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With the collapse of the DILEX, I can no longer defend this game's business model

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  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    Since this was becoming an absurdly long post I cut it down to the first sentence or so, and I'm responding to what you wrote from there until the next sentence in a quote box.
    Nobody really seemed to mind the New Romulus featured episode which did exactly this ...
    I remember a lot of people complaining about them doing this with New Romulus, because it was obvious that they were just doing it to waste people's time by drawing out what should be a short thing for far longer then it needed to be. This is why Cryptic hasn't done anything like it since, and later decoupled the New Romulus missions from the rep entirely. It's not something people enjoy. It's just one of the most hated forms of content time gating.

    Also, reputations aren't dil sinks, they are dial faucets. You get dil for completing projects. The New Romulus reputation mission thing only gave people dil, it didn't take it away.
    Let us reimagine the Dyson Sphere development leading up to the introduction to the Delta Quadrant content...
    Why would this be an issue? And why would players be the ones doing this? The Alliance and its allies constitute the major powers of like a quarter of the galaxy. They have the resources, and they don't need us going around playing shipping container transport for them. They have people doing that already.
    The cumulative costs in Dilithium and other resource contributions would ideally have been so large that it would take the entire player base grinding at massive efficiency for however long Cryptic could have decided they wanted it to take...
    I don't think most people really care about the actual building part of fleet holdings. I've never been in a fleet where anyone felt proud to have built it up, just happy to get access to the fleet gear at the end. Unless theres some super great gear at the end of this, I don't think anyone is going to feel anything but that their time, and resources, were wasted on a time gate.
    I've talked about ways that STO could be made to feel like a living world...
    Why would donating resources to the public tower help rebuild another personal fleet tower elsewhere? Does it magically duplicate itself? If they were going to set up both systems, you would just have to donate to both systems separately since they're separate places.
    Oh... and those Dyson ships we get to buy for Lobi if we want them?...
    This is honestly one of the worst ideas possible. If people were told that something like the Dyson ships were locked behind a project queue, you would have no one other with them in the first place. Especially when theres so many other ships in the game that aren't part of this system. Its like the most hated form of MMO housing, limited public land plots people have to fight over, but for STO ships. This is just DOA.
    And why isn't it making money?...
    Who says it isn't? Everything we have heard for some time now is that STO is more profitable now then its ever been. The recent Emrbacer acquisition would seem to back that up since Embracer has been buying up successful mid tier studios. Yes it isn't WoW, or FF14 level, but most games aren't WoW and FF14 level. Star Trek, as a franchise, has never done particularly well in gaming since Star Trek isn't really built for games. The last Trek show ended back in 2005, and we didn't get a new one for over a decade, which limited STO's initial interest base.
    They need to reinstate subscription fees as an option to get access to everything at the most cost-effective level. Barring that they need to start charging for mission content and unlocking new gameplay loop mechanics...
    This would pretty much kill STO, no doubt. Sub fees are dead outside of WoW and FF14, for good reason. People who play MMOs often play many of them, and if they are having to pay a sub fee for one of them, they are unlikely to pay for another. Most people are already subbing to WoW, or FF14, as is. They're more likely to just drop STO then pay a sub for it on top of paying for a sub for those games.
    The collapse of the DilEx shows just how flawed their idea of Free to Play is. Fundamental changes need to be made, and we need to be flexible enough to embrace them...
    Not really? The DilEx did well under F2P for nearly a decade. The collapse of the DilEx is because Cryptic stopped adding new fleet holdings, and stopped adding new things to the Phoenix boxes, to keep it under control. This has nothing to do with the game being F2P.
    Lord of the Rings Online was the first MMO that went Free to Play while its subscription model was still viable and its player base was growing...
    Lord of the Rings Online is in an even worse state then STO is, with one of the biggest barriers of entry for new people being that every single quest pack, and expansion, costs money, or takes insane in-game grind to be able to afford even one or two of them. Them charging money for this has massively limited their playerbase, and how much content they can put out, with the game suffering from massive lag and performance problems for years because they just can't get to fixing it. On the other hand, the similarly set up DCUO recently made all of its previously paid for quest packs free, and I've heard thats done wonders for them since people are more willing to come into a game, and spend money on it, when the game's content is free, and what you pay for is cosmetics.

    And you look at both of these MMOs, and both DCUO, and LoTRO, both put out content roughly every 3-4 months. Which is the same release pattern as STO. The only difference is that those games go for more generic MMO questing with basic "kill 10 wolves" quests, and such, whereas STO goes for a more narrative, TV episode like, design. So monetizing content hasn't caused them to put it out any faster then STO does. They just put out different content then STO does.


    You claim STO does things "bss-aackwards" compared to other F2P MMOs, yet it does the same things other successful F2P MMOs do, while all the things you suggests are systems and ideas used by F2P MMOs that are doing far worse than STO because no one likes those things. Time gating content, forcing people to dump massive amounts of resources to unlock content that's already complete and in-game, pitting people against each other for ship building slots, introducing decay mechanics, subscription fees for anything other than WoW and FF14, nickel and diming people for every content release, all of these are things done by failed MMOs, or MMOs doing much worse then STO.
  • paradox#7391 paradox Member Posts: 1,774 Arc User
    Since this was becoming an absurdly long post I cut it down to the first sentence or so, and I'm responding to what you wrote from there until the next sentence in a quote box.
    Nobody really seemed to mind the New Romulus featured episode which did exactly this ...
    I remember a lot of people complaining about them doing this with New Romulus, because it was obvious that they were just doing it to waste people's time by drawing out what should be a short thing for far longer then it needed to be. This is why Cryptic hasn't done anything like it since, and later decoupled the New Romulus missions from the rep entirely. It's not something people enjoy. It's just one of the most hated forms of content time gating.

