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The Grind
TheOctagon
Member UncommonPosts: 411
Just curious how many people are still playing STO after the latest patch took away FMs from The Foundry missions.
The last patch ((Thursday)) is the latest in Cryptics and PWEs quest to turn a fun game into a daily grindfest for enough Dilithium, Romulan Marks, Fleet Marks, EC's and Lobis just to make it to the NEXT day, which normally takes 4 or 5 hours a day for a casual gamer. Then maybe you have time to chat with your friends and fleetmates.
D.Stahl, in his last thread explaining why they removed FMs from The Foundry without replacing said marks anywhere else in the game, gave so many non-answers I had to take an asprin after I tried to read through the convoluted mess that was his post. Please, read it for yourself...
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=552391
There has been an underlying tension within the game since PWEs aquisition, mainly due to the fact, IMO, it is PWEs established goal to turn every game into a grindfest of one sort or another. Bugs that have been within the game since beta, have never been fixed and every new season has added even more to the point if you start a new character, you have to plan your characters advancement around these bugs. Their newest sector Tau Dewa is riddled with bugs starting at Red Alerts and continuing right through the newest Romulan missions with no fixes in sight. This last patch added even more bugs that at the time of this posting have not been fixed, although players have found workarounds for most them. Thank goodness the players are smarter than the developers...
This latest decision by Cryptic and PWE basically sounded the death knell for fleets of under 25 members establishing starbases within 3 to 4 years. Gated content holds diehard players back from endgame content and with the removal of FMs from Foundry missions, starbase upgrades are almost impossible to grind at higher levels. ((Unless your in a 200+ member fleet in most cases.)) Honestly, at this point I don't see the game being around that long and I think the only real reason that people are still playing is because it is Star Trek, and that soon will wear thin...
In closing, if they can mess up the number one Sci Fi franchise in the world in less than the 3 years its been around, whats that say for Neverwinters future...
The last patch ((Thursday)) is the latest in Cryptics and PWEs quest to turn a fun game into a daily grindfest for enough Dilithium, Romulan Marks, Fleet Marks, EC's and Lobis just to make it to the NEXT day, which normally takes 4 or 5 hours a day for a casual gamer. Then maybe you have time to chat with your friends and fleetmates.
D.Stahl, in his last thread explaining why they removed FMs from The Foundry without replacing said marks anywhere else in the game, gave so many non-answers I had to take an asprin after I tried to read through the convoluted mess that was his post. Please, read it for yourself...
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=552391
There has been an underlying tension within the game since PWEs aquisition, mainly due to the fact, IMO, it is PWEs established goal to turn every game into a grindfest of one sort or another. Bugs that have been within the game since beta, have never been fixed and every new season has added even more to the point if you start a new character, you have to plan your characters advancement around these bugs. Their newest sector Tau Dewa is riddled with bugs starting at Red Alerts and continuing right through the newest Romulan missions with no fixes in sight. This last patch added even more bugs that at the time of this posting have not been fixed, although players have found workarounds for most them. Thank goodness the players are smarter than the developers...
This latest decision by Cryptic and PWE basically sounded the death knell for fleets of under 25 members establishing starbases within 3 to 4 years. Gated content holds diehard players back from endgame content and with the removal of FMs from Foundry missions, starbase upgrades are almost impossible to grind at higher levels. ((Unless your in a 200+ member fleet in most cases.)) Honestly, at this point I don't see the game being around that long and I think the only real reason that people are still playing is because it is Star Trek, and that soon will wear thin...
In closing, if they can mess up the number one Sci Fi franchise in the world in less than the 3 years its been around, whats that say for Neverwinters future...
Comments
I've got a three day weekend, no wife, no kids, for the first itme in many months. My plans for these rare three days of me time?
To play STO! Three whole days to immerse myself in the parts of the game I love, enough time for the GRIND, earn a few FMs and dil. Then jump into story-line missions and then enjoy one of the longer foundry missions...
