Something needed to be done to offset the demands caused by the greedonomics of the zen side. The phoenix boxes becoming an everyday item predictably didn't do much in the long run so they're finally looking at the suggestion of cosmetics, albeit greedonomically priced which will definitely dissuade those who would like to actually see what they're going to be buying.
Hopefully that's intentional and they won't change it.
lets hope. if this is the case i will be getting some. waiting to confirm if you can swap from toon to toon then. and like you said, lets hope they dont change it.
I can provide a video if you wish it, but I've just tried it: bought a Section 31, equipped it and unequipped. It's now resting quite comfortably in my account bank.
Not agreeing with someone doesn't give you the right to be an TRIBBLE.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
'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.'
No need to shush. Kael tweeted tht they're account bound by design.
I suspect that they were supposed to be character bound but were bugged and they decided to just not fix the bug.
If that's the case, then thank you Cryptic.. it's appreciated. Deciding to just let people have this one is a good decision, going back in and 'fixing' them would have surely generated a wave of complaints.
I think it's pretty cool that they decided to just let us have account bound shields and I actually think it was a good move for the intended purpose. I know in my case it really increased the value of these shields quite a bit.
Account bound certainly takes some of the sting out of the cost but there still needs to be some way to properly preview the visuals prior to purchase.
Given they said, "These shields will be a per character purchase, for 280,000 Dilithium" yet several Fleet or Armada Members stated they remained Account-Bound even after equipping Vanity Shields.
And they say nothing about changing to Character-Bound once equipping. And most have equipped and they still say Account-Bound. Hmm, I wonder if that was a mistake or an oversight? Doesn't mean it was, yet the price may also change next time.
I'd honestly found the price a bit low, given they allowed Account-Bound, as most expected a Character Bind for that price initially, though they were clear it may later change. Still you can only use one at a time, so if you regularly play multiple toons, perhaps it's a mute point.
Given they said, "These shields will be a per character purchase, for 280,000 Dilithium" yet several Fleet or Armada Members stated they remained Account-Bound even after equipping Vanity Shields.
And they say nothing about changing to Character-Bound once equipping. And most have equipped and they still say Account-Bound. Hmm, I wonder if that was a mistake or an oversight? Doesn't mean it was, yet the price may also change next time.
I'd honestly found the price a bit low, given they allowed Account-Bound, as most expected a Character Bind for that price initially, though they were clear it may later change. Still you can only use one at a time, so if you regularly play multiple toons, perhaps it's a mute point.
Kael said on twitter, and is also posted here in the thread, that it's intentional.
Account bound certainly takes some of the sting out of the cost but there still needs to be some way to properly preview the visuals prior to purchase.
I totally agree about the ability to view prior to purchasing, but I figure this might've been a compromise & making a best deal out of the current situation perhaps. I'm glad & thankful for the way Cryptic did these vanity shields otherwise I wasn't going to risk buying something for only 1 toon & blindly at that. Now I plan to purchase (if I have the dilithium) most or all. I've just never liked that Ferengi shield. lol
May help a little in the short term but look at the phoenix boxes, meant to be a dilithium sink...things got worse so they were made permanent...still capped the exchange
We do see the exchange rates react to a Phoenix Event though. But I will admit they need to slow down the events a bit due to event fatigue. But that's a double edged sword because guess why we got event spam? People complaining of lack of things to do. So... its partially our fault.
Events aren't a real solution to a lack of things to do. The devs should invest more in endgame content. Other mmos have raids and meaningful dungeons. There's reasons to go back and repeat stuff in other games and it can be fun.
In sto you're stuck doing whatever event there is and there's been so many its super dull grind. They're getting closer and closer to a breaking point, eventually people are just going to stop doing events and they'll no longer serve a real purpose.
And don't go blaming the players for the failure of the developers. It is not our fault there is a lack of meaningful repeatable content. The reputation system is so bloated that its not effective, and you get virtually no actual rewards from playing stfs, only currencies to eventually get a reward. They need to revamp how Stfs function, and create some kind of high level long form content like raids. The original STFs functioned more like raids but suffered from some poor design decisions that at that point in the game made them ineffective.
May help a little in the short term but look at the phoenix boxes, meant to be a dilithium sink...things got worse so they were made permanent...still capped the exchange
We do see the exchange rates react to a Phoenix Event though. But I will admit they need to slow down the events a bit due to event fatigue. But that's a double edged sword because guess why we got event spam? People complaining of lack of things to do. So... its partially our fault.
Events aren't a real solution to a lack of things to do. The devs should invest more in endgame content. Other mmos have raids and meaningful dungeons. There's reasons to go back and repeat stuff in other games and it can be fun.
In sto you're stuck doing whatever event there is and there's been so many its super dull grind. They're getting closer and closer to a breaking point, eventually people are just going to stop doing events and they'll no longer serve a real purpose.
And don't go blaming the players for the failure of the developers. It is not our fault there is a lack of meaningful repeatable content. The reputation system is so bloated that its not effective, and you get virtually no actual rewards from playing stfs, only currencies to eventually get a reward. They need to revamp how Stfs function, and create some kind of high level long form content like raids. The original STFs functioned more like raids but suffered from some poor design decisions that at that point in the game made them ineffective.
Thou i kinda agree with you.. it does not solve the dilithium problem, more raids or STF only gives more cristals to the economy, we need something that depletes the reserves, and this is it, not perfect but it is something
May help a little in the short term but look at the phoenix boxes, meant to be a dilithium sink...things got worse so they were made permanent...still capped the exchange
We do see the exchange rates react to a Phoenix Event though. But I will admit they need to slow down the events a bit due to event fatigue. But that's a double edged sword because guess why we got event spam? People complaining of lack of things to do. So... its partially our fault.
Events aren't a real solution to a lack of things to do. The devs should invest more in endgame content. Other mmos have raids and meaningful dungeons. There's reasons to go back and repeat stuff in other games and it can be fun.
In sto you're stuck doing whatever event there is and there's been so many its super dull grind. They're getting closer and closer to a breaking point, eventually people are just going to stop doing events and they'll no longer serve a real purpose.
And don't go blaming the players for the failure of the developers. It is not our fault there is a lack of meaningful repeatable content. The reputation system is so bloated that its not effective, and you get virtually no actual rewards from playing stfs, only currencies to eventually get a reward. They need to revamp how Stfs function, and create some kind of high level long form content like raids. The original STFs functioned more like raids but suffered from some poor design decisions that at that point in the game made them ineffective.
+1. There's no need to even upgrade gear with a lot of the 'defend x for 15 minutes' designed things we end up with now. Challenging and exciting end game content can contribute to dilithium usage as well (for me at least)
May help a little in the short term but look at the phoenix boxes, meant to be a dilithium sink...things got worse so they were made permanent...still capped the exchange
We do see the exchange rates react to a Phoenix Event though. But I will admit they need to slow down the events a bit due to event fatigue. But that's a double edged sword because guess why we got event spam? People complaining of lack of things to do. So... its partially our fault.
Events aren't a real solution to a lack of things to do. The devs should invest more in endgame content. Other mmos have raids and meaningful dungeons. There's reasons to go back and repeat stuff in other games and it can be fun.
In sto you're stuck doing whatever event there is and there's been so many its super dull grind. They're getting closer and closer to a breaking point, eventually people are just going to stop doing events and they'll no longer serve a real purpose.
And don't go blaming the players for the failure of the developers. It is not our fault there is a lack of meaningful repeatable content. The reputation system is so bloated that its not effective, and you get virtually no actual rewards from playing stfs, only currencies to eventually get a reward. They need to revamp how Stfs function, and create some kind of high level long form content like raids. The original STFs functioned more like raids but suffered from some poor design decisions that at that point in the game made them ineffective.
+1. There's no need to even upgrade gear with a lot of the 'defend x for 15 minutes' designed things we end up with now. Challenging and exciting end game content can contribute to dilithium usage as well (for me at least)
+2!
Events have become nothing more than a boring slog - even when we are fortunate enough to have one coincide with an episode drop.
There are three difficulty levels in this game, in theory at least.
Why in theory? Because they don't make use of them, at all. Even elite is just enemies with more HP doing more damage.
As I said more than once: I don't expect them to add raid-like content to this game - the people would revolt amidst cries of "it's too difficult, 'cause I have to do more than just press one button" and I shudder to think of the number of bugs they'd be able to cram in such a thing - but they could still make a proper use of the different levels to offer more challenging content to those that wants to play it.
Not agreeing with someone doesn't give you the right to be an TRIBBLE.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
Events aren't a real solution to a lack of things to do. The devs should invest more in endgame content. Other mmos have raids and meaningful dungeons. There's reasons to go back and repeat stuff in other games and it can be fun.
