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Bowman's Star Trek Online Corner: Mirror of Discovery Edition - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Bowman's Star Trek Online Corner: Mirror of Discovery Edition - MMORPG.com
When there are signals coming from a planet in the galaxy who are you going to call to investigate it? In my case Captain Shinzor, a level 65 Tactical Captain. I traveled to a planet you all should know by now, Pahvo. The same mysterious planet that we see live in Star Trek: Discovery, is subject to some strange readings emanating from an Ion Storm in space. What is this the new Star Trek from JJ Abrams? No, it’s something worse.
Comments
Cryptic has been doing many positive things with STO lately, imo, but it has been feeling like a 2 steps forwards 1 step back approach since there has been some negatives too. I think Cryptic's overall quality of additions have improved, they weren't bad to begin with, but relabeling queues to TFOs isn't adding content, rearranging missions in the journal isn't too helpful but I suppose it is good busy work, 2 missions for a story arc used to be 6 or more missions for a story arc, Cryptic shut-down the Foundry ceasing a valuable assest to STO & lots of content, & Cryptic's forums lately are notoriuos for voiding any critisizing threads/posts.
Hopefully with DISC's season 2 over we won't keep being pushed only DISC content, not bad content but too much of 1 thing gets boring, & allow some expansion of other ideas. Most recently Cryptic is offering a earn a free C-Store ship multi-event scenario which is a positive. Heck, my playing in STO would be a lot more fun too if I was handed an Engle ship lol. Lately in STO my rule of thumb is if Cryptic allows me to have a free ship I'll buy a ship or other Items/Services when there's a sale.
The other issue is why arent romunlans "romulans" thier either tied to feds or klinks and then we have the dumpster fire of jem hadar and cardassians got totally screwed its all very sad the game has such potential but its run by clueless tools who are gold diggers smh
I haven't abandoned STO, yet, for (1) I still have some zen I had stockpiled over years to use-up since I'm not buying any more zen & (2) I haven't found a nice alternative scifi mmo that is comparable to STO or better to enjoy.
Even earlier today Cryptic announced a couple of more ships being released in May, these 2 will be C-Store ships at least & not "gambling", of course Cryptic doesn't have these C-Store ships being top-notch you have to get the fleet versions. This bundlle of 2 ships includes 1 fleet ship module lol, 5 keys to "gamble" with no since probably going to lose offers no or very little value, & then of course still no Romulan ship. Since Cryptic has already stated they'll be releasing the DISC Enterprise & the Section 31 ship I'm sure those will be the "gamble" ships.
I tried over two months time to change my own mind as I kept playing the game looking for any rhyme or reason to change my opinion and keep my precious ego from admitting I made a terrible mistake. In fact, I came back to the game several times over the years only to be disappointed again and again. While I saw some minor improvements, the overall flaws in the game and at times, stability issues, caused me to continue my disappointment and contempt for this game.
I really truly wanted to like this game and I've given it every opportunity over the years to make amends and become even a minuscule aspect of what I thought the game should've been. Instead, I find that star trek as an MMO is being held prisoner as this game continues to disappoint and bring back all those horrible feelings. At this point, I simply wish they would close this game down and give someone else a chance to make a decent star trek MMO from scratch. In all honesty I wouldn't even care if it was a clone of something else as long as it was fun and something that was engaging in some capacity. Okay so my rants over, sorry to take up your time, but I'm sure if you think back, you can identify that one game that you had such high hopes for, but in the end delivered a swift kick to your nut sack and left you feeling betrayed in an area that means so much to all of us.
No need to be sorry, that is your opinion & it is just as valid if not more than anyone elses. Reading your journey with STO made me realize though that probably one of my most dominent feelings with STO over the last couple of years is disappointment. I do think STO is far better than it was when it first began as F2P which was shortly after I began playing it off & on. I also think that the last couple of years of STO even with or without Discovery shoved into the mix has been on a decline & continues to slip. I'm not even sure if Cryptic cares as much as hopefully they did about STO since when asked tough questions they ignore or deflect then as I previously said never get around to fixing what they said they would do most times. Instead I think Cryptic focuses on saying something to have players buy stuff then never do it or release something really good to have players buy it to purposely "nerf" it later. That latter might be a game industry standard though. Just last week there were 4 consecutive days of patches so I guess that is good & bad. I'm playing the game less & less, usually only events now that offer something I deem useful. I think Cryptic has done some good things over the last year, but not sure if Cryptic is just over worked not talented enough or just doesn't care as much anymore. Over the last few years though Cryptic has done a good job turning STO into a casino slot machine with a side Star Trek themed storyline.
* "All the good ships" is a pretty relative term. There are a lot of garbage ships in the boxes as well, and there are plenty of really good ships that are attainable from the cash store or just by playing events. The game isn't hard, and a BOFF seat here or there isn't going to make any difference to most people's actual game experience. Power creep still exists, but difficulty creep is pretty much non-existent, so all you are doing by getting that "good ship" is shaving off a few seconds more from a mission or bragging to the server anyway.
* That being said, they do lock some stuff away so deep that even people willing to spend a lot of money will never see it. While a Crossfield or Walker class is attainable with some work (via cash exchange if you buy things like keys and sell them in game along with earnings from playing), things like the T6 Constitution are so expensive that most people aren't even going to try to save for one.
* If you think PWE is bad about this stuff, you really need to play some other games. SWTOR, for example, does everything that PWE games do, PLUS you need to pay a monthly fee if you want to play the end game content. In fact, a lot of other games lock actual important gameplay options behind "optional" subs, and constantly spam you to remind you that you don't have one. Even games that are less aggregious like ESO's cosmetic-only lockboxes are actually pretty bad, making you pay in different ways like charging you for expansions every 9 months and slowing you down in various ways if you don't have a sub.
And don't get me started on Battle Royale games...
So, I respect your opinions on the subject, and agree that PWE is pretty bad in the ways you mention. However, in the grand scheme of the MMO industry as a whole they aren't any worse than anyone else, and in a lot of ways that actually count, they are a lot better than most. In the end, STO and NW let you play all actual content in the game without every actually paying a dime to them with no restrictions that purposely slow you down in the process, even going as far as to give away several free end-game ships every year in exchange for a minimal amount of effort. Over time they have actually *relaxed* some restrictions they had that kept you from playing the way you wanted to play, and are doing more to do so now than they ever have on that front. They even let you turn off most of their advertising spam in game. Those are things you just won't find in other MMO games in 2019, and it's worth thinking about.