So far I've logged on for a total of 2hrs in three days, done my DOffs, then returning to see how many pages have been added to the PWE Forums hottest thread. Still nothing more than poor old Bran trying to deflect all the flack that is in truth not aimed at him, or at Dstahl, but squarely at PWE...
I guess it's a holiday over there, so little chance of an answer before Tuesday. Although I'm pretty sure that they are all keeping track of developments, plus the amount of negative reaction over this "change".
Just wondering how many other forums are getting posts over this, I hear that SWTOR forums are on to this as well.
"Just curious how many people are still playing STO"
/raise_hand (though I refuse to even go near to those messy fleet grind parts
)
What can I say... I like the game, so I try to stick those parts which aren't infected (much) with the Grind yet. Collecting DOffs, ships, doing missions from the Foundry, explore or just flying around the Quadrants, sometimes joining an stf for the lolz...
But I feel for you, it really seems based on the last two seasons, their answer to everything is: put more grind in it. At least their reasons are somewhat funny, like in the dastahl letter you posted: "we aggressively adjusted Dilithium rewards in order to keep Dilithium earnings back in line with our goal". Funny - but at least honest
Since I don't care about fleets, the remove of Fleet Marks doesn't affect me (all I have is came from Foundry and so far I never used those marks for anything
). But what she wrote about npc's wiping each other out... wow. I'm a story-mission oriented fella, maybe that's why I never heard of those kinda missions. Damn, how many posts I made where I stated there's no farming / exploit in the Foundry... I think it's only fair to say I was sloppy and lacked with information on the subject :I
On the other hand I think she's wrong with the mission search Achilles heel part - at least in cases like mine, where you search for story-oriented missions. She wrote: "Currently there is no possible way for a player to search for and find a battle-focused mission as opposed to story-driven mission using the current UI." I think the opposite. Just go for the reviews. Easy as that, it works for me.
True, the stars are averaged out in time, but the reviews in almost every time tells if it's a pew-pew mission or a story / lore based one. See, action-players mostly never write a review
Even if the mission is awesome for them, has lots of stuff to shooting down, they just rate it with 5 stars, they don't waste time to write: "thanks, it was great fun to shoot down the hundreds of mobs, you placed them well, great job" 
Story missions on the other hand, if written well, in most cases grips the players to write in the review box at least a Thank you, or comments, ideas, noticing possible errors, etc. So with checking the reviews, it's easy to separate story and action missions, imo.
She's also not stating the whole problem with STO either, just focusing on one facet of it.
The game has so many bugs, they keep piling more and more on top without fixing any. The two minute BOFF skillcooldown that came with this last patch is just horrible. And the sad thing is, IT WAS ALL REPORTED BY PEOPLE TESTING ON TRIBBLE!!
They patched anyways! There are threads in the Tribble forums detailing the problems and Cryptic went ahead and went live with it anyways...
[quote]Originally posted by TheOctagon
[b]She's also not stating the whole problem with STO either, just focusing on one facet of it.[/quote]
She consistently does this. Most of her articles are designed to bring forth the "pros" of the game while at the same time, writing off most criticisms as minimal, blown out of proportion, exadurated, or simply not an issue. She also then takes to the comment section to argue/insult anyone with negative feedback. Much like the defenders that frequent the STO boards on this site. (yes I know, Im going to be flamed for that comment, and I can think of exactly who. It never fails :P)
After reading a multitude of her articles, its my opinion that you should go elsewhere for a more unbiased source. Her loyalties/priorities are obvious. Report what she wants to report, ignore anything that she doesn't want to talk about that may be relevant at the time. She also seems to like to hear herself talk in every article, with how she likes going "into depth" about things.
Personally, I think Massively should separate themselves from the likes of her, as her articles are mostly filled with biased opinion pieces loosely based of the goings-on in the game and up coming content. Fire her ass, get someone in there that has at least a little journalistic integrity. She would fit right in at Cryptic. The last time I checked, Cryptic hired their now community manager, BranFlakes from Massively, who was also disgustingly biased.