In sto you're stuck doing whatever event there is and there's been so many its super dull grind. They're getting closer and closer to a breaking point, eventually people are just going to stop doing events and they'll no longer serve a real purpose.
And don't go blaming the players for the failure of the developers. It is not our fault there is a lack of meaningful repeatable content. The reputation system is so bloated that its not effective, and you get virtually no actual rewards from playing stfs, only currencies to eventually get a reward. They need to revamp how Stfs function, and create some kind of high level long form content like raids. The original STFs functioned more like raids but suffered from some poor design decisions that at that point in the game made them ineffective.
The problem with this is that things like raids, and dungeons, have become increasingly unpopular among MMO communities.
Guild Wars 2 for instance started off with like 8 dungeons... and only like 20% of the playerbase actually played them. So even after they made a new dungeon wing, and it still didn't draw more people in, they had to abandon making dungeons because too few people played them to justify making them. Years later Guild Wars 2 introduced legit raids... and raids were, like dungeons, so unpopular that there hasn't been a new raid wing in 2 years.
After raids failed Arena Net(the devs behind Guild Wars 2) made a new form of content called Strikes. Strikes were essentially raid-lite content, that taught people raid like mechanics and boss fights in a small setting. this was done to try to get more people into raids, so they could justify making more of them. Strikes flopped so hard, and had massive backlash from the playerbase, including pages long threads on the forums with people telling them to stop putting money into dungeons/raids/raid-like content because no one wants it.
We see this in STO as well. The original Borg TFOs were like raids, and were near universally hated by the playerbase, especially due to the typical raid like "you can only get this weapon/armor drop from this TFO and it has a .001% drop chance lol!" design. Cryptic broke them up, and made the rep system, specifically because people don't want raids/raid-like design. And hell, people have a hard time doing something as simple as Gravity Kills. You think they could do a raid?
We are unlikely to ever see Cryptic put a lot of time into making raid-like content. The overwhelming majority of people who play MMOs are casuals, who just want to log in, do something for 10-15 minutes, and then leave. They don't want raids, and wouldn't play them. And when you can spend money making something only like 15-20% of your playerbase might play, like dungeons/raids, or spend money on literally anything more people will use, the anything else will win out. Which is why dungeon/raid design has been going away in many MMOs in the last decade or so.
You'd be surprised how important meaningful endgame content is to a lot of games survivability. Raid when done well can be very very popular. But they're the easiest example of meaningful repeatable content. They give challenge, and items to want to repeat them for. You don't need to make things a uber .0001% drop to make them repeatable, I don't know where the hell you got that idea from, all the games I've played with raids that are popular give guaranteed drops, but with random loot so everything can drop equally. The only one I've tried that does the low drop chance of loot is Destiny, but even then that's usually for non raid exclusive items. Raiders tend to be very loyal players if they enjoy the raids, often putting in the most play time for the challenge, or the fun of raiding.
But that's only one aspect of what I was talking about.
Sto has catered hard to a casual playerbase, a playerbase even more casual than most mmos I've played. I've seen far more "simple" players (Simple as in they don't do anything efficiently) in here, players running rainbow weapons, running the wrong consoles, missing items, using abilities that are just bad in here than in other games, though other mmos tend to have more defined classes with abilities baked into them, which have a somewhat natural learning progression to how abilities function together.
In most mmos something like gravity kills would be a minor inconvenience. Hell none of Sto's content would be considered anything but easy mechanically. The only difficulty usually comes in inflated numbers.
Sto needs to balance out rewards however. How it currently is, its designed more like a mobile game in terms of progression. You don't get anything meaningful from STFs outside of tokens. Its not engaging to always get a meager amount of tokens. You need more substantial reward. And the rep system needs an overhaul.
The overwhelming majority of people who play MMOs are casuals, who just want to log in, do something for 10-15 minutes, and then leave. They don't want raids, and wouldn't play them. And when you can spend money making something only like 15-20% of your playerbase might play, like dungeons/raids, or spend money on literally anything more people will use, the anything else will win out.
Then I would humbly request my 15-20% of meaningful end-game content pretty please. Different things for different folks and all.
Without meaningful end-game content why would your estimated 15-20% spend $$$ ? We are not a charity you know
Without meaningful end-game content why would your estimated 15-20% spend $$$ ? We are not a charity you know
Because most of the people complaining about the lack of it will still play the game, and spend money on it, regardless of if their demands are met or not. Same reason they have for all the years thus far despite STO not having it. Same reason most of the people that were part of that infamous "Call of Duty boycott" image were playing the game despite none of their demands being met.
Gamers are notorious for making claims of not playing the game anymore, or not spend money on it, until some demands are met... and then they just keep doing it despite their demands not being met, and game devs know this.
I wasn't making demands - just an observation. Maybe it's just me... the more meaningful game play feels the more likely I am to spend. Heck, I might not even wait for an upgrade weekend to upgrade key items when things feel really meaningful. On topic - buying dilithium with Zen helps the exchange rate.
With respect to that last sentence of yours it makes me feel like a bovine who's love of Star Trek is being used to produce something other than milk.
Again, I've seen this same comment in numerous MMOs, and it never works that way. Raiders, and those seeking "meaningful" repeatable content end up making such a small minority of the playerbase that an MMO could stand to lose every single one of them, and it would be a drop in the bucket to their overall numbers. The same ends up being true of PVP as well. Loyalty of a group of players means nothing if they aren't a large enough group to pay the game's bills.
I find it kinda scary how you can just brush aside so many different groups of players so casually. I'm feeling invalid now.
2) This game will NEVER get meaningful endgame content. Between the players being too damn casual for it and the devs being completely unable to execute even simple systems without bugs and terrible design choices, there is no chance of there being meaningful endgame content. This game is about getting in you favorite trek or trek style ships and blowing things up.
Exactly right. But you know... it's easier to say that people wanting challenge and meaningful endgame content are just a bunch of useless players that the game could stand to lose without batting an eye.
Nevermind the fact that apparently "elite" means "meaningful" - as if we haven't proved, again and again, that that's not the case.
Not agreeing with someone doesn't give you the right to be an TRIBBLE.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
I wanted to add this since double posting I think is a no no, so this top paragraph is after what I wrote below. If the vanity shields are 250K dil, then why would the exchange of dill for zen be offline. Think about it. People need Dil, so they would be selling zen to get dill so the the dill side (buy zen) should have hundreds of offers for people selling dil and buying zen since the vanity shields are based on dil, and you can't buy EC in the c-store nor can you buy Dil in the c-store, so I stick to my comments below but now begin wondering, hmm they take down selling dil for zen??????? You can't exchange EC for anything but items, resell item for ec or dabo for GPL. GPL only buys those experimental consoles or whatever that you turn into that Ferengi in ESD or other unknown purposes. The lobi store crystals are only good for lobi store purchases, sometimes items, sometimes to exchange for things usually the summer and winter/anniversary event.
==============Below was written before the above paragraph as I realized something is wrong ==========
==============about dil to zen being not what people need for vanity shields, unless they buy zen========
==============then use zen to buy dil but that would seem counter productive???==================
It is a mirror image (mirror ha) of Neverwinter. If you have Astral Diamonds (the D&D version of dil ) good luck on trading it to buy Zen. Since I initially got interested to start putting more time over there (years ago) the buying of zen was possible I believe but at horrible AD to Zen rates. The one day it stopped and only sell zen was all but impossible. It still is to this day, what STO is like now, there is nothing listed to trade dil for zen.
Now over there it was supposedly one heard too many transactions, over a million all backed up. Then they said they were going to fix it, but I have yet to trade any AD for Zen.
Remember when they had I think it was zen/cryptic quest that had you trying their other games in exchange for Zen. Well that was taken down years ago for an improved and much more enjoyable system, haven't heard boo on it other than they were still working on one, that is several years old.
The grinding in this game has actually caused to only spend time finishing these mission 7, 10, 14, 20 times to where I don't want to see anything else. They did start to add options but it usually was search/find/investigate/defend against <insert possible enemy/problems/strange things> and they would appear in different or a single spot with new waves coming in that either required you to move or stay around the general area and might involve space/ground or ground/space combat. I am so numb to the game because of this pointless grinding. Of course I don't have to but with the over powered items they usually give away it was a simply choice, fall behind and perhaps they increase power of enemy and I won't have the items, gear, ships, etc.