    Also, reputations aren't dil sinks, they are dial faucets. You get dil for completing projects. The New Romulus reputation mission thing only gave people dil, it didn't take it away.
    Let us reimagine the Dyson Sphere development leading up to the introduction to the Delta Quadrant content...
    Why would this be an issue? And why would players be the ones doing this? The Alliance and its allies constitute the major powers of like a quarter of the galaxy. They have the resources, and they don't need us going around playing shipping container transport for them. They have people doing that already.
    The cumulative costs in Dilithium and other resource contributions would ideally have been so large that it would take the entire player base grinding at massive efficiency for however long Cryptic could have decided they wanted it to take...
    I don't think most people really care about the actual building part of fleet holdings. I've never been in a fleet where anyone felt proud to have built it up, just happy to get access to the fleet gear at the end. Unless theres some super great gear at the end of this, I don't think anyone is going to feel anything but that their time, and resources, were wasted on a time gate.
    I've talked about ways that STO could be made to feel like a living world...
    Why would donating resources to the public tower help rebuild another personal fleet tower elsewhere? Does it magically duplicate itself? If they were going to set up both systems, you would just have to donate to both systems separately since they're separate places.
    Oh... and those Dyson ships we get to buy for Lobi if we want them?...
    This is honestly one of the worst ideas possible. If people were told that something like the Dyson ships were locked behind a project queue, you would have no one other with them in the first place. Especially when theres so many other ships in the game that aren't part of this system. Its like the most hated form of MMO housing, limited public land plots people have to fight over, but for STO ships. This is just DOA.
    And why isn't it making money?...
    Who says it isn't? Everything we have heard for some time now is that STO is more profitable now then its ever been. The recent Emrbacer acquisition would seem to back that up since Embracer has been buying up successful mid tier studios. Yes it isn't WoW, or FF14 level, but most games aren't WoW and FF14 level. Star Trek, as a franchise, has never done particularly well in gaming since Star Trek isn't really built for games. The last Trek show ended back in 2005, and we didn't get a new one for over a decade, which limited STO's initial interest base.
    They need to reinstate subscription fees as an option to get access to everything at the most cost-effective level. Barring that they need to start charging for mission content and unlocking new gameplay loop mechanics...
    This would pretty much kill STO, no doubt. Sub fees are dead outside of WoW and FF14, for good reason. People who play MMOs often play many of them, and if they are having to pay a sub fee for one of them, they are unlikely to pay for another. Most people are already subbing to WoW, or FF14, as is. They're more likely to just drop STO then pay a sub for it on top of paying for a sub for those games.
    The collapse of the DilEx shows just how flawed their idea of Free to Play is. Fundamental changes need to be made, and we need to be flexible enough to embrace them...
    Not really? The DilEx did well under F2P for nearly a decade. The collapse of the DilEx is because Cryptic stopped adding new fleet holdings, and stopped adding new things to the Phoenix boxes, to keep it under control. This has nothing to do with the game being F2P.
    Lord of the Rings Online was the first MMO that went Free to Play while its subscription model was still viable and its player base was growing...
    Lord of the Rings Online is in an even worse state then STO is, with one of the biggest barriers of entry for new people being that every single quest pack, and expansion, costs money, or takes insane in-game grind to be able to afford even one or two of them. Them charging money for this has massively limited their playerbase, and how much content they can put out, with the game suffering from massive lag and performance problems for years because they just can't get to fixing it. On the other hand, the similarly set up DCUO recently made all of its previously paid for quest packs free, and I've heard thats done wonders for them since people are more willing to come into a game, and spend money on it, when the game's content is free, and what you pay for is cosmetics.

    And you look at both of these MMOs, and both DCUO, and LoTRO, both put out content roughly every 3-4 months. Which is the same release pattern as STO. The only difference is that those games go for more generic MMO questing with basic "kill 10 wolves" quests, and such, whereas STO goes for a more narrative, TV episode like, design. So monetizing content hasn't caused them to put it out any faster then STO does. They just put out different content then STO does.


    You claim STO does things "bss-aackwards" compared to other F2P MMOs, yet it does the same things other successful F2P MMOs do, while all the things you suggests are systems and ideas used by F2P MMOs that are doing far worse than STO because no one likes those things. Time gating content, forcing people to dump massive amounts of resources to unlock content that's already complete and in-game, pitting people against each other for ship building slots, introducing decay mechanics, subscription fees for anything other than WoW and FF14, nickel and diming people for every content release, all of these are things done by failed MMOs, or MMOs doing much worse then STO.

    Well said, I know that if they do add an Subscription fee, it won't bother me, I'll just stop playing STO all together since I know that I still have ESO and Neverwinter to fall back on, this isn't my only MMO.
  • sheldonlcoopersheldonlcooper Member Posts: 4,042 Arc User
    Yes, this is complicated. And yes, there is no "magic fix".

    But setting those 2 obvious statements aside, consider this simple qustion:

    Why did the dilex work for years, and what changed?

    Answer: for many years, Cryptic regularly added fleet holdings and dil sinks. What changed? They stopped.

    This isn't rocket science here. It used to work, and now it doesn't. It stopped working because they stopped doing the things they used to do.

    The accelerated sales have rubbed salt in the wound, but didn't cause the wound.

    Cryptic just stopped supporting fleet stuff, which was the major dil sink of the game.

    And yes, I lay that choice 100% at the feet of the devs. They choose to stop doing the thing that kept the dilex working, so they are 100% to blame for it collapsing.

    I think you are right about all of this.
    The problem is that if they added new sinks - especially fleet sinks - not enough people would do it.
    In the past you would have fleet leaders buying vast amounts of dilithium to fill these sinks.
    Now they will look at it and say the #@&! with that. Then if there is something absolutely needed they will get an invite to buy it from the very large fleets, who will be the only ones filling the sink.
    I remember when they came out with those ridiculous uniforms that cost millions of dil. I just looked at it and laughed. Even if I had wanted any I would have just avoided the sink. Which I'd say most people do when they see an onerous burden come up in this game. The other problem is that I don't want anything.

    I can't believe I'm going to say this - after all these years - but I think the game desperately needs something new. And I think that thing has to be some sort of elite combat akin to raids. How this would help with dilithium I have no idea. But these endless series of events has become a real bore after what 3 years solid of it?
    Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."

    "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

  • husanakxhusanakx Member Posts: 1,588 Arc User
    Since this was becoming an absurdly long post I cut it down to the first sentence or so, and I'm responding to what you wrote from there until the next sentence in a quote box.
    Nobody really seemed to mind the New Romulus featured episode which did exactly this ...
    I remember a lot of people complaining about them doing this with New Romulus, because it was obvious that they were just doing it to waste people's time by drawing out what should be a short thing for far longer then it needed to be. This is why Cryptic hasn't done anything like it since, and later decoupled the New Romulus missions from the rep entirely. It's not something people enjoy. It's just one of the most hated forms of content time gating.