I think Bran knew exactly what he was getting into as the person who covered STO at Massively for a good while. He knew exactly what he was dealing with... so... no, not Poor ol Flakes. Ya know, I do feel sorry for him a little bit. He has to be the buffer between Cryptic and the shit storms that erupt whenever Cryptic does something idiotic. Which is often.
Ah, what am I saying, I don't feel any sympathy for him at all. Do your job Flakes, keep on keeping on.
To finally answer the OP. I play off and on. I enjoy space combat, and sometimes I will pay attention to the duty officer system. Mainly, if I have an itch for Space combat, I play STO. I try to get into ground combat to. I believe I could enjoy it much more if there wasn't so much input delay.
Also, I am playing with a TAC officer at the moment and having some decent enjoyment from it. However, my TAC character, while in ground combat, will sit there and do the melee attack over and over and over, roughly 6 to ten times before it lets me do anything else. I try and switch weapons, it wants to do the melee attack before it will switch. Want to use an ability? It does the melee attack as well as firing off the power.
The worst culprit of this happening is when I try and dodge. My character will just stand there doing that silly melee animation over and over and over before dodging, if it even does.
I use a razer naga as my mouse, and I think that the side buttons on the mouse that I use to fire off powers may be part of the problem. Anyone else think so? If not, what could be the likely problem?
Look this thing is a joke , it was an issue in CoX and now it's an issue in STO . Wow , what a surprise! I'd say i was shocked , but past history says this snafu is typical Cryptic operating proceedure.It's not like it wasn't predicted or warned against.
If they are serious about it ,they'll go through the missions and charge a maintainennce fee for keeping missions on the Foundry.
My biggest problem with this game has always been it's design and it's performance. I never had a problem with loading screens until I played this game. I expect a loading screen when I change planets. I don't expect one ever time I enter a shaft or sometimes even a room. I did one mission recently where I had to go around a ship and make repairs which required me to enter a turbo lift for each one. By the third ride up that thing I was ready to log off because I was spending more time in loading screens than playing the game.
Even after three years the performance is still terrible. I have a rig that runs TOR, RIFT,TSW and other games very smoothly yet STO is jerky and laggy even at lower settings. There's just no excuse for that.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
The update to remove FMs from the Foundry doesn't affect me as I never play Foundry missions. Foundry stuff tends to be of poor quality so I don't bother with it. I can understand and sympathize with those who are upset about the change though.
As far as the grind goes, I've never been bothered by having to grind for items per say. The implementation of the rep grinds in STO is poorly executed IMO. The 20 hour timers are just plain stupid as far as I'm concerned. Most of my characters are now parked on New Romulus to buy shield charges and regenerators for the next round of Omega and Romulan rep. I log in, fill up the requirements and log out becuase I've nothing to do for the next 20 hours until I can progress.
I also don't care for having to grind yet again for the same items I've already unlocked before. I ran STFs get the Borg space sets back when STFs were actual missions. Then I had to grind several hundred STFs and ESTFs to unlock the same gear along with MACO and Honor Guard sets when they put STFs into the queue system. Now, I'm having to grind yet again, in addition to forking over huge amounts of items and dilithium to get the same gear again. I haven't even bothered with starbases or embassies as the requirements for those are a complete joke.
It's abundantly clear these were added as massive time and currency sinks. I do hope they start adding some decent content soon becuase you can only do the same patrols and STFs so many times before you get bored of it. Personally, they should've kept the "prestige" system like they had in CoX. You can earn that doing any PvE content and weren't limited to the stupid tasks they give you.
and the grind is not enough... just look at the upcoming stuff for may and beyond according to http://www.stowiki.org/Upcoming_content
rep system for pvp, rep system for foundry, new fleet holdings with all the associated leveling required for those, rep system for crafting, rep system for anti tholian, rep system rep system rep system...grind grind grind.... welcome to china enjoy your grind game.