Now in terms of new TFO, it is the lack of testing and making it have a purpose that has caused backlash, especially being broken/bugged/can't complete on 1st day of release and might last several days. They removed the mission maker, probably partially not just having a shortage of staff to keep it updated but also because they simply couldn't remove the accolade laden list of missions and those that required very little for a lot of items or whatever. I would love to see new tfo but why don't they tap those who use to make really good missions on the, sorry forgot name, additional game content created by players, they tossed that gold mine out. They also need to bring back an incentive to go onto the tribble server. However to get the feedback they need and to test new ideas, they need to require you are active in that part of content they are testing or getting bugs worked out. It had been for 1 or 2 times in the past, spend X hours get a special tribble and usually something else.
So people saying the store was over run in people cashing in dil to get zen to go get vanity shield is highly possible. I also feel it is possibly be another Neverwinter feature added to STO as they make more money by people buying with cash then buying with in game currency.
I am not into the vanity/pets/appearance look so I have never bought into it. After all what is the fun if you spend all that dil you worked on to get a different shield cover, or to have DS9 uniforms, or whatever. However what they did sell, like with the first All Good Things Galaxy with spinal lance phaser would cause PvP to all but vanish as people with money could buy the power to overwhelm those without the special features.
So I am more worried we have seen the last of the days of grinding for dil and then sell it to get zen to buy doff packs, keys, etc and from now on it is a cash only system, especially if they bind to character and exclude account unlock or account bound. What was it that Darth Vader said (I don't remember exact phrase or wording) "It will be a day long remembered, it is has seen the end of (obi wan) dil for zen and soon will see the end of <insert your thought - sadly mine is the game is nearing its end>.
Please however do not join a game called WoT, WoW or WoP, as it is a pay to win system and it is so unbalanced, it is like having you take on the capital ship in the battle of the binary star in an oberth, you wouldn't buy the big Klingon ship and so you often instead of fighting other oberth's you find every time you play you face many of those big Klingon ships from TRIBBLE. STO still has the edge over them and of course is the best of any online options for Star Trek. Plus with PvE content here, you don't have to play against other players and deal with toxic nature.
Please Cryptic you want us to stay put back up the dill exchange, even if you lock it at 500 to 1 zen, we then have some reason to grind for dil at least.
Uhm... you've got a very strange idea of what's going on.
The Dilithium Exchange has not been disabled and you can still very well exchange dilithium for Zen - or vice versa.
We're just at a point where Zen's buy requests are higher in number than selling ones, and that's because dilithium has lost pretty much all its value and so 500:1 doesn't seem like a good enough exchange rate, which means that while we can still convert, it's gonna take longer than usual for the transaction to go through.
Not agreeing with someone doesn't give you the right to be an TRIBBLE.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
If the vanity shields are 250K dil, then why would the exchange of dill for zen be offline. Think about it.
Yeah, just to echo what Jenny said above, in reading your post I am not sure you really understand what has happened with the Star Trek Online Economy. As Jenny pointed out, the Dilithium Exchange was never disabled, Cryptic did not step in and stop the exchange of Dilithium for Zen.
The way the exchange works is just like any other player driven exchange. Players make offers of how much Dilithium they want to trade for how much Zen. If another player has Zen they want to sell for that price, the offer is accepted and the trade is made. Over the last couple of years, Zen has become more valuable, it's been more desired and more sought after then previous years. This was because Cryptic adopted a policy in which there is always something in the store on sale.. always. There used to be quiet periods between sales and they stopped that. Rather it's a 'Flash sale,' a special promotion, or some other thing.. the desire for Zen has never been higher.
On the other side of the Economy, the supply of Dilithium has also been heavily inflated over the years. In a similar style to they constant sales.. Cryptic added yet another change.. Non Stop Events. There can never be.. even a single day.. ever where there is no event going on. Events reward Dilithium Ore upon completion, then you can re-run the event daily for more Dilithium. Add that in to things like Admiralty and other sources and you can just rake in Dilithium without much effort at all. The problem is, there is nothing to use this Dilithium for. Once you get your ship all upgraded and your character(s) are finished this Dilithium just piles up and you have nothing to do with it, so people want to trade it for Zen.
People selling Zen are selling a valuable currency, and they are trading it for Dilithium, a currency that is in abundance and isn't useful for anything. As a result, Zen sellers wanted more and more Dilithium to make the trades worth it since the Dilithium just wasn't worth that much. This is why you saw the market go from 300:1 exchange rate to the cap of 500:1.
Then after some time, even at 500:1, the players bought all the Zen that people were selling and no one was willing to sell anymore, even at 500:1. This is why the exchange appeared disabled, Cryptic didn't turn it off, there was just no players willing to sell their Zen for Dilithium because they don't want the Dilithium. It's worthless, so no one was willing to trade for it.
What the Vanity Shields did was introduce a badly needed 'Dilithium Sink.' An item or service that's highly desirable (people love these things) that can ONLY be acquired via Dilthium. Boom.. now Dilithium is suddenly valuable. Now people are once again willing to trade Zen for it because they can actually get something for that Dilithium. The very day they announced the sale was starting, the Exchange was back up and running because players were selling Zen once again.
Cryptic has a policy of not directly intervening to manipulate the exchange and it was followed here. They didn't disable it, and they opted not to 'infuse' the market with Zen Supply which is not a surprise since that's basically just giving away money for them. They instead, introduced something to balance the market, and it worked.. for now. This is why players are saying we need a constant need for Dilithium, we need something introduced that makes Dilithium valuable.. either that or we have to cut the supply since scarcity also increases value.
Again, I've seen this same comment in numerous MMOs, and it never works that way. Raiders, and those seeking "meaningful" repeatable content end up making such a small minority of the playerbase that an MMO could stand to lose every single one of them, and it would be a drop in the bucket to their overall numbers. The same ends up being true of PVP as well. Loyalty of a group of players means nothing if they aren't a large enough group to pay the game's bills.
I also see comments like yours thrown around quite a bit as well, and very rarely do they ever prove to be true, and end up being the death of many a game. If you honestly think meaningful content isn't what drives games and keeps them alive, then as much as I hate to say it, you have no idea how video game development works. Making games fun and giving people things they can do in those games is what keeps people coming back again and again, especially during the era before the internet when we didn't have all the online multiplayer games we have now. Your game lived and died based on the content of the game. If your content sucked, your game would tank and you would never recoup the money you invested into creating it, let alone made a profit. If a game was pretty much a one and done then what would be anyone's motivation to play it let alone recommend it to others? Meaningful content is why people still love to play iconic games like Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Super Mario World, Mario 64, Goldeneye, and a host of other games. Their gameplay content was meaningful and it stuck with players, separating them from flavor of the month type games. Not everyone is going to consider the same kinds of content fun, but not all games are meant to attract all kinds of people. Meaningful content does NOT only mean raid type encounters. Meaningful content is anything that keeps people coming back and puts people in chairs to play.
While it's true that you're going to have some die-hards in any community you come across, that think anything and everything a company does is perfect and they can do no wrong, Then on the opposite end you've got a bunch of flakes that as soon as the company does any little minute thing they don't like, or the next flavor of the month game comes out, they're gone. Neither of those groups ultimately matter as they are the fringe. In the middle you have everyone else. That middle group is the group that ultimately pays the bills. That middle group is also not exclusively raiding types, nor are they exclusively casual types who only play here and there. This middle group is what pays the bills and keeps games alive. Without this middle group a game will die within 6 months if it lasts that long.
If you want a perfect example of a game that had no meaningful content to keep people coming back and didn't even last a full year, look no further than Anthem. There were the bits of story they had, and then you could run around and blast a few things in the open world, but they had nothing else of value. Without something meaningful to keep people coming back, that's what all games would be. Good content is why I still play games like Star Trek Armada II, Bridge Commander, and a host of other older games to this day.
And I've seen these same problems that STO has in ESO, GW2, and WoW. People don't use a whole set of gear with the same stat configuration, people don't pick skills/traits that have synergy, people don't know how to use skill rotations to maximize the damage of their skills to get even remotely decent DPS. Most people are bad at basic character building in most MMOs becuase they find MMOs confusing in general.
First I will say that game companies should have basic information available in their games so folks can learn what certain things do. Assuming that has been taken care of, in today's day and age of information there is no excuse for someone not being able to find some kind of information on a game if folks need further help. If someone wants to improve themselves they can look for guides, find some videos, or dare I say it, ask for help in the community. For that matter you can learn alot just by reading your abilities and paying attention to what they do.
With that said, game companies can put all the info in the world out there, and I myself can put video after video out for STO or anything else. For that matter I have put several videos for STO out there, though I have been taking a break to focus more on my current Space Engineers project as of late. With that said however I can put stuff out there, the games themselves can put stuff out there, and anyone else who wants to contribute can put stuff out there, but it all means nothing if our hypothetical player chooses not to listen to anything said and continues to willfully slam their head against a wall while blaming the game. At that point it's not the game that's at fault, but the player. The folks who willingly choose not to improve themselves or learn and get better are not worth a company's time as those folks chose to be willfully ignorant. An easy way to tell those who have no desire to get better and improve in game. If they find STO or any other game that confusing, why keep playing since they're clearly not having fun? Why continue to slam their heads against a wall vs look up info or ask for help?