    Also, reputations aren't dil sinks, they are dial faucets. You get dil for completing projects. The New Romulus reputation mission thing only gave people dil, it didn't take it away.
    Let us reimagine the Dyson Sphere development leading up to the introduction to the Delta Quadrant content...
    Why would this be an issue? And why would players be the ones doing this? The Alliance and its allies constitute the major powers of like a quarter of the galaxy. They have the resources, and they don't need us going around playing shipping container transport for them. They have people doing that already.
    The cumulative costs in Dilithium and other resource contributions would ideally have been so large that it would take the entire player base grinding at massive efficiency for however long Cryptic could have decided they wanted it to take...
    I don't think most people really care about the actual building part of fleet holdings. I've never been in a fleet where anyone felt proud to have built it up, just happy to get access to the fleet gear at the end. Unless theres some super great gear at the end of this, I don't think anyone is going to feel anything but that their time, and resources, were wasted on a time gate.
    I've talked about ways that STO could be made to feel like a living world...
    Why would donating resources to the public tower help rebuild another personal fleet tower elsewhere? Does it magically duplicate itself? If they were going to set up both systems, you would just have to donate to both systems separately since they're separate places.
    Oh... and those Dyson ships we get to buy for Lobi if we want them?...
    This is honestly one of the worst ideas possible. If people were told that something like the Dyson ships were locked behind a project queue, you would have no one other with them in the first place. Especially when theres so many other ships in the game that aren't part of this system. Its like the most hated form of MMO housing, limited public land plots people have to fight over, but for STO ships. This is just DOA.
    And why isn't it making money?...
    Who says it isn't? Everything we have heard for some time now is that STO is more profitable now then its ever been. The recent Emrbacer acquisition would seem to back that up since Embracer has been buying up successful mid tier studios. Yes it isn't WoW, or FF14 level, but most games aren't WoW and FF14 level. Star Trek, as a franchise, has never done particularly well in gaming since Star Trek isn't really built for games. The last Trek show ended back in 2005, and we didn't get a new one for over a decade, which limited STO's initial interest base.
    They need to reinstate subscription fees as an option to get access to everything at the most cost-effective level. Barring that they need to start charging for mission content and unlocking new gameplay loop mechanics...
    This would pretty much kill STO, no doubt. Sub fees are dead outside of WoW and FF14, for good reason. People who play MMOs often play many of them, and if they are having to pay a sub fee for one of them, they are unlikely to pay for another. Most people are already subbing to WoW, or FF14, as is. They're more likely to just drop STO then pay a sub for it on top of paying for a sub for those games.
    The collapse of the DilEx shows just how flawed their idea of Free to Play is. Fundamental changes need to be made, and we need to be flexible enough to embrace them...
    Not really? The DilEx did well under F2P for nearly a decade. The collapse of the DilEx is because Cryptic stopped adding new fleet holdings, and stopped adding new things to the Phoenix boxes, to keep it under control. This has nothing to do with the game being F2P.
    Lord of the Rings Online was the first MMO that went Free to Play while its subscription model was still viable and its player base was growing...
    Lord of the Rings Online is in an even worse state then STO is, with one of the biggest barriers of entry for new people being that every single quest pack, and expansion, costs money, or takes insane in-game grind to be able to afford even one or two of them. Them charging money for this has massively limited their playerbase, and how much content they can put out, with the game suffering from massive lag and performance problems for years because they just can't get to fixing it. On the other hand, the similarly set up DCUO recently made all of its previously paid for quest packs free, and I've heard thats done wonders for them since people are more willing to come into a game, and spend money on it, when the game's content is free, and what you pay for is cosmetics.

    And you look at both of these MMOs, and both DCUO, and LoTRO, both put out content roughly every 3-4 months. Which is the same release pattern as STO. The only difference is that those games go for more generic MMO questing with basic "kill 10 wolves" quests, and such, whereas STO goes for a more narrative, TV episode like, design. So monetizing content hasn't caused them to put it out any faster then STO does. They just put out different content then STO does.


    You claim STO does things "bss-aackwards" compared to other F2P MMOs, yet it does the same things other successful F2P MMOs do, while all the things you suggests are systems and ideas used by F2P MMOs that are doing far worse than STO because no one likes those things. Time gating content, forcing people to dump massive amounts of resources to unlock content that's already complete and in-game, pitting people against each other for ship building slots, introducing decay mechanics, subscription fees for anything other than WoW and FF14, nickel and diming people for every content release, all of these are things done by failed MMOs, or MMOs doing much worse then STO.

    Well said, I know that if they do add an Subscription fee, it won't bother me, I'll just stop playing STO all together since I know that I still have ESO and Neverwinter to fall back on, this isn't my only MMO.

    I hate to break it to you... If Star Trek Online goes Subscription. So will Neverwinter.
  • husanakxhusanakx Member Posts: 1,588 Arc User
    Yes, this is complicated. And yes, there is no "magic fix".

    But setting those 2 obvious statements aside, consider this simple qustion:

    Why did the dilex work for years, and what changed?

    Answer: for many years, Cryptic regularly added fleet holdings and dil sinks. What changed? They stopped.

    This isn't rocket science here. It used to work, and now it doesn't. It stopped working because they stopped doing the things they used to do.

    The accelerated sales have rubbed salt in the wound, but didn't cause the wound.

    Cryptic just stopped supporting fleet stuff, which was the major dil sink of the game.

    And yes, I lay that choice 100% at the feet of the devs. They choose to stop doing the thing that kept the dilex working, so they are 100% to blame for it collapsing.

    I think you are right about all of this.
    The problem is that if they added new sinks - especially fleet sinks - not enough people would do it.
    In the past you would have fleet leaders buying vast amounts of dilithium to fill these sinks.
    Now they will look at it and say the #@&! with that. Then if there is something absolutely needed they will get an invite to buy it from the very large fleets, who will be the only ones filling the sink.
    I remember when they came out with those ridiculous uniforms that cost millions of dil. I just looked at it and laughed. Even if I had wanted any I would have just avoided the sink. Which I'd say most people do when they see an onerous burden come up in this game. The other problem is that I don't want anything.

    I can't believe I'm going to say this - after all these years - but I think the game desperately needs something new. And I think that thing has to be some sort of elite combat akin to raids. How this would help with dilithium I have no idea. But these endless series of events has become a real bore after what 3 years solid of it?

    If that where true... no one but a couple fleets would have completed the colony holding. Or for that matter why did anyone complete any of the other holdings that have been added. Its not like we couldn't always do tier 1 get provisions and an invite. Game has always worked that way. People like to finish their own holdings. They search for armadas to help, they fill their projects.

    Some of Cryptics past fixes are also part of the problem. They changed Klingon admiralty and it helped nothing... in fact it made things worse now you don't need those big whale fleet members to fill the big projects. Everyone gets a bunch of free fleet dill.
  • protoneousprotoneous Member Posts: 2,950 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    Yes, this is complicated. And yes, there is no "magic fix".

    But setting those 2 obvious statements aside, consider this simple qustion:

    Why did the dilex work for years, and what changed?

    Answer: for many years, Cryptic regularly added fleet holdings and dil sinks. What changed? They stopped.

    This isn't rocket science here. It used to work, and now it doesn't. It stopped working because they stopped doing the things they used to do.

    The accelerated sales have rubbed salt in the wound, but didn't cause the wound.

    Cryptic just stopped supporting fleet stuff, which was the major dil sink of the game.

    And yes, I lay that choice 100% at the feet of the devs. They choose to stop doing the thing that kept the dilex working, so they are 100% to blame for it collapsing.

    ... I can't believe I'm going to say this - after all these years - but I think the game desperately needs something new. And I think that thing has to be some sort of elite combat akin to raids. How this would help with dilithium I have no idea. But these endless series of events has become a real bore after what 3 years solid of it?

    I think you're right. Something new is needed.