I had quit for a year and came back recently and the game has really gone downhill... drops are all crap, no upgrades via drops unless you are brand new... best gear is now locked behind grinds. Previously dropped/trade in items gone, replaced with grinds.... uninstalled the game after less than 2 weeks and unfortunately I am done.
" Remastering (cutscenes etc.) and incorporating the best Foundry missions into the hard code of the game as part of the official story line; possibly replacing some of the less popular Cryptic missions "
One of my biggest problems with the foundry. They claim copy rights to all material posted on the foundry, therefore they own it. The authors are basically denied any all possible compensation from said work. Cryptic has now resorted to basically stealing Foundry work and posting it as hard code in it's game with no acknowledgement of source. The real problem with the foundry is this part.
I can't say I'm surprised they will be adding more rep grinds for gear.
I don't disagree with you, however to be fair, no one forces authors to use the Foundry. Stop using it and their work won't get used this way.
THis is why I always refused to take part in the foundry. It's basically a feature to cover up for lazy developers.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
OH MAH GAWD!!! WE HAVE TO WORK FOR SOMETHING!!
Really gents, really? The bugs I'd admit to being bad...if I'd ever run into a bug (seriously I don't remember ever having a bug in that game and I've played every inch of it) and as for the game itself... me and a friend fire it up a few times a year to do STFs and other shit together and have fun, the game in that way is fun, if I were to play it non-stop it likely would get boring but meh, at least the F2P system is fair, they respected their former subs when they went F2P and say what you will about the foundry system but I've had quite a few epic adventures in it and took the time to thank the people who made them and while it is a bit harsh for Cryptic not to give them credit (but as I haven't yet seen them not do it I will hold my reaction for this if the foundry stuff gets put in and the people don't get credited) but in the end the people who made the content did so to enrich their community and offer people some awesome adventures which the top ones did and en some, if you think they deserve praise (which I certainly do) thank them yourselves (I did that).
Playing: MWO
Waiting For: Star Citizen
You only fire up the game a few times a year? Jeez, I play the game more than you it seems, and I like the game less! Weird.
Yeah but it's one of the few themepark games that isn't going to Hell in a handbasket yet, why shit on it?
Why not? It IS pretty bad. While were at it, why do people shit on GW2, WOW, and every MMO made EVER! Everyone has an opinion. And I edited my post but you seem to have caught my long-windedness. And I guess you are accurate to an extent about the hell in a handbasket part. Usually the forums blow up into shit storm city.
But, this is only my opinion, formed over time since closed beta. Meh, Im sorry if we don't agree. :P
Grinds are nessisary and STO does it more fairly than many oher games I've seen. In WOW you grind for weeks or months in raid to get the best gear only to have them become trash when the next xpac or patch comes out. In the Diablo series you have to slay thousands of mobs to have something descent drop, grant it's fun as hell, you have to do multiple runs to get what you want.
You do get rewarded well for your efforts. In STO you earn dilithium which can be use to buy a large selection of items, the dilithium/zen exchange is player run so you buy Z-store (cash) items, you don't have to pay anything! The devs at Cryptic are so pleased with this system that they are putting it into all their games. Champions has questionite, Neverwinter will have astral diamonds.
I understand what your saying and I can't really say I disagree with most of your post. The part I take issue with is the combination of grind added with lockboxes, when master keys that don't drop as loot ingame (if they do, I've never got one as loot). You MUST purchase them in the C store. Some don't take issue with that at all, but I do.
Yes, grind is a part of MMO's, but I just cant convince myself that Cryptic does it all that well. Again, my opinion, I just have stubborn opinions that won't change that easily. They haven't changed since launch, but I am always waiting for Cryptic to do something to let me change my opinion.
Ive loved Star Trek since when The Next Generation was a new series, and I guess some of my trepadations about this game come from how the game actually turned out compared to my idea of what a trek MMO should be. I admit, its my fault for not adapting, but there it is.
In any case, I like aspects of STO, but not enough to convince me its all that great.