I've seen things like Gravity Kills prove trouble in other MMOs. Many years ago, in GW2, there was a quasi boss fight where you had to walk into colored circled to get a magical attunement, so you could get past a shield on a thing that can hurt the boss. The magic circles were color coded, and people couldn't figure out you needed to step into the blue circle to get past the blue shield, etc.
Going outside of MMOs. In Half Life 2: Episode 2 there is a part where you are getting chased by a giant creature known as an Antlion Guardian through some caves. Valve, the developers of HL2, had to remove part of the cave system because playtesters apparently didn't realize that this path allowed them to loop back, and so were looping around the same part of the cave for literally over an hour because they just couldn't figure out to take the other path, or that they were looping at all.
People are bad at games, just in general.
This is where I'm going to be extremely blunt as a long time MMO player. Most folks I have played with in STO would not last more than 3 days in a traditional MMO outside of STO. STO is not a traditional MMO by any stretch of the imagination. STO's difficulty curve is nothing compared to some of the other MMOs out there with WoW and SWTOR being prime examples. In those games you want to mess around on story difficulty forever, that's perfectly fine, but if you want to progress into the STO equivalent of Advanced and Elite content, you have to bring your A game and have at least a basic understanding of what you're doing. If you don't then you will quickly find yourself getting booted from groups, wiping over and over in groups, and eventually folks will not want to play with you and you will find it increasingly difficult to get into higher tiered content.
As for the scenario you describe in which the person had to color match the circles to get past a shield and damage a boss, the question I would ask is what those visuals looked like and how obvious they were. They may have been super obvious and they may not have been. Stuff like this is where its incumbent on the devs of those games to make sure folks can actually see what's going on around them. Once the devs have done their part by making sure folks have clear visuals and similar, it's up to the players to clear the fight. Fights being hard to clear or nigh unbeatable due to broken mechanics (as in not working), or being so OP that it requires you to make frame perfect moves each time or fail, is one thing. Folks refusing to learn and get better is something else entirely.
I have no problem with people wanting to see and experience certain content or playing on higher difficulties. I DO however have a problem with it when those folks clearly are not ready for that higher content and it effects my ability or that of my teammates to clear content. Let's suppose you have a 5 man encounter with 3 DPS, a tank, and a healer. Let's also suppose that it requires the 3 DPS to be pulling a minimum of 10k each in order to clear the content. If you have 2 of them doing the required 10k minimum, but the 3rd guy is only pulling 5k, then that run is doomed to fail because that 3rd DPSer has been allowed into content they are not yet ready for. Thus the 4 other people are unable to clear content because of the one guy. With proper time and gearing that dude may eventually be ready for that encounter, but that day is not today. As such dude has no business or right to be in that encounter until he is able to pull the basic minimum as required by the game itself. Even if the team can make up for dude's lack of damage they shouldn't have to as that person is essentially a leech at that point. It also means they lied to the game and the other people of that group by queueing for something they weren't ready for yet.
Again I want people to see content and be able to experience it BUT not at the cost of other people's experience. It's why I loved early Cataclysm difficulty in WoW is it made you earn your place in a group and required you to at least be conscious at your keyboard. The folks who refused to learn and get better were never able to clear content and were kept out of raids where they had no business being in the first place. If folks snuck in who clearly weren't ready, they were booted from the group as they should have been. Unfortunately STO has no consequences for folks refusing to learn and get better, and no kick system for TFOs and similar. Some people may say "but darkblade you're just being an elitist". However I liken it to hospital not allowing an untrained person to walk in off the street and start performing a surgery.
Not everyone is going to catch on to certain games as easily or at all as it may not be their cup of tea. However generally in today's day and age, people are only as bad as they choose to be. I'm willing to be those playtesters could have found that path if they were paying attention.
At the end of the day something people need to understand is that the difficulty level of any game could be lowered to
the floor of the lowest basement level of Gre'thor itself and there would STILL be people who couldn't do it, simply because they refuse to learn and get better.
Do you know why STO, and many other MMOs, have switched to the token system? Because its what people want and ask for.
People don't want to get drops in raids/dungeons/TFOs/whatever. Either
A. Drop rates are so low, as a means to keep the dungeon/raid/TFO "active" for a significant period of time, that people end up not bothering at all, or end up hating the experience because they just have to play over, and over, and over, just for the chance of something. Typically getting nothing most runs, and thus wasting the time in their eyes.
B. Loot tables are so filled with things people don't want that, even if they get a guaranteed drop, its almost never something they actually want, resulting in having to play the thing over, and over, and over, and getting nothing that is rewarding to them. And also feeling like they wasted time in all the runs they didn't get what they want.
The whole reason STO, and other MMOs, introduced tokens is because of the mass complaints over the idea of loot droop systems that were popular years ago, and used in things like the old Borg TFOs. Most people don't find what you are asking for meaningful. What they do find meaningful, and not wasting time, is knowing that you can play a TFO/Raid/Dungeon, and ALWAYS get something that you can use to progress your character in the way that YOU chose. Aka, getting tokens that you can put into projects you chose, for the items you want.
Also, you complain about STO's system being mobile like, but the system you are advocating for is far closer to gatcha games, the worst kind of mobile games. Literally "keep playing the same thing over and over until RNG is on your side!"
No, that's not why they switched to tokens and personal loot systems as the defaults. The random loot concept itself was never the problem, the problem was certain people being tools about said loot. I can't tell you the number of times I saw people get ripped off under that system by people rolling on items they were never meant to have and taking them away from people who legitimately needed them. In my case I once farmed an instance for 5 hours to get a Stamina trinket to drop for my Death Knight back in the day, only to have a Hunter steal it from me even though that class wasn't supposed to use stamina trinkets. Blizzard themselves even recognized items like that as tank trinkets, but because anyone could try to boost their health via stamina, "he needed the health also." It would be another 4 hours of farming before I saw that trinket again because one guy wanted to be a tool. Then you would have instances of DPS rolling on healer items because "it gave more of a stat they wanted", healers rolling on DPS items because "it's an upgrade even though it has a single DPS only stat on it," people rolling for their "offspec" and taking items away from people who needed said item for their main spec. Then you had people who would roll on anything they could even if it was a downgrade for them, then either try to sell it to the person who legitimately needed the item, or just vendor it. Then for certain loot modes where it allowed a Master Looter situation you would have situations where the Master Looter would steal the loot for the entire raid and then just leave. I could keep going but I think you get the idea. Instances like those examples are why they went to a personal loot system and a token loot system, not because they hated random drops. The previous systems brought out the worst in people.
Another reason they went to the new token and personal loot systems was so they would have the excuse to dish out more loot to people. Under the old systems only a few people got loot each time, making it difficult in some instances for people to progress at all. You may go in with a 25 man group and only 7 people out of that raid benefit at all that evening. However if they went in under the new system it was possible for the entire group of 25 people to get something from every fight. They went to the new systems because a superior system was crafted, and because people were able to be extreme tools under the old system. Overall it had nothing to do with what you're talking about.
Define meaningful. Elite TFOs are repeatable, end-game, content, thats harder then the rest of the game's content, and requires decent planning, character building, and generally good team communication, to get through. It also provides notably more marks, and elite marks, then normal or advanced, allowing you to get the rep gear you want faster for the extra effort put into doing it. they also come with additional/harder objectives then their lower tier counterparts have, as well as a lack of being able to fail said objecitves to make them that much more harder then normal content. You know... like raids/dungeons in other MMOs do.
For some people elite TFOs are meaningful content, to others it just a suped up version of an already existing bad queue. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that meaningful content is limited to raid type encounters and elite modes only. As explained above, meaningful content is the content that keeps people coming back and makes folks actually want to play the game. While there is a slight bit of subjectivity to it, there are easy ways to tell what is and isn't meaningful. When 99% of your playerbase say "this level sucks" then that's probably not meaningful content. If 99% of your playerbase says "we love this level' that's an example of meaningful content. I've already given further examples of this above.
I never said you were. I simply pointed out that many people do, and then don't follow through. Which in turn makes such requests hollow.
And you should instead feel that most game developers work on making games as many people as possible can enjoy, not making games only a small handful of people enjoy. That doesn't make them TRIBBLE, unless you have the "my secret club" mentality where the thought of anyone "not as good" as you playing games angers you.