    Without the dev time to add a fresh sense of opportunity and challenge I don't think much will change.

    The dilex will remain in a state similar to some aspects of the game.
    Post edited by protoneous on
  • livinlifejb90#4082 livinlifejb90 Member Posts: 218 Arc User
    you're all forgetting the bottom line. STO has entered the stage in its mmo lifespan where its nothing more than a cash farm. If the devs really disagreed with it, then they would do something. they would strike or whistleblow. but the don't. so the devs are complicit. this is just the state of the game now. its all about money. and will be until they decide to close up shop.​​
    gQytlm7.jpg
  • faelon#8433 faelon Member Posts: 358 Arc User
    Put the T6x and Elite Captain tokens on the Dil store.
  • husanakxhusanakx Member Posts: 1,588 Arc User
    Put the T6x and Elite Captain tokens on the Dil store.

    T6x tokens already make repeated appearances in the Dil store that is the Phoenix box.

    They already had the solution but abandoned it. Phoenix should be getting event ships/consoles/items... mudd store should have always been lockbox items only. They messed with the only real sink other then standard MMO item creep... in an obvious cash in move. The course was set when they started adding event items to the cash shop.
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,969 Community Moderator
    Put the T6x and Elite Captain tokens on the Dil store.

    Not really viable as that is only a short term bandaid that will drop off the moment most players have it on what ships/characters they want. Runs into the same problem as Fleet Holdings. Once done... what then?
    Star Trek, as a franchise, has never done particularly well in gaming since Star Trek isn't really built for games. The last Trek show ended back in 2005, and we didn't get a new one for over a decade, which limited STO's initial interest base.

    Not ENTIRELY accurate. The golden age of Star Trek games was in the 90s under Interplay, then turn of the century under Activision. There were quite a few games. Everything from Judgement Rites, which was a point and click adventure game with the TOS crew, to Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, which was a FPS. I think the only genre that Star Trek hadn't really touched until STO was RPG. But most Trek games were more focused on elements of combat, such as games like Legacy and Starfleet Command. Hell... Shattered Universe actually gave us a look into the Mirror Universe itself! And Star Trek did try their hand at a ground based RTS game with New Worlds.

    And then we have at least two interactive movies, Borg (Q was involved) and Klingon (Gowron was involved). And I know for a fact that Klingon was directed by Jonathan Frakes (as I watched a playthrough on YouTube and saw his name in the credits).
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
  • fleetcaptain5#1134 fleetcaptain5 Member Posts: 4,754 Arc User
    you're all forgetting the bottom line. STO has entered the stage in its mmo lifespan where its nothing more than a cash farm. If the devs really disagreed with it, then they would do something. they would strike or whistleblow. but the don't. so the devs are complicit. this is just the state of the game now. its all about money. and will be until they decide to close up shop.​​

    That might have been the case if it weren't for one important fact: Star Trek is more valuable than it ever has been during the game's existence. With the exception of the occasional movie, there was no new Trek being produced outside the game.

    That has changed. Soon there will be... what, four or five series running? At the same time even, with multiple target audiences being exposed to almost every part of the timeline. While not all of them (especially the animated ones) can easily be incorporated into the game, the live action shows can.

    There are investment opportunities here, certainly so if it's true what they have been telling us: that the game is doing better each year financially. They just need to find and convince someone to make those investments.
    [4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother

    [3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    rattler2 wrote: »
    Not ENTIRELY accurate. The golden age of Star Trek games was in the 90s under Interplay, then turn of the century under Activision. There were quite a few games. Everything from Judgement Rites, which was a point and click adventure game with the TOS crew, to Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, which was a FPS. I think the only genre that Star Trek hadn't really touched until STO was RPG. But most Trek games were more focused on elements of combat, such as games like Legacy and Starfleet Command. Hell... Shattered Universe actually gave us a look into the Mirror Universe itself! And Star Trek did try their hand at a ground based RTS game with New Worlds.

    And then we have at least two interactive movies, Borg (Q was involved) and Klingon (Gowron was involved). And I know for a fact that Klingon was directed by Jonathan Frakes (as I watched a playthrough on YouTube and saw his name in the credits).
    I think you meant to quote me with this, not paradox.

    Star Trek having games =/= being built for them. Most Star Trek games are very un-Star trek, being more action based games, or larger scale war RTSs. Almost none of them did well, especially the more point and click adventure games. At best they did middling.

    Its like comparing Warcraft, Final Fantasy, and Elder Scrolls, to Marvel, DC, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings. All of them are massive franchises in their own right, but the actual games(Warcraft, Final Fantasy, and Elder Scrolls) do better as MMOs(a kind of game) because they are game in the first place. The others(Marvel, DC, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings) tend to not do particularly well as video games, since they aren't games in the first place. Not to say all of the games based on those franchises are bad, but licensed games tend to range from outright bad, to just terribly mediocre. Only Batman and Spiderman get somewhat consistently good games.

    You look at how those franchise transferred into MMOs and Warcraft, Final Fantasy, and Elder Scrolls, are three of the biggest MMOs out there. Whereas things like STO, DCUO, and LoTRO, do OK, but never drew in the kind of crowds the others did because their fanbases don't have that same sort of gravity to games as the actual video game franchises do. You're never going to have that same kind of fanbase in an MMO from a non video game property as you would from an actual video game property. They aren't built for games, they are forced into games.
  • rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 57,969 Community Moderator
    If they didn't do well... why were there so many? And why was the modding communities for Legacy, Bridge Commander, and Armada II so active?
    And the games came out duing the height of Trek as well.

    I think the problem here is by what definition is successful, and what definition is a franchise "built for games". There are many Trek games that people have praised to hell and back, one of the biggest apparently being Bridge Commander. And as a whole, Star Trek was not built for games because it started back in the 60s! Before video games were even a thing.

    So on the matter of "built for or forced into"... I don't think ANYTHING is "built for games". The setting is more important than anything, and the Star Trek games do fit pretty well into the universe. Quite a few of them even had actual Trek actors involved. They COULD have gotten people who sound like them, like a lot of Star Wars games did, but they didn't. Dominion Wars even had the guy who played Admiral Ross and Gul Dukat!
    And we recently had Bridge Crew, which had VR capability, AND we got a new one coming out soon.

    And they went with things that would sell, so yes they did focus more on conflicts. Having a whole game with the pacing and amount of action as TMP is not really going to sell as well as one where you're saving Voyager from the Borg or some other hostile alien attacking the ship.

    Ultimately... I think Trek Games fall under the same umbrella as the shows. You can't difinitively say if its Trek or not because it is a matter of opinion. You said Trek pretty much fails at games, I pointed out that was not the case because we got a LOT in the 90s and early 2000s. And comparing STO to something like FF14 is unfair because of the sheer scale of the games and companies behind them. Sure they're about the same age, but again, its apples and oranges in terms of scale, funding, and... well... EVERYTHING.
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    There is also the fact that the Marvel game did not do very well because it was an ARPG and only a few of those have really taken off well, and DCUO was a great game while leveling until you slammed into the P2W wall at endgame (I hear it is not as bad now but the old P2W stigma is still there) and it still has some balance issues. I never played LotR online (just a little of the old paper-and-dice version) so I have no idea what its problem was.

    The problems were not from the fact that they were based on other media and not originally games (at least for the first two anyway, I don't know about the third), they were problems with the implementation of the games themselves.
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,100 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    questerius wrote: »

    Other than maintenance cost/upkeep for ships/facilities.

    I would hate an maintenance cost/upkeep for ships (in fact i have seen several games in which the upkeep eventually bankrupts players) but it would be one of the few consistent ways to remove dilithium from the balance.

    Each day, each character can grind a sheer unlimited amount of unrefined dilithium and refine 8.5K so the amount of dilithium grows daily.

    There are simply too few things to spend said dilithium on.
    Buying mission rewards with dilithium after completing a mission would be an option, but that would remove the need to replay missions.

    There are simply no easy solutions at this point.

    I have to agree with quest here. Everyone who is ranting is expecting Cryptic to come up with some oneshot, magic bullet solution to fix the economy, and when they don't they start crying fowl with accusations of malice, incompetence, or some other jab. The truth is right in quest's last line. THERE ARE NO EASY SOLUTIONS.
    This is a complex problem with a player driven economy. And the biggest problem is lack of demand for Dilithium. That is one of the major pieces of this puzzle. Its not the only piece, but its one of the biggest. And because of this... there is no magic bullet fix. Its not like fixing a bug in the game, you can't just flip a switch and make everything better... fixing an economy, especially a player driven one that is always in flux based on players reacting to things, takes time and experimentation. We've seen one thing make a dent already. But its only one part of a solution. We need sustainability. Not just spikes.

    And I also have to agree with my fellow forumites who disagree with ANYTHING like maintenance fees. That essentially penalizes players who are not active. STO is an extremely casual game, which is one of its appeals. You can get on anytime, you can take time off anytime, and you can come right back to where you were anytime. Imposing a maintenance fee on things would feel like a gut punch to a lot of players most likely. "Play x amount of time to earn x amount of y otherwise you can't do z". No. Just no.

    I agree with Rattler2 on all points and I still think selling T6 ships for Dil would at least add value to Dilithium, which in turn would get a Player Driven Economy slowly going again, it might be even better if we go even farther by adding T7 ships to the Dil store.

    But they don't make any money directly with Dilithium. The Dil Exchange is a way fior the person converting the DIl -> Zen to get something 'Free' (to them) by just playing the game - but SOMEONE spent real money for that Dil at some point (Even if it was an LTS person, they paid $150 - $300 at some point to Cryptic.

    It would be a bad business move to make something truly 'free' (if people had earlier always paid in Zen for it) for a long period of time as it does hurt profitability and cuts into their bottom line.
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  • seaofsorrowsseaofsorrows Member Posts: 10,918 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    questerius wrote: »

    Other than maintenance cost/upkeep for ships/facilities.

    I would hate an maintenance cost/upkeep for ships (in fact i have seen several games in which the upkeep eventually bankrupts players) but it would be one of the few consistent ways to remove dilithium from the balance.

    Each day, each character can grind a sheer unlimited amount of unrefined dilithium and refine 8.5K so the amount of dilithium grows daily.

    There are simply too few things to spend said dilithium on.
    Buying mission rewards with dilithium after completing a mission would be an option, but that would remove the need to replay missions.

    There are simply no easy solutions at this point.

    I have to agree with quest here. Everyone who is ranting is expecting Cryptic to come up with some oneshot, magic bullet solution to fix the economy, and when they don't they start crying fowl with accusations of malice, incompetence, or some other jab. The truth is right in quest's last line. THERE ARE NO EASY SOLUTIONS.
    This is a complex problem with a player driven economy. And the biggest problem is lack of demand for Dilithium. That is one of the major pieces of this puzzle. Its not the only piece, but its one of the biggest. And because of this... there is no magic bullet fix. Its not like fixing a bug in the game, you can't just flip a switch and make everything better... fixing an economy, especially a player driven one that is always in flux based on players reacting to things, takes time and experimentation. We've seen one thing make a dent already. But its only one part of a solution. We need sustainability. Not just spikes.

    And I also have to agree with my fellow forumites who disagree with ANYTHING like maintenance fees. That essentially penalizes players who are not active. STO is an extremely casual game, which is one of its appeals. You can get on anytime, you can take time off anytime, and you can come right back to where you were anytime. Imposing a maintenance fee on things would feel like a gut punch to a lot of players most likely. "Play x amount of time to earn x amount of y otherwise you can't do z". No. Just no.

    I agree with Rattler2 on all points and I still think selling T6 ships for Dil would at least add value to Dilithium, which in turn would get a Player Driven Economy slowly going again, it might be even better if we go even farther by adding T7 ships to the Dil store.

    But they don't make any money directly with Dilithium. The Dil Exchange is a way fior the person converting the DIl -> Zen to get something 'Free' (to them) by just playing the game - but SOMEONE spent real money for that Dil at some point (Even if it was an LTS person, they paid $150 - $300 at some point to Cryptic.

    It would be a bad business move to make something truly 'free' (if people had earlier always paid in Zen for it) for a long period of time as it does hurt profitability and cuts into their bottom line.

    Cryptic absolutely makes money off Dilithium.. or at least they could.

    People always want ships.. rather it’s for cosmetics, traits, or any other reason.. they are always in demand. If Ships were sold for Dilithium, they would cost a sizable amount of Dilithium and only being able to refine 8k per day would mean many weeks, months, or even years of refining. So how would players that want it now get around this? They would buy Zen to convert to Dilithium.

    Dilithium is no different from Zen.. they’re exactly the same. Their value is determined 100% by what can be obtained with that currency. Right now, Zen is far more valuable so people only buy Zen, if Dilithium had a high value people would pay money for Dilithium (through conversion.)

    Make no mistake, the absolute best financial position for Cryptic is if both Zen and Dilithium have a very high in game value. That is where they really score, and right now they are only capitalizing on half that opportunity. Yes, having Dilithum obtainable in game means that some will just stick to what they can get for free, but that is how thing are now anyway. That doesn’t change, the only thing that changes is Cryptic’s ability to cash in. The condition of players that don’t want to pay cash has always been present. These players previously just played and converted their Dilithium to Zen. In the current climate, those players simply quit. Cryptic makes nothing on players who quit.
    Insert witty signature line here.
  • faelon#8433 faelon Member Posts: 358 Arc User
    It was ALWAYS all about money.

    What, you think "Free to Play actually meant Free? That Zen on the exchange that we want to be able to trade RD for? Every single bit of it is there because somebody else spent real money. They should never have abandoned the subscription model, because Free to Playhasn't really helped them in the long term, which is WHY they have stopped with meaningful stuff people want to spend RD on that made trading Zen for it worth something to them, while evrything desirable is on the Zen side, and the price tags for these things are getting ridiculously high.

    Are the devs complicit? In that they are clearly following mandates handed down by the people signing their paychecks? Yes. I don't think that PWE wanted anyone to get anything for free. I think they want everyone spending real money on everything. Cryptic has access to the metrics. They know how many Zen sales are made on the DilEx. They can see how that trend has shifted since RD has been given almost no purpose in recent time. That's what happens when a currency gets devalued. People stop investing in it. And when it becomes worthless, nobody wnts it. But RD is the only way that the "I want everything for free" crowd can get what they want. Now if they really want something, they have to buy the Zen to get it. Or else stop playing.

    Not that it really matters anyway. The name of the STO game is "Run the same content over and over and over and maybe once a year you might get some new content to run over and over and over." And because the only thing they sell for Zen is fluff, then whatever bought with it just lets us look a little different while running the same content over and over and over.

    What we are looking at is the status quo PWE wanted. I don't know if Gearbox will be any better in the long run, but the dilex is broken. And short of Cryptic suddenly starting to put desirable stuff behind a RD paywall or adding actual RD sinks to as many gameplay elements as possible, only fundamental changes to the business model will make the game practical enough that the people signing the paychecks will allocate funds toward its actual improvement.
    We do all remember that the game failed rather spectacularly as a subscription game, and was saved from certain death by the ftp cash shop model, right? I mean this was an actual thing in this games history. it's not alone. There are a ton of good, but not WoW tier succesful games that suffered the same near death only to be saved by going f2p. As much as I hate to say it, the age of the Subscription Service game is soon to be gone. There are really only 2 successful long term subscription MMO's out there. WoW and FFXIV. And one of those has started talking about adding NFT's. So what does that tell you? And given how predatory Blizzard's cash shop has become I'm not sure WoW even counts as a true subscription model anymore. It's Activisions "You'll Pay to buy the game, pay a monthly subscription, and then pay cash for the good stuff, and damn well like it peasant!" business model.

  • strathkinstrathkin Member Posts: 2,666 Bug Hunter
    edited January 2022
    Yes, this is complicated. And yes, there is no "magic fix".

    But setting those 2 obvious statements aside, consider this simple qustion:

    Why did the dilex work for years, and what changed?

    Answer: for many years, Cryptic regularly added fleet holdings and dil sinks. What changed? They stopped.

    This isn't rocket science here. It used to work, and now it doesn't. It stopped working because they stopped doing the things they used to do.

    The accelerated sales have rubbed salt in the wound, but didn't cause the wound.

    Cryptic just stopped supporting fleet stuff, which was the major dil sink of the game.

    And yes, I lay that choice 100% at the feet of the devs. They choose to stop doing the thing that kept the dilex working, so they are 100% to blame for it collapsing.

    It's why I wish a little more attention was paid here, I mean expanding Tier 3 holding out to Tier 4 be easiest to do. Aside from adding perhaps a new Ferengi Commerce Holding out to Tier 4 (max) as well... ...Perhaps it be somewhere where we could use Fleet Credit, GPL & DIL to get some interesting new things.

    I don't think it should fall on just a few people, that was the idea of Fleets though working together--do at your own pace, yet to earn rewards you have to contribute.
    Post edited by strathkin on
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  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    If they didn't do well... why were there so many? And why was the modding communities for Legacy, Bridge Commander, and Armada II so active?
    Back in the 90s games like the ones Star Trek usually put out were incredibly cheap to make, so failures didn't matter all that much. Same reason you saw a lot of licensed games in that era doing poorly, yet more get keeping churned out by the truck full.

    Defined "active". Most game companies stopped proving/supporting modding because modding was never popular in the vast majority of games. Really only like GTA, and Bethesda games, retained a truly active modding scene until games like Garry's Mod, and Minecraft came out. Modding being "active" is almost entirely perception based, and not actually backed up by the hard data.
    And comparing STO to something like FF14 is unfair because of the sheer scale of the games and companies behind them.
    I don't really agree with this. Even if both STO and FF14 were developed by the same company, with the same amount of resources, and the same scope, FF14 would be blowing STO out of the water due to the difference in the franchise itself. More gamers would be drawn to FF because FF is a game already, whereas STO is a TV show adapted to a game.
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    strathkin wrote: »
    It's why I wish a little more attention was paid here, I mean expanding Tier 3 holding out to Tier 4 be easiest to do. Aside from adding perhaps a new Ferengi Commerce Holding out to Tier 4 (max) as well... ...Perhaps it be somewhere where we could use Fleet Credit, GPL & DIL to get some interesting new things.

    I don't think it should fall on just a few people, that was the idea of Fleets though working together--do at your own pace, yet to earn rewards you have to contribute.
    I'm not so sure this would be true. I recall reading on Reddit the notes of one of the livestreams where they talked about how they did T6 reps because they thought it would be easier to expand the existing reps, rather then make a new one. But in the end they found it took the exact same amount of time and effort as had they just made a new rep.

    I don't see expanding the existing fleet holdings being any different. You would still have to design new buildings/visual upgrades for each fleet holding, new gear, leveling projects, and post completion projects, for those new tiers. And with how many fleet holding there are, adding one new tier on every category for every fleet holding would be adding more then just making a new fleet holding with 12 tiers(0-3) like the Dil mine, or embassy, are. If anything I think it would be harder because they would have to try to fit in new upgrades to existing content that was never originally designed for it. Whereas just making a new holding lets you do it from scratch.

    I don't think existing fleet holdings need more tiers, I think they need more post completion projects akin to the Research Lab's boosts, and slightly better bonuses for constantly slotting them, to encourage more constant project activity in the holdings we have. A new tier is something that is one and done. Projects are endlessly repeatable.
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    I still feel that Star Trek could really use an elder scrolls/fallout scale RPG. Complete with modding potential that those games enjoy, coupled with expansions that focus on the different eras of Trek, as well as branches for all sorts of different roles within the universe. Want to be just an average citizen within the Federation? Do-able. Want to be captain of a cargo vessel? Do-able. Want to be an admiral in charge of an entire fleet of ships in a politically-charged storyline? Do-able. And that's just the Federation side. The Klingon resource pack would release individually and include a series of missions and a massive library of resources for the community to tell their own Klingon-centric stories, as well as official missions that would make use of both... Then of course there would be Romulan and Cardassian resource packs that would do the same thing... Then the Gamma Quadrant pack. And then the Delta Quadrant pack... Then an alternate timelines pack that would inclide resources based on all those alternate reality episodes throughout Trek history...
    This sounds too much like Star Citizen. While that game's development is plagued by mismanagement, its equally hindered by what you describe here. Being able to essentially "do everything" sounds great... on paper. In practice, trying to code "everything" doesn't work. The sheer amount of things you describe here, just for the Federation side, is far more then what even Skyrim did with all of its DLC, and Creation Club content, put together. And many people would say Skyrim stretched itself too thin as is, leading to many of its features being bare bones. What you describe for the Federation side alone would be multiple game's worth of content by itself. Getting a fully functional Klingon experience wouldn't be doable in DLC, it would require its own game as well. Same with Romulans, Cardassians, Dominion, different Eras, etc. Every single one of those things would need a full game on its own to fully flesh out.

