechanic or two, and call it good.
Not only is this a low-cost means to regenerate interest in older ships (since, very obviously, the bulk of design time is spent on the models [if the changes done to the ships in the anniversary bundle are proof of anything, it's that stat alterations can apparently be made on the fly]), but it's also simply a good way to keep people playing (since the more ships were tinkered with, the fewer that people could just shrug and write off as 'useless trash'). Frankly, I don't see a downside here - there's financial motive to act on these derelicts, and Cryptic themselves has now shown that such changes can essentially be done while firing from the hip. It's time to stop letting so many of the spaceframes in STO rot in disuse.
What I am NOT okay with - and it is a behavior that Cryptic is wildly guilty of - is leaving older ships, weapons, etc. in a non-competitive state once the tide has rolled out. No, PvP isn't a big deal in STO, and yeah, the endgame is kind of a joke. But, IMO, that's all the more reason that it's completely unacceptable to leave dozens upon dozens of ships in a state of deficiency - you're asking people to essentially make their own content, and for a lot of us, that boils down to min-maxing builds and trying to throw big numbers. Broken or badly-designed starships don't fit into that equation.
So many of the ships - on the C-store, on the fleet vendor, or from lockboxes - are either outright garbage or a hair's breadth from being in that state. Worse, a large portion of these are still 'for sale' in one way or another. Cryptic is literally asking the same money for a Gegarin as they are a Europa - and people (many of them too new to understand the difference [especially since the game does such an outright horrid job explaining how nearly all its systems function]) throw hundreds or even thousands of dollars after vessels that are woefully out of date, with no hope of them ever being brought closer to par.
I just think it's silly that more of an effort isn't made to occasionally do a pass over on some of these older products in order to clean them up a bit, or to reconcile them with ships that would be released in the present day. Cryptic doesn't have to spend hundreds of hours re-texturing models, nor do they have to tackle the massive pile of antiquated boats all at once - just pick one or two dated ships a month, move a few consoles around, check the boffs, add or exchange a mechanic or two, and call it good.
Not only is this a low-cost means to regenerate interest in older ships (since, very obviously, the bulk of design time is spent on the models [if the changes done to the ships in the anniversary bundle are proof of anything, it's that stat alterations can apparently be made on the fly]), but it's also simply a good way to keep people playing (since the more ships were tinkered with, the fewer that people could just shrug and write off as 'useless trash'). Frankly, I don't see a downside here - there's financial motive to act on these derelicts, and Cryptic themselves has now shown that such changes can essentially be done while firing from the hip. It's time to stop letting so many of the spaceframes in STO rot in disuse.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Cryptic can't remove any existing feature from old ships because players will scream "fraud", "I paid good money for 5 engineering consoles", "My build counts on 3 tac seats and just ensign eng and sci", "rabble rabble rabble"
About all that cryptic could do is change seats to universal, add or increase a specialization level (e.g. Lt C => Commander), add a console slot, etc. anything removed or changed will fire up the lynch mob.
Power creeping would be OK, rebalancing ships where someone loses something would not.
That said, I agree in general that power creeping some old ships wouldn't be a bad thing. Make a seat universal to fix excessively tac heavy seating, add a hangar or extra pet buffs to true carriers so they have a reason to exist, ...?
> STO is a game so easy that even a T5 ship, with MK12 gear, is able to smoke pretty much all of the content with ease.
>
> There is nothing T5 onward that isn't usable. It may not be meta, but not being meta =/- not being competitive. The meta is itself wholly irrelevant as an argument since devs do not design around the meta. Most MMO players are casuals who don't care about the meta, nor is the meta necessary to do well in the game.
>
> Likewise, you don't want to udpate older ships to be more inline with the meta because the meta is always designed around being as exploitative of the game's mechanics as possible, to get as high of DPS as possible. Trying to bring non meta ships to that level just increases the problem of power creep, which is massive in MMOs to begin with.