If someone makes a request for something, the developers then do it, and the folks who requested it don't follow through, that will be demonstrated by the final numbers and tell the devs how serious people are about something or not. If you've got half your playerbase threatening to quit if they do X, yet when they do X none of them quit, then folks were just talking out of their aft shuttlebay. If they do actually quit then it wasn't a hollow thing.
In this instance making content to appeal to a wider array of audience includes them occasionally making content you personally may not care for. A prime example being in WoW when they would add new pvp maps. I'm not a big pvp guy but congrats to the pvp bunch that had more maps. You personally not liking something does not automatically mean only a small minority of folks enjoy it. Personally I hate that kind of logic that if someone doesn't like something that automatically means it's objectively bad or that they are part of a majority that hates it.
As for the whole "people not as good at games playing angers you" and the "my secret club" comments. You're going to have elitists in any community you go to that try to gatekeep what is true fan and isn't, that think they're the most important things in the fandom and know more than everyone else. I dare say most folks typically don't have a problem with folks playing games who are not as good as they are, because everyone has to start somewhere. People who are veteran gamers now were once new players who had no clue what to do. What I DO however have a problem with is when people try to get into game modes and similar they're clearly not ready for, then want to complain and moan about how the game is too hard and needs to be nerfed, even though they came into an encounter with gear 50 levels below what it should be. In STO's case I can't tell you the number of times I've seen people complain about something being hard and how they can't do enough damage to kill anything, yet when I look at their build it's a mismatch of cannons, mines, beams, dual banks, torps, and overall and absolutely terrible build. When you tell them their build needs work they go on long rants about how it's not their build at fault because they've been playing since beta and know what they're doing, even though they don't. Then those same people go complain to Cryptic or the company for said respective MMO, and throw a hissy fit which ultimately gets it nerfed for everyone else in the game. THAT is the kind of people I can't stand.
That isn't brushing aside anyone. That's simply pointing out the fact that the group of people asking for said content are generally a very small minority, to the point the devs literally can't afford to make content for them. So they don't regardless of how often people ask for it.
I actually recall a livestream or two where Cryptic themselves talked about this very subject. When asked about how the MMO industry has changed in the last 10 years, and why there isn't more raid like content, Cryptic's answer was that, way back in ye olden days, even getting onto the internet was much harder, and required far more investment by people to achieve a decent, stable, internet connection. Because even getting onto the internet took so much more time investment, these people were far more likely to then invest far more time and effort into the games they played, leading to the generally much more difficult, dungeon based, design of older MMOs.
You are kind of brushing a ton of folks aside by assuming that meaningful content is limited to elite mode only, or strictly raid type encounters. Whether you intend for it to come off that way or not, that's how it reads to me. Again simply because a feature doesn't appeal to you personally doesn't automatically make it a bad thing or mean the people wanting it are part of a "small minority."
There's a ton of reasons MMOs have changed over the last 10 years. Gaming fads as well as TV fads and similar come and go all the time. As time goes on different systems are also developed that are superior to the previous ways of doing things, and those new systems get implemented. I also don't buy the "internet required more investment so folks tended to invest more into games" logic. While it may be true for some people, I don't buy that for the vast majority of people as it doesn't explain the radical shifts we see in the attitude of the people either.
Even by the time STO came out however, internet access was far easier to achieve, and thus the people playing games weren't putting as much effort into getting on, and thus didn't want as much effort to actually play games in general. The idea of raid/dungeon like content was already on its way out in many MMOs across the industry, and we saw this very same backlash against it with the old ground/space combined Borg TFOs. Most people don't want to play hour+ long content, where you can easily reach a point where it becomes impossible to progress due to someone leaving, or it being too hard. Most people just find that sort of design wasting their time, so they wont even attempt to play it.
They changed it because so few people wanted it that it simply wasn't justifiable to keep. And any attempts to make more complex TFO design, especially in recent years, have met with either backlash, or confusion, further showing most people don't want it, or couldn't do it. So they aren't going to make it when data shows very very few people want it.
If people legitimately don't have the time to sit down and do raids all at once due to life or other reasons, that at least is a valid argument, which is why most raid encounters had/have checkpoints after each boss that you could resume from later on. If people chose to try and hammer it out at once, then run out of time and moan about it, that was on them and not the company.
Another problem with things today is too many people want their instant gratification and they want it now. If they have to do a single mechanic and can't just spacebar it down, "it's too hard" gets thrown around until they nerf it, because again they refuse to learn and get better. As I said above, most folks I've run into in STO would not last long in a traditional MMO. STO also does very little promote traditional teamwork often associated with MMOs or dedicated builds associated with the trinity type MMOs of tank, healer, dps. In STO it's more of a holy duo type game of Tank and DPS. For that matter a tank isn't always needed either depending on what level of content you're going for. I don't think games should need a billion mechanics to a fight, but I do think it should at least require you to be conscious at your keyboard. With far too many in gaming today, if it takes more than 5 minutes to do something, they can't just blast it to pieces and actually have to pay attention to a mechanic or 2, it's always "it's too hard" or "it's too long" and they want it nerfed so the game basically plays itself.
This inevitably leads to a situation where the company has to decide where they're going to take their game. In WoW's case it got to the point with their raids and even their 5 man content that people would complain about it being too hard every single time something came out. It was always "the tank won't keep the mobs off me", but conveniently dude would leave out the fact that he pulled a group of mobs on the other side of the room by being in the wrong place, and chose to run around the room like a targ that just got hit with a pain stick instead of coming to the tank. It was never their fault, never them needing to step up and improve their game. It was always the game at fault and never them. Tanks like myself got fed up, as did healers and stopped joining as many random queues. Finally Blizzard had to put their foot down and tell folks, "okay from now on we're only nerfing for game breaking issues and at the end of an expansion so people can fight the final boss. From here on you will either have to get better if you want to enter higher tier content and prove you belong there, or you don't go." To make sure folks were ready Blizzard did 3 things.
1: Institute the dungeon journal. This gave basic info on mobs you would encounter and gave just enough info to formulate your own plans to beat them. You could have 3 different groups go into a particular encounter with 3 different plans to beat it, and all of them be valid. It also told what kinds of loot dropped from each boss, and could be searched to know what dropped where. If one was a plate wearer it would tell them where to get plate items. If one was a cloth wearing mage it told where to get mage stuff. This removed the "we don't know anything about the mobs or boss" excuse too many threw around, and the "I don't know where to get gear" excuse.
2: Next they instituted the proving grounds. Proving grounds was a tiered practice system of sorts that had 4 levels, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Endless. Endless would keep going and scale up periodically. It would go until you couldn't handle it anymore, or go bored and quit. It had something for tanks, healers, and DPS. It would test you on basic concepts folks should know. If you're a tank, point the guy with the cleave away from the group. If you're a healer, watch for this debuff. If you're a DPS, stay out of stuff on the ground and then smash his face in. If you wanted to join any kind of raid content through group finder, or for that matter any kind of heroic 5 man content, you needed to clear at least silver on the proving grounds.
3: Institute a gear level requirement. This ensured you didn't have people trying to cheese their way into certain content and required them to have an average item level appropriate for the content. This was meant to help ensure they had the stats on paper to survive the encounter, and be able to contribute to their team.
Once Blizzard did this, it removed all excuses people could have for not knowing an encounter or where to get gear. If someone was in that raid, then you knew they had put forth the effort to clear silver in the proving grounds. You knew they farmed out a basic set of gear to get in there, even if it was only the bare minimum. They also should have had a basic idea of what they were going to run into. At that point if they couldn't do it, you knew they weren't trying and were expecting a free ride. As such we had the boot system to boot those folks from the group.
Lastly on data, neither you or I have full access to the data. Some games can make raid content work, some can't. Not every playerbase is going to be the same and not every game is going to appeal to every person. We only know what they release. Yes I know my post was longwinded, but as a long time MMO player, I could not let some of the misconceptions around certain things go unchallenged.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Holly smokes that's a wall of verbiage, perhaps not excessive. However, reading segment by segment as I ate my oatmeal this morning I enjoyed, found it informative & entertaining. I may not completely agree with some of the points by either party but found the response well thought-out. I'm also unsure of the complete context since I just read this 1 post. Some of the issues discussed I've been thinking about myself regarding STO, the pros & cons, & how it affects me wanting to play STO. My conclusion is I'd rather have my time in STO be more like a passenger on a scenic train route with periodic rest stops than a hamster on an exercise wheel.
Comments
Hopefully that's intentional and they won't change it.
I can provide a video if you wish it, but I've just tried it: bought a Section 31, equipped it and unequipped. It's now resting quite comfortably in my account bank.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
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.'
No need to shush. Kael tweeted tht they're account bound by design.
Yes!!, i'm so happy by that!
I suspect that they were supposed to be character bound but were bugged and they decided to just not fix the bug.