    If this is what you want STO to be, you would never have gotten your wish. No game does this, because no game can do this. Star Citizen is the titanic folly of such an attempt, and the perfect example of why dreaming big doesn't "just work" as Todd would say.
    Skyrim itself has been released and re-released over and over for 10 years, and it remains heavily played and heavily modded. So in theory a Star Trek RPG with that sort of scope could also be commercially viable for a decade or more.
    Skyrim's longevity has little to do with its scope. Many games have come out since Skyrim, copying it formula, but increasing their scope, and have failed to have anywhere close to the same staying power as Skyrim did. Skyrim's success has just as much to do with a perfect storm of timing, and cultural coincidences, as it did with Bethesda's own game making skills. I doubt TES 6, even if its objectively better and larger in every way then Skyrim will have the same longevity as Skyrim itself did.

    Trying to compare anything to Skyrim is folly. The only thing that is like Skyrim is Skyrim. Skyrim can't be intentionally replicated, only accidentally stumbled upon through an equally lucky alignment of factors.
  • leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,331 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    If they didn't do well... why were there so many? And why was the modding communities for Legacy, Bridge Commander, and Armada II so active?
    And the games came out duing the height of Trek as well.

    I think the problem here is by what definition is successful, and what definition is a franchise "built for games". There are many Trek games that people have praised to hell and back, one of the biggest apparently being Bridge Commander. And as a whole, Star Trek was not built for games because it started back in the 60s! Before video games were even a thing.

    So on the matter of "built for or forced into"... I don't think ANYTHING is "built for games". The setting is more important than anything, and the Star Trek games do fit pretty well into the universe. Quite a few of them even had actual Trek actors involved. They COULD have gotten people who sound like them, like a lot of Star Wars games did, but they didn't. Dominion Wars even had the guy who played Admiral Ross and Gul Dukat!
    And we recently had Bridge Crew, which had VR capability, AND we got a new one coming out soon.

    And they went with things that would sell, so yes they did focus more on conflicts. Having a whole game with the pacing and amount of action as TMP is not really going to sell as well as one where you're saving Voyager from the Borg or some other hostile alien attacking the ship.

    Ultimately... I think Trek Games fall under the same umbrella as the shows. You can't difinitively say if its Trek or not because it is a matter of opinion. You said Trek pretty much fails at games, I pointed out that was not the case because we got a LOT in the 90s and early 2000s. And comparing STO to something like FF14 is unfair because of the sheer scale of the games and companies behind them. Sure they're about the same age, but again, its apples and oranges in terms of scale, funding, and... well... EVERYTHING.

    I think the problem with Star Trek, is that it's percieved as a niche area still, yet it's one of the most 'modded for' franchises out there in the Grand Strategy and Real-Time Strategy arenas. Star Trek is a perfect for those areas as well. It's basically what STO 'Admiralty' could be. Star Trek is perfect to base games off; for others to say it isn't is just as bad as 'flat earth theory'. :lol:

    I would give my back-teeth for a new Birth of The Federation!
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    reyan01 wrote: »
    I'm of the opinion that FFXIV is something of a unique case, personally.

    As have said in previous posts, a healthy number of my online friends who used to frequent STO migrated to FFXIV and now consider that to be their primary game.

    I myself have absolutely no prior knowledge or experience of the FF franchise. However upon recommendation from several of my aforementioned friends (and watching one of them livestream some of their gameplay), and reading about the awards the game has won recently, I decided to register for a Free Trial account a few months ago. To be honest I didn't pay it much attention initially and preferred to stick to STO. Sadly, my interest in STO has been on the decline of late, due (at least in part) to my dislike of the game's business model and any news/updates being about either something new to buy, a gamblebox promotion or a FOMO fueled event.

    So I turned my attention back to FFXIV and am seeing why my friends recommended it so highly. Sadly being on a Free Trial account means my in-game time there is limited as the popularity of that game, atop the fact that they've been unable to upgrade their servers due to being unable to purchase semiconductor chips, means that I usually get stuck in a long queue. And can't purchase the full version of the game either, as they suspended sales (and Free Trial registrations) to ease pressure on their servers until they can resolve the capacity issue.

    Again, I have no prior knowledge or experience of the FF franchise, and neither did some of my friends, but it is - in my opinion - doing enough right to attract players like me. And the interesting element of it is that they rebuilt the game, due to it being a complete lemon in it's former incarnation, and turned it from a failure into one of the most popular/successful MMOs on the market.
    I'll be perfectly honest, I've never understood why Final Fantasy was ever popular as a franchise. The original is one of the most bare bones awful RPGs I've ever played(not that I played it when it came out, but even in retrospect to other RPGs of the era), and each respective game has done little to change that opinion.

    When I played a free trial FF14 did in the past I only saw a stock standard FF game, like all the others. Not to mention all the horrible things I've heard on Reddit about FF14 from people who play it regularly.
    -The devs are pathological liars who've broken every promise they made.
    -The housing system is abusive, and takes your house away if you cancel you sub. This despite the devs themselves telling people to unsub in-between content updates.
    -Despite the money FF14 is making the game has awful content regularity issues, with content drops happening maybe once every 6 months, and just being a new dungeon.(even STO puts out more content then that jeez).
    -The game has less content each expansion despite each one doing so well.
    -The game has a horribly abusive cash shop, and many highly Pay-2-win features like the retainer system. Which you need for inventory space, being able to sell things on the market, and retainer unique crafting materials.

    The only factor people seemed to really care about was the worst one ever. That all the "cute" girls can be put in super revealing clothing. That, and it looks pretty. FF14's success seems more to do with WoW's failure, and constant shooting itself in the foot, rather then its own successes in gameplay and such.
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,100 Arc User
    rattler2 wrote: »
    If they didn't do well... why were there so many? And why was the modding communities for Legacy, Bridge Commander, and Armada II so active?
    False equivalence here. Just because a game has a dedicated set of fans, it doesn't neccissarily mean the games were overly successful financially <--- And that's the reason ANY of these games exist; to make those that licensed them and created them benefit financially and make a profit.