>
> If anything, Cryptic would want to look at supremely meta ships/consoles and edit those to be more inline with the rest of the ships/consoles in the game. If you have a handful of things that are massively OP, you don't make everything as OP as them, you make them less OP.(not that they would do this due to how much forum rage there would be)
You're kind of arguing in circles here. Either the meta doesn't matter because the endgame is a joke, or you're concerned about ships becoming OP - it can't be both. If the endgame is a joke, 'OP' is meaningless. If it isn't a joke, meta does matter.
Also what if some players want an old ship to show "How it used to be done"?
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
(and remember - Space Barbie Is Endgame™. I'd much rather fly a Europa than a Gagarin.)
That's true for many of us
it may not be meta but assimilating the Voth city ship is freaking hilarious
Further still i think you should only be allowed to use one specific set on your ship so you can't take pieces from here and there and stick them together. So if you got 3/4 of an aegis set and 1/2 of a borg set, the aegis set works while the borg set doesn't work until the aegis set is removed or is reduced to 1/4 so the borg set automatically takes over. however to get the most from that set you need the full set and stick with it or change it to another set after you leave the mission or TFO. The KCB won't activate if you have it slotted and the borg set isn't working, so you are just wasting a weapons slot.
I also think that certain types of builds should not be allowed to happen, for example cross cannon-omni beam builds, it is either full cannon-turret or full beam-wide beam-omni beam builds, but torpedoes will be allowed on either.
This should prevent insane builds from happening and limit the abuse as there is a hard limit to the potential an object can achieve. This will allow other users to get in on the action instead of having one user running around with a 140k build doing TFO's in 45 seconds, which frankly is not what this game is about. It is there to have some fun and to enjoy it and where is the enjoyment in destroying everything in less than half a second? it wasn't designed to be like that, you have powers there to help heal your ship, control your enemies and they aren't being used and neither will you ever sense the threat of being destroyed.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The Great Karnak says, "Nova"
That's your opinion, and that's fine. But your experience is not representative of everyone else's, and you can't claim how easy or difficult the game is for other people with X gear.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Sorry, but you're still trying to pass off your opinion as a fact. Saying STO is "easy" with (whatever) ship or gear is an opinion. Easy is a completely subjective word, and that experience will vary depending on who is playing.
I happen to agree with the opinion that STO is an easy game, but that's still just an opinion. Yours and my subjective experience doesn't prove anything to someone else who may be having a harder time for various reasons.
Again, stop claiming your opinion is a fact.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Great, glad we're on the same page now.
So just to recap: OP feels like certain ships have become outdated and are no longer viable based on their personal experience in the game. It's a opinion, and is neither right or wrong. You disagree, and think the ships in question are still viable based on your personal experience in the game. Both opinions are valid, and neither is more right than the other.
So here is mine: this is nothing new to MMOs or exclusive to STO. Power creep always catches up with older gear/items, and things that were once uber eventually feel less and less so. So when you are using those older items in newer content (which may involve new types of NPCs with new powers that didn't exist before, OR a change in design where you are facing unlimited swarms of enemies until a timer runs out which didn't exist in older content) you may find yourself having a harder time. IMO
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Actually, yours was simply the first post in the thread to disagree with the premise of the OP: that older ships need updating. And your basis for disagreeing was your personal experience that the game was "easy". That's a valid opinion, and one I share. But it's still just an opinion, and doesn't mean the OP is wrong.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I'm referring to your statement that the game is "easy". That is your subjective experience and not representative of everyone, so you can't use that as any kind of basis for an argument that someone is wrong.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
> That isn't my subjective opinion.
>
Yep, it is. Your opinion of what is a "decent build" is also completey subjective. And that's fine. It just isn't ever going to prove anything.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
There's a kind of desperation in your post patterns that's really... telling. I've noticed that, when compared to the reddit, there are an inordinate number of people present on these forums that are attempting to "win" threads, and you're probably the chief culprit. You need to learn to stop trying to dominate people, and start actually communicating.