If that's the case, then thank you Cryptic.. it's appreciated. Deciding to just let people have this one is a good decision, going back in and 'fixing' them would have surely generated a wave of complaints.
I think it's pretty cool that they decided to just let us have account bound shields and I actually think it was a good move for the intended purpose. I know in my case it really increased the value of these shields quite a bit.
Given they said, "These shields will be a per character purchase, for 280,000 Dilithium" yet several Fleet or Armada Members stated they remained Account-Bound even after equipping Vanity Shields.
And they say nothing about changing to Character-Bound once equipping. And most have equipped and they still say Account-Bound. Hmm, I wonder if that was a mistake or an oversight? Doesn't mean it was, yet the price may also change next time.
I'd honestly found the price a bit low, given they allowed Account-Bound, as most expected a Character Bind for that price initially, though they were clear it may later change. Still you can only use one at a time, so if you regularly play multiple toons, perhaps it's a mute point.
Kael said on twitter, and is also posted here in the thread, that it's intentional.
I totally agree about the ability to view prior to purchasing, but I figure this might've been a compromise & making a best deal out of the current situation perhaps. I'm glad & thankful for the way Cryptic did these vanity shields otherwise I wasn't going to risk buying something for only 1 toon & blindly at that. Now I plan to purchase (if I have the dilithium) most or all. I've just never liked that Ferengi shield. lol
Events aren't a real solution to a lack of things to do. The devs should invest more in endgame content. Other mmos have raids and meaningful dungeons. There's reasons to go back and repeat stuff in other games and it can be fun.
In sto you're stuck doing whatever event there is and there's been so many its super dull grind. They're getting closer and closer to a breaking point, eventually people are just going to stop doing events and they'll no longer serve a real purpose.
And don't go blaming the players for the failure of the developers. It is not our fault there is a lack of meaningful repeatable content. The reputation system is so bloated that its not effective, and you get virtually no actual rewards from playing stfs, only currencies to eventually get a reward. They need to revamp how Stfs function, and create some kind of high level long form content like raids. The original STFs functioned more like raids but suffered from some poor design decisions that at that point in the game made them ineffective.
Thou i kinda agree with you.. it does not solve the dilithium problem, more raids or STF only gives more cristals to the economy, we need something that depletes the reserves, and this is it, not perfect but it is something
+2!
Events have become nothing more than a boring slog - even when we are fortunate enough to have one coincide with an episode drop.
There are three difficulty levels in this game, in theory at least.
Why in theory? Because they don't make use of them, at all. Even elite is just enemies with more HP doing more damage.
As I said more than once: I don't expect them to add raid-like content to this game - the people would revolt amidst cries of "it's too difficult, 'cause I have to do more than just press one button" and I shudder to think of the number of bugs they'd be able to cram in such a thing - but they could still make a proper use of the different levels to offer more challenging content to those that wants to play it.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
You'd be surprised how important meaningful endgame content is to a lot of games survivability. Raid when done well can be very very popular. But they're the easiest example of meaningful repeatable content. They give challenge, and items to want to repeat them for. You don't need to make things a uber .0001% drop to make them repeatable, I don't know where the hell you got that idea from, all the games I've played with raids that are popular give guaranteed drops, but with random loot so everything can drop equally. The only one I've tried that does the low drop chance of loot is Destiny, but even then that's usually for non raid exclusive items. Raiders tend to be very loyal players if they enjoy the raids, often putting in the most play time for the challenge, or the fun of raiding.
But that's only one aspect of what I was talking about.
Sto has catered hard to a casual playerbase, a playerbase even more casual than most mmos I've played. I've seen far more "simple" players (Simple as in they don't do anything efficiently) in here, players running rainbow weapons, running the wrong consoles, missing items, using abilities that are just bad in here than in other games, though other mmos tend to have more defined classes with abilities baked into them, which have a somewhat natural learning progression to how abilities function together.
In most mmos something like gravity kills would be a minor inconvenience. Hell none of Sto's content would be considered anything but easy mechanically. The only difficulty usually comes in inflated numbers.
Sto needs to balance out rewards however. How it currently is, its designed more like a mobile game in terms of progression. You don't get anything meaningful from STFs outside of tokens. Its not engaging to always get a meager amount of tokens. You need more substantial reward. And the rep system needs an overhaul.
Then I would humbly request my 15-20% of meaningful end-game content pretty please. Different things for different folks and all.
Without meaningful end-game content why would your estimated 15-20% spend $$$ ? We are not a charity you know
I wasn't making demands - just an observation. Maybe it's just me... the more meaningful game play feels the more likely I am to spend. Heck, I might not even wait for an upgrade weekend to upgrade key items when things feel really meaningful. On topic - buying dilithium with Zen helps the exchange rate.
With respect to that last sentence of yours it makes me feel like a bovine who's love of Star Trek is being used to produce something other than milk.
I find it kinda scary how you can just brush aside so many different groups of players so casually. I'm feeling invalid now.
Exactly right. But you know... it's easier to say that people wanting challenge and meaningful endgame content are just a bunch of useless players that the game could stand to lose without batting an eye.
Nevermind the fact that apparently "elite" means "meaningful" - as if we haven't proved, again and again, that that's not the case.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
==============Below was written before the above paragraph as I realized something is wrong ==========
==============about dil to zen being not what people need for vanity shields, unless they buy zen========
==============then use zen to buy dil but that would seem counter productive???==================
It is a mirror image (mirror ha) of Neverwinter. If you have Astral Diamonds (the D&D version of dil ) good luck on trading it to buy Zen. Since I initially got interested to start putting more time over there (years ago) the buying of zen was possible I believe but at horrible AD to Zen rates. The one day it stopped and only sell zen was all but impossible. It still is to this day, what STO is like now, there is nothing listed to trade dil for zen.
Now over there it was supposedly one heard too many transactions, over a million all backed up. Then they said they were going to fix it, but I have yet to trade any AD for Zen.
Remember when they had I think it was zen/cryptic quest that had you trying their other games in exchange for Zen. Well that was taken down years ago for an improved and much more enjoyable system, haven't heard boo on it other than they were still working on one, that is several years old.
The grinding in this game has actually caused to only spend time finishing these mission 7, 10, 14, 20 times to where I don't want to see anything else. They did start to add options but it usually was search/find/investigate/defend against <insert possible enemy/problems/strange things> and they would appear in different or a single spot with new waves coming in that either required you to move or stay around the general area and might involve space/ground or ground/space combat. I am so numb to the game because of this pointless grinding. Of course I don't have to but with the over powered items they usually give away it was a simply choice, fall behind and perhaps they increase power of enemy and I won't have the items, gear, ships, etc.
Now in terms of new TFO, it is the lack of testing and making it have a purpose that has caused backlash, especially being broken/bugged/can't complete on 1st day of release and might last several days. They removed the mission maker, probably partially not just having a shortage of staff to keep it updated but also because they simply couldn't remove the accolade laden list of missions and those that required very little for a lot of items or whatever. I would love to see new tfo but why don't they tap those who use to make really good missions on the, sorry forgot name, additional game content created by players, they tossed that gold mine out. They also need to bring back an incentive to go onto the tribble server. However to get the feedback they need and to test new ideas, they need to require you are active in that part of content they are testing or getting bugs worked out. It had been for 1 or 2 times in the past, spend X hours get a special tribble and usually something else.
So people saying the store was over run in people cashing in dil to get zen to go get vanity shield is highly possible. I also feel it is possibly be another Neverwinter feature added to STO as they make more money by people buying with cash then buying with in game currency.
I am not into the vanity/pets/appearance look so I have never bought into it. After all what is the fun if you spend all that dil you worked on to get a different shield cover, or to have DS9 uniforms, or whatever. However what they did sell, like with the first All Good Things Galaxy with spinal lance phaser would cause PvP to all but vanish as people with money could buy the power to overwhelm those without the special features.
So I am more worried we have seen the last of the days of grinding for dil and then sell it to get zen to buy doff packs, keys, etc and from now on it is a cash only system, especially if they bind to character and exclude account unlock or account bound. What was it that Darth Vader said (I don't remember exact phrase or wording) "It will be a day long remembered, it is has seen the end of (obi wan) dil for zen and soon will see the end of <insert your thought - sadly mine is the game is nearing its end>.
Please however do not join a game called WoT, WoW or WoP, as it is a pay to win system and it is so unbalanced, it is like having you take on the capital ship in the battle of the binary star in an oberth, you wouldn't buy the big Klingon ship and so you often instead of fighting other oberth's you find every time you play you face many of those big Klingon ships from TRIBBLE. STO still has the edge over them and of course is the best of any online options for Star Trek. Plus with PvE content here, you don't have to play against other players and deal with toxic nature.