    Interplay saturated the market and made full use of their license and had both good success, but ultimately bad failure, and eventually went bankrupt (and also tried to BLAME CBS when they started to fail with a lot of the Star Trek offering too.)
    Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
    TOS_Connie_Sig_final9550Pop.jpg
    PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited January 2022
    Tell me... How much have you actually PLAYED Skyrim? Or Obliviom? Or Morrowind.
    Steam shows just under 700 hours in Oldrim, and just under 200 in Skyrim SE. So about 900 hours total in Skyrim. I played Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, NV, and Fallout 4, about just as much.
    Each of these enjoyed tremendous commercial success and remaind commercially viable for years, each with a very strong modding community adding to their longevity. If skyrim's commercial longevity and strong modding community ar reprsentative of a perfect storm of timing, as you suggest, then that perfect storm happened three times in a row. Five times, really, as Fallout 3 and 4 have also enjoyed commercial longevity and a strong modding community. So maybe you don't really know as much about what you are talking about as you want to come off as knowing, because I've BEEN involved with elder scrolls modding, and I've been a player of Elder Scrolls games since Arena, which did not have any modding support.
    Neither Morrowind nor Oblivion had the same sort of modding scene/longevity as Skyrim did. Both previous game's mod scenes were already starting to putter out quite some time before the next game came out. Whereas Skyrim's has gone on for MUCH longer then either game's did. Both Morrowind and Oblivion still have a small number of modders around, but neither are, or were, anything like Skyrim's mod scene.

    Fallout, in general, has never had the same sort of modding scene as Elder Scrolls did. Despite each Elder Scrolls game topping the last in the number of mods, both New Vegas and Fallout 3 have yet to reach even Oblivion's number of mods, and were both dead long before coming to a decade old. This is a result of scifi being much harder to design for then fantasy, and the fact Fallout just isn't as popular as Elder Scrolls in general. Fallout 4's mod scene, the strongest of the three, is still generally considered to be lagging far behind Elder Scrolls, and the vitality of that modding scene has already dropped massively compared to Skyrim's. Fo4's becomes something of a trickle outside of those overly ambition "recreate the old game in the new game engine!" projects that pretty much never actually come out.
    And to compare what I am talking about to star Citizen is rubbish. Star Citizen is an MMO. What I am talking about is not. Star Citizen intends to include everything AND the kitchen sink in its core game, what I propose does not. Thinks like being captain of a cargo vessel probably wuld not be an official expansion or content pack for a hypothetical Star Trek RPG. But with the same modding capabilities as a game like Skyrim, a modder would introduce the option into the mix with the core options, and there would be people who would play it. What officially doesn't get fleshed out would be fleshed out by modders, and players who look for different experiences would likely give thm a try.
    It doesn't matter if Star Citizen is an MMO or not. Being a freighter captain, being an admiral in command of a huge fleet, being an average Joe citizen working a 9 to 5 job, is essentially asking for everything. And modders wouldn't be able to mod all those things in because you would need fundamental engine changes to support it, and you can't fundamentally edit the engine with free mod tools due to various licensing restrictions. This is why Skyrim modders have to use TRIBBLE in systems to try to ape new animations into the game, and why the unofficial patch team cant fix every issue. Some issues are engine level issues, and modders can't do jack about that.
    I really wish Star Trek would get that type of game with that open-ended support for a modding community,, because it allows so much potential to be reached bot officially and unofficially. STO by all rights should have had something new added to it every year to keep it more than on autopilot in terms of actual gameplay options, but PWE has withheld the funding it would take to grow the team to a point of being able to do more than just maintaining the cash shop status quo. Because only cash shop fluff keeps the bills paid. Real gameplay is not monetized so it is not prioritized. And if it is not prioritized, it isn't being produced. Not regularly.
    No MMO, hell, no RPG, adds some big new thing every year. It takes far more then a year to develop something fleshed out enough to feel good. Doing something in a year's time is just going to lead it to be TRIBBLE. This the reason why MMOs take the approach of padding out the time between expansions(usually 1.5-2 years apart) with content updates that may add new zones or w/e, but don't add any really new gameplay mechanics.

    Even if you could make worthwhile gameplay systems that quickly you wouldn't want to for a number of reasons.
    1. It doesn't give players enough time to really adjust to said system before being thrown a new one.
    2. Giving people too many systems to work with just leads to confusion in the playerbase since the game is inconsistent, and pulling them in 10 different directions.
    3. Putting in that many gameplay systems just leads to maintenance and support issues where you can't keep supporting that many unique gameplay modes over a decade, so things get left behind, or break down.

    It's simply not sustainable, which is why no game does it, or does it well. You always want to build a small core of gameplay mechanics and focus on developing those rather then trying to constantly introduce new things.
  • strathkinstrathkin Member Posts: 2,666 Bug Hunter
    edited January 2022
    reyan01 wrote: »
    Yes, this is complicated. And yes, there is no "magic fix".

    But setting those 2 obvious statements aside, consider this simple qustion:

    Why did the dilex work for years, and what changed?

    Answer: for many years, Cryptic regularly added fleet holdings and dil sinks. What changed? They stopped.

    This isn't rocket science here. It used to work, and now it doesn't. It stopped working because they stopped doing the things they used to do.

    The accelerated sales have rubbed salt in the wound, but didn't cause the wound.

    Cryptic just stopped supporting fleet stuff, which was the major dil sink of the game.

    And yes, I lay that choice 100% at the feet of the devs. They choose to stop doing the thing that kept the dilex working, so they are 100% to blame for it collapsing.

    This.

    Fact is, even if they did come up with a 'magic fix' there would absolutely be a sale, or new gamblebox, not far behind to ensure that said 'magic fix' didn't do any lasting good.

    I'm of the opinion that the Phoenix box was the best Dil sink they had. Sadly the benefit of the Phoenix store as a Dil sink was watered down when they decided to monetise items that could've been put in the Phoenix store (or should only have been obtainable that way - Epic Phoenix token for example) by putting them in Mudds instead.

    I do think they should keep Event Ships to Phoenix Epic tokens mostly, as after all Mudd's has really refocused on offering Lockbox/Lobi/Promo Ships in various 3 or 6 choice packs.

    Still I think where the @thegrandnagus1 stated earlier, that by removing expanding Fleet Holdings has really hurt the DILEX the most. It's why awhile ago I suggested expanding all Tier III Fleet Holdings to IV, perhaps one a year over the next 5 years. They could also in time do a Ferengi Commerce Holding also out to IV. Beside it's be nice to get something that required Fleet Credit or DIL for some items, while others require GPL and DIL depending what the item is.

    So hopefully they consider both these aspects, doesn't seem like a complicated solution. Don't really need large changes to existing Tier 3 Fleet Holdings, just subtle improvements to refresh each look. Also the Nagis would likely love to see a Ferenginar Commerce Holding. I'm also sure many would also like a Holding that required a third currency like GPL as well, giving us somewhere to spend some of that.

    o:)
    Post edited by strathkin on
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