Please Cryptic you want us to stay put back up the dill exchange, even if you lock it at 500 to 1 zen, we then have some reason to grind for dil at least.
The Dilithium Exchange has not been disabled and you can still very well exchange dilithium for Zen - or vice versa.
We're just at a point where Zen's buy requests are higher in number than selling ones, and that's because dilithium has lost pretty much all its value and so 500:1 doesn't seem like a good enough exchange rate, which means that while we can still convert, it's gonna take longer than usual for the transaction to go through.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
Yeah, just to echo what Jenny said above, in reading your post I am not sure you really understand what has happened with the Star Trek Online Economy. As Jenny pointed out, the Dilithium Exchange was never disabled, Cryptic did not step in and stop the exchange of Dilithium for Zen.
The way the exchange works is just like any other player driven exchange. Players make offers of how much Dilithium they want to trade for how much Zen. If another player has Zen they want to sell for that price, the offer is accepted and the trade is made. Over the last couple of years, Zen has become more valuable, it's been more desired and more sought after then previous years. This was because Cryptic adopted a policy in which there is always something in the store on sale.. always. There used to be quiet periods between sales and they stopped that. Rather it's a 'Flash sale,' a special promotion, or some other thing.. the desire for Zen has never been higher.
On the other side of the Economy, the supply of Dilithium has also been heavily inflated over the years. In a similar style to they constant sales.. Cryptic added yet another change.. Non Stop Events. There can never be.. even a single day.. ever where there is no event going on. Events reward Dilithium Ore upon completion, then you can re-run the event daily for more Dilithium. Add that in to things like Admiralty and other sources and you can just rake in Dilithium without much effort at all. The problem is, there is nothing to use this Dilithium for. Once you get your ship all upgraded and your character(s) are finished this Dilithium just piles up and you have nothing to do with it, so people want to trade it for Zen.
People selling Zen are selling a valuable currency, and they are trading it for Dilithium, a currency that is in abundance and isn't useful for anything. As a result, Zen sellers wanted more and more Dilithium to make the trades worth it since the Dilithium just wasn't worth that much. This is why you saw the market go from 300:1 exchange rate to the cap of 500:1.
Then after some time, even at 500:1, the players bought all the Zen that people were selling and no one was willing to sell anymore, even at 500:1. This is why the exchange appeared disabled, Cryptic didn't turn it off, there was just no players willing to sell their Zen for Dilithium because they don't want the Dilithium. It's worthless, so no one was willing to trade for it.
What the Vanity Shields did was introduce a badly needed 'Dilithium Sink.' An item or service that's highly desirable (people love these things) that can ONLY be acquired via Dilthium. Boom.. now Dilithium is suddenly valuable. Now people are once again willing to trade Zen for it because they can actually get something for that Dilithium. The very day they announced the sale was starting, the Exchange was back up and running because players were selling Zen once again.
Cryptic has a policy of not directly intervening to manipulate the exchange and it was followed here. They didn't disable it, and they opted not to 'infuse' the market with Zen Supply which is not a surprise since that's basically just giving away money for them. They instead, introduced something to balance the market, and it worked.. for now. This is why players are saying we need a constant need for Dilithium, we need something introduced that makes Dilithium valuable.. either that or we have to cut the supply since scarcity also increases value.
Hope this clears the situation up a little.
While it's true that you're going to have some die-hards in any community you come across, that think anything and everything a company does is perfect and they can do no wrong, Then on the opposite end you've got a bunch of flakes that as soon as the company does any little minute thing they don't like, or the next flavor of the month game comes out, they're gone. Neither of those groups ultimately matter as they are the fringe. In the middle you have everyone else. That middle group is the group that ultimately pays the bills. That middle group is also not exclusively raiding types, nor are they exclusively casual types who only play here and there. This middle group is what pays the bills and keeps games alive. Without this middle group a game will die within 6 months if it lasts that long.
If you want a perfect example of a game that had no meaningful content to keep people coming back and didn't even last a full year, look no further than Anthem. There were the bits of story they had, and then you could run around and blast a few things in the open world, but they had nothing else of value. Without something meaningful to keep people coming back, that's what all games would be. Good content is why I still play games like Star Trek Armada II, Bridge Commander, and a host of other older games to this day.
First I will say that game companies should have basic information available in their games so folks can learn what certain things do. Assuming that has been taken care of, in today's day and age of information there is no excuse for someone not being able to find some kind of information on a game if folks need further help. If someone wants to improve themselves they can look for guides, find some videos, or dare I say it, ask for help in the community. For that matter you can learn alot just by reading your abilities and paying attention to what they do.
With that said, game companies can put all the info in the world out there, and I myself can put video after video out for STO or anything else. For that matter I have put several videos for STO out there, though I have been taking a break to focus more on my current Space Engineers project as of late. With that said however I can put stuff out there, the games themselves can put stuff out there, and anyone else who wants to contribute can put stuff out there, but it all means nothing if our hypothetical player chooses not to listen to anything said and continues to willfully slam their head against a wall while blaming the game. At that point it's not the game that's at fault, but the player. The folks who willingly choose not to improve themselves or learn and get better are not worth a company's time as those folks chose to be willfully ignorant. An easy way to tell those who have no desire to get better and improve in game. If they find STO or any other game that confusing, why keep playing since they're clearly not having fun? Why continue to slam their heads against a wall vs look up info or ask for help?
This is where I'm going to be extremely blunt as a long time MMO player. Most folks I have played with in STO would not last more than 3 days in a traditional MMO outside of STO. STO is not a traditional MMO by any stretch of the imagination. STO's difficulty curve is nothing compared to some of the other MMOs out there with WoW and SWTOR being prime examples. In those games you want to mess around on story difficulty forever, that's perfectly fine, but if you want to progress into the STO equivalent of Advanced and Elite content, you have to bring your A game and have at least a basic understanding of what you're doing. If you don't then you will quickly find yourself getting booted from groups, wiping over and over in groups, and eventually folks will not want to play with you and you will find it increasingly difficult to get into higher tiered content.
As for the scenario you describe in which the person had to color match the circles to get past a shield and damage a boss, the question I would ask is what those visuals looked like and how obvious they were. They may have been super obvious and they may not have been. Stuff like this is where its incumbent on the devs of those games to make sure folks can actually see what's going on around them. Once the devs have done their part by making sure folks have clear visuals and similar, it's up to the players to clear the fight. Fights being hard to clear or nigh unbeatable due to broken mechanics (as in not working), or being so OP that it requires you to make frame perfect moves each time or fail, is one thing. Folks refusing to learn and get better is something else entirely.
I have no problem with people wanting to see and experience certain content or playing on higher difficulties. I DO however have a problem with it when those folks clearly are not ready for that higher content and it effects my ability or that of my teammates to clear content. Let's suppose you have a 5 man encounter with 3 DPS, a tank, and a healer. Let's also suppose that it requires the 3 DPS to be pulling a minimum of 10k each in order to clear the content. If you have 2 of them doing the required 10k minimum, but the 3rd guy is only pulling 5k, then that run is doomed to fail because that 3rd DPSer has been allowed into content they are not yet ready for. Thus the 4 other people are unable to clear content because of the one guy. With proper time and gearing that dude may eventually be ready for that encounter, but that day is not today. As such dude has no business or right to be in that encounter until he is able to pull the basic minimum as required by the game itself. Even if the team can make up for dude's lack of damage they shouldn't have to as that person is essentially a leech at that point. It also means they lied to the game and the other people of that group by queueing for something they weren't ready for yet.
Again I want people to see content and be able to experience it BUT not at the cost of other people's experience. It's why I loved early Cataclysm difficulty in WoW is it made you earn your place in a group and required you to at least be conscious at your keyboard. The folks who refused to learn and get better were never able to clear content and were kept out of raids where they had no business being in the first place. If folks snuck in who clearly weren't ready, they were booted from the group as they should have been. Unfortunately STO has no consequences for folks refusing to learn and get better, and no kick system for TFOs and similar. Some people may say "but darkblade you're just being an elitist". However I liken it to hospital not allowing an untrained person to walk in off the street and start performing a surgery.
Not everyone is going to catch on to certain games as easily or at all as it may not be their cup of tea. However generally in today's day and age, people are only as bad as they choose to be. I'm willing to be those playtesters could have found that path if they were paying attention.
At the end of the day something people need to understand is that the difficulty level of any game could be lowered to
the floor of the lowest basement level of Gre'thor itself and there would STILL be people who couldn't do it, simply because they refuse to learn and get better.
No, that's not why they switched to tokens and personal loot systems as the defaults. The random loot concept itself was never the problem, the problem was certain people being tools about said loot. I can't tell you the number of times I saw people get ripped off under that system by people rolling on items they were never meant to have and taking them away from people who legitimately needed them. In my case I once farmed an instance for 5 hours to get a Stamina trinket to drop for my Death Knight back in the day, only to have a Hunter steal it from me even though that class wasn't supposed to use stamina trinkets. Blizzard themselves even recognized items like that as tank trinkets, but because anyone could try to boost their health via stamina, "he needed the health also." It would be another 4 hours of farming before I saw that trinket again because one guy wanted to be a tool. Then you would have instances of DPS rolling on healer items because "it gave more of a stat they wanted", healers rolling on DPS items because "it's an upgrade even though it has a single DPS only stat on it," people rolling for their "offspec" and taking items away from people who needed said item for their main spec. Then you had people who would roll on anything they could even if it was a downgrade for them, then either try to sell it to the person who legitimately needed the item, or just vendor it. Then for certain loot modes where it allowed a Master Looter situation you would have situations where the Master Looter would steal the loot for the entire raid and then just leave. I could keep going but I think you get the idea. Instances like those examples are why they went to a personal loot system and a token loot system, not because they hated random drops. The previous systems brought out the worst in people.
Another reason they went to the new token and personal loot systems was so they would have the excuse to dish out more loot to people. Under the old systems only a few people got loot each time, making it difficult in some instances for people to progress at all. You may go in with a 25 man group and only 7 people out of that raid benefit at all that evening. However if they went in under the new system it was possible for the entire group of 25 people to get something from every fight. They went to the new systems because a superior system was crafted, and because people were able to be extreme tools under the old system. Overall it had nothing to do with what you're talking about.
For some people elite TFOs are meaningful content, to others it just a suped up version of an already existing bad queue. You seem to be under the mistaken impression that meaningful content is limited to raid type encounters and elite modes only. As explained above, meaningful content is the content that keeps people coming back and makes folks actually want to play the game. While there is a slight bit of subjectivity to it, there are easy ways to tell what is and isn't meaningful. When 99% of your playerbase say "this level sucks" then that's probably not meaningful content. If 99% of your playerbase says "we love this level' that's an example of meaningful content. I've already given further examples of this above.
If someone makes a request for something, the developers then do it, and the folks who requested it don't follow through, that will be demonstrated by the final numbers and tell the devs how serious people are about something or not. If you've got half your playerbase threatening to quit if they do X, yet when they do X none of them quit, then folks were just talking out of their aft shuttlebay. If they do actually quit then it wasn't a hollow thing.
In this instance making content to appeal to a wider array of audience includes them occasionally making content you personally may not care for. A prime example being in WoW when they would add new pvp maps. I'm not a big pvp guy but congrats to the pvp bunch that had more maps. You personally not liking something does not automatically mean only a small minority of folks enjoy it. Personally I hate that kind of logic that if someone doesn't like something that automatically means it's objectively bad or that they are part of a majority that hates it.
As for the whole "people not as good at games playing angers you" and the "my secret club" comments. You're going to have elitists in any community you go to that try to gatekeep what is true fan and isn't, that think they're the most important things in the fandom and know more than everyone else. I dare say most folks typically don't have a problem with folks playing games who are not as good as they are, because everyone has to start somewhere. People who are veteran gamers now were once new players who had no clue what to do. What I DO however have a problem with is when people try to get into game modes and similar they're clearly not ready for, then want to complain and moan about how the game is too hard and needs to be nerfed, even though they came into an encounter with gear 50 levels below what it should be. In STO's case I can't tell you the number of times I've seen people complain about something being hard and how they can't do enough damage to kill anything, yet when I look at their build it's a mismatch of cannons, mines, beams, dual banks, torps, and overall and absolutely terrible build. When you tell them their build needs work they go on long rants about how it's not their build at fault because they've been playing since beta and know what they're doing, even though they don't. Then those same people go complain to Cryptic or the company for said respective MMO, and throw a hissy fit which ultimately gets it nerfed for everyone else in the game. THAT is the kind of people I can't stand.
You are kind of brushing a ton of folks aside by assuming that meaningful content is limited to elite mode only, or strictly raid type encounters. Whether you intend for it to come off that way or not, that's how it reads to me. Again simply because a feature doesn't appeal to you personally doesn't automatically make it a bad thing or mean the people wanting it are part of a "small minority."
There's a ton of reasons MMOs have changed over the last 10 years. Gaming fads as well as TV fads and similar come and go all the time. As time goes on different systems are also developed that are superior to the previous ways of doing things, and those new systems get implemented. I also don't buy the "internet required more investment so folks tended to invest more into games" logic. While it may be true for some people, I don't buy that for the vast majority of people as it doesn't explain the radical shifts we see in the attitude of the people either.
If people legitimately don't have the time to sit down and do raids all at once due to life or other reasons, that at least is a valid argument, which is why most raid encounters had/have checkpoints after each boss that you could resume from later on. If people chose to try and hammer it out at once, then run out of time and moan about it, that was on them and not the company.
Another problem with things today is too many people want their instant gratification and they want it now. If they have to do a single mechanic and can't just spacebar it down, "it's too hard" gets thrown around until they nerf it, because again they refuse to learn and get better. As I said above, most folks I've run into in STO would not last long in a traditional MMO. STO also does very little promote traditional teamwork often associated with MMOs or dedicated builds associated with the trinity type MMOs of tank, healer, dps. In STO it's more of a holy duo type game of Tank and DPS. For that matter a tank isn't always needed either depending on what level of content you're going for. I don't think games should need a billion mechanics to a fight, but I do think it should at least require you to be conscious at your keyboard. With far too many in gaming today, if it takes more than 5 minutes to do something, they can't just blast it to pieces and actually have to pay attention to a mechanic or 2, it's always "it's too hard" or "it's too long" and they want it nerfed so the game basically plays itself.
This inevitably leads to a situation where the company has to decide where they're going to take their game. In WoW's case it got to the point with their raids and even their 5 man content that people would complain about it being too hard every single time something came out. It was always "the tank won't keep the mobs off me", but conveniently dude would leave out the fact that he pulled a group of mobs on the other side of the room by being in the wrong place, and chose to run around the room like a targ that just got hit with a pain stick instead of coming to the tank. It was never their fault, never them needing to step up and improve their game. It was always the game at fault and never them. Tanks like myself got fed up, as did healers and stopped joining as many random queues. Finally Blizzard had to put their foot down and tell folks, "okay from now on we're only nerfing for game breaking issues and at the end of an expansion so people can fight the final boss. From here on you will either have to get better if you want to enter higher tier content and prove you belong there, or you don't go." To make sure folks were ready Blizzard did 3 things.
1: Institute the dungeon journal. This gave basic info on mobs you would encounter and gave just enough info to formulate your own plans to beat them. You could have 3 different groups go into a particular encounter with 3 different plans to beat it, and all of them be valid. It also told what kinds of loot dropped from each boss, and could be searched to know what dropped where. If one was a plate wearer it would tell them where to get plate items. If one was a cloth wearing mage it told where to get mage stuff. This removed the "we don't know anything about the mobs or boss" excuse too many threw around, and the "I don't know where to get gear" excuse.
2: Next they instituted the proving grounds. Proving grounds was a tiered practice system of sorts that had 4 levels, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Endless. Endless would keep going and scale up periodically. It would go until you couldn't handle it anymore, or go bored and quit. It had something for tanks, healers, and DPS. It would test you on basic concepts folks should know. If you're a tank, point the guy with the cleave away from the group. If you're a healer, watch for this debuff. If you're a DPS, stay out of stuff on the ground and then smash his face in. If you wanted to join any kind of raid content through group finder, or for that matter any kind of heroic 5 man content, you needed to clear at least silver on the proving grounds.
3: Institute a gear level requirement. This ensured you didn't have people trying to cheese their way into certain content and required them to have an average item level appropriate for the content. This was meant to help ensure they had the stats on paper to survive the encounter, and be able to contribute to their team.
Once Blizzard did this, it removed all excuses people could have for not knowing an encounter or where to get gear. If someone was in that raid, then you knew they had put forth the effort to clear silver in the proving grounds. You knew they farmed out a basic set of gear to get in there, even if it was only the bare minimum. They also should have had a basic idea of what they were going to run into. At that point if they couldn't do it, you knew they weren't trying and were expecting a free ride. As such we had the boot system to boot those folks from the group.
Lastly on data, neither you or I have full access to the data. Some games can make raid content work, some can't. Not every playerbase is going to be the same and not every game is going to appeal to every person. We only know what they release. Yes I know my post was longwinded, but as a long time MMO player, I could not let some of the misconceptions around certain things go unchallenged.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator