Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)

[J. Allen]

Scout101 wrote:

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For the amount of grinding they force us to do, they don't give us anything to DO with the shiny once we manage to achieve it. Not only that, they just release something OP that makes whatever you spent months grinding (or paying) for obsolete when you get it anyway. Takes a lot of the fun/achivement out of it.

Wish they'd focus more on giving us stuff to DO with our toys and less on screwing with the systems to make it harder to get, or just releasing new stuff to make your current stuff worthless. You really can't take a break in this game without coming back and finding your ship and gear are now garbage.

For these super-ships, they've driven me out of even looking at them. I've had a sour taste in my mouth since I paid $20 in real money for the Gal-X way back when, and it was abandoned and made obsolete shortly thereafter. It became a T-4.5 ship at best, and it's not terribly good at much of anything, so it doesn't even leave spacedock anymore. After that, I decided I wasn't really interested in throwing more money at them.

My Zen points from the LTS just go towards trying to fix things Cryptic has nerfed or ignored. Like getting enough DOFF slots to actually do the DOFF missions and maybe even support the starbase system that forces you to go get more. Or increasing the bank slots, since if you've been playing since launch, there's all kinds of toys/trinkets/currencies that you have to carry around. And if you drop any, they're no longer in the game to get back. Then there's all the pets they give us, but no where to store them. Should probably add a couple more BOFF spots, because my entire roster is filled with the special reward BOFFs they've given us over the past 2 years. I might only have 1 regular BOFF (purple, of course), rest are 2 borg/android/Jem'Hadar/Breen/Reman, etc. Extra annoyance there, because each is a locked costume set, so if you get any of these special rewards, you can't tweak the costumes at all. So no crew unity, and my BOFFS look exactly the same as everyone else's.

Because I can't seem to get over the hump, I'm going to keep grinding the STF (IGE only) until the Season 7 conversion. 300+ runs, have yet to complete a MK XII ground set. Both space sets, with spares, but only a single ground weapon and armor. Would like to at least finish one set. Of course, rumor from DEVs is that the NEW grinds will make the STF gear obsolete anyway, so not really sure why I'm bothering, IGE is terrible anyway. Just no way in hell I'm going to have the interest to RE-LEVEL the character through another 300 or so STFs to get back to the ability to buy that gear (plus huge time and DIL/resource sinks to get there).

going to take a hard look at whether it's even worth bothering to jump into the NEW grind (Romulan/Omega), or whether I just play a couple for fun and start ramping myself down on this one.

I WANT to love this game, they just seem to keep going out of their way to make it less enjoyable, and don't focus on any of the stuff that was fun back when they were more interested in the game. Now it's just Asian grind-fest with a side-game of how much can they squeeze out of us. They've DIL-taxed about everything but Chat at this point...

I think this really sums it all up quite nicely. I saw the specs for the Vesta class, and my first thought was "Well, shit, we've been Paladin'd."

I have the Gal-X, I have the TAC Odyssey, I have the Retrofit Galaxy Class (my favorite), and I have the Excelsior Retrofit (My 2nd Favorite). All of them easily rendered obsolete by this ship. I mean, all you have to do is combine all three consoles, and you might as well have a God ship.

I think they want to get rid of PvP altogether, because anyone with this ship, and a decent skill layout, will be able to stand their ground against just about anyone.

[syberghost]

Rainbow Dash wrote:

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I think they want to get rid of PvP altogether, because anyone with this ship, and a decent skill layout, will be able to stand their ground against just about anyone.

Nah, they just want all the PvPers to buy it. If you're not spending money, you're not a customer. F2P doesn't make that more or less so, it just changes what the line items on the bill say.

I don't plan to buy it either; even when the new missions come out in a couple weeks.

[Scout101]

Be nice if there was some sort of used-starship trade-in program. I gotta spend $20 in real money to buy the ship, now it's worth zero. Don't want to use it anymore, only option is the trash. If it was at least worth 50% on the purchase of the new toy, there'd be more incentive to put more in and get it. As it is, just feels like a waste, as it's gonna be nerfed/OBE eventually, so why bother at all?

Kinda a fine line. Understand they want my money, but by being so aggressive about it, makes me pull back and not put ANY in instead of more. If I felt like it was going somewhere or getting me something, maybe. But since it's really such a blatant money grab (lottery boxes with unpublished but terrible odds), i just opt out completely.

Haven't bought a ship since the gal-X, and don't see it changing. And if it does, it'll be with the zen they give me, not buying more. They've just gradually burned most of the goodwill and positive feelings I used to have towards them over time. Still playing, but it's inertia as much as anything. And since i have the LTS, really not costing me anything to stick with it.

Just tough trying to remember the last time they were doing things that I was excited about. Probably the last FE in the first series, I guess (Reman episodes). They were on a nice string, I'd make a point to be on the computer and ready to go when it hit the server, and they were promising to ramp these up to like 4-5 a year!

Then they took an entire year and delivered almost NOTHING at all, game stagnated. After lots of promises, eventually got the DS9 set, and plans to at least do a couple FEs a year. Didn't even get a 2nd one out before quitting on that goal, and replacing it with a different plan, of not doing them at all anymore.

Now our content is 100% of the grind variety, and gets old SO fast. Defera, Tholian zone, starbases, new Romulan stuff coming. Just more stuff to grind out, work-like, and for rewards that don't matter anyway. Just no excitement to it anymore. Feels like Cryptic is feeling the same thing, from the way they come across. Just running out the clock, seeing how far they can milk this thing before they just put it to bed...

[TheRoyalFamily]

If they would give us a good reason to actually run the Foundry missions (as opposed to just doing the quickies for the daily), I think they could really get away with just giving us the grindy stuff. It would be pretty lame, not paying folks for coming up with the real content and all, but at least there would be content, and some rewards for doing it. Even just xp and a random leveled item or a bit of dil (like 100 or so) would be worth it. But no, we can't even do that.

[syberghost]

TheRoyalFamily wrote:

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If they would give us a good reason to actually run the Foundry missions (as opposed to just doing the quickies for the daily), I think they could really get away with just giving us the grindy stuff. It would be pretty lame, not paying folks for coming up with the real content and all, but at least there would be content, and some rewards for doing it. Even just xp and a random leveled item or a bit of dil (like 100 or so) would be worth it. But no, we can't even do that.

The drops inside the Foundry mission, including xp, are better; but without dil it doesn't help capped players, and without that up-front promise people don't take the chance of a bad run of the RNG.

[TheRoyalFamily]

Big State of the Game is up. Lots of stuff there, most of which we already knew, but I just want to talk/speculate about one thing

They say that Omega Force and New Romulus are only the first two reps. So, what do y'all think will be the next?

I personally don't see too many options. Klinks/Feds, Borg, and Undine are straight out - they are the villains, barring some major shift. The only other major factions so far are the Deferi - and it seems obvious this would be in the future sometime, as they already have it set up for a lot of missions and the like - and the Cardassians, which, besides the small Cardassian campaign, are mostly ignored, even though "their" space is three sector blocks. I could actually see them being the next major focus after the Romulans.

I guess they could add the Ferengi or something - there's a lot of empty space on the galaxy map around the Deferi sector block.

[Timelord_Victorious]

There has been talk about expanding the game into the Delta Quadrant eventually... so lots of room for other reputations there.
Colonization and Exploration as a focus in the Delta Quadrant is a given.

Ferengi for Trade.

[intrinsical]

I would love to see the Gamma Quadrant opened up for exploration. Who knows, we might even get reputation with the Dominion.

[Mage]

I just realized, ever since I got stuck with that glitch last week, I haven't played anymore..... Should try again tomorrow.

[Mage]

Finally get past the glitch, the warbird didn't get stuck again and I was finally able to beam down to Hobus, play the ground part of the mission, finish the warbird once and for all and finally finish Ground Zero.

[Ruaidhri]

I ran Into the Hive Onslaught Normal...wow. Very nice new space STF. Our group finished it pretty methodically, but my six month old build struggled to stay alive. I'll wait to try the Elite version when it hits holodeck. It was weird to be doing so much damage to the Queen's octahedron when her shields stayed up nearly full for so long. SHe was getting damaged solely from bleed-through until her shields finally dropped, and then she was toast.

[intrinsical]

The Queen's Octahedron ship is essentially v2.0 of Donatra's ship in Khitomer Space, with much harsher penalties.

With Donatra's ship, it only cloaks and fires its Thalaron cone when the aggro target gets within 5km. So escorts can still go full dps on her without any serious penalty. In this case, a tanking cruiser is purely optional.

With the Queen's ship, any ship that gets within 5km is quickly fried. Besides that, she constantly pounds on the aggro target. This time, escorts should not go full dps and grab aggro because the queen will simply destroy the ship. Finally, an encounter where a high treat tanking cruiser is absolutely need to grab the queen's attention AND absorb her formidable arsenal.

[TheRoyalFamily]

So they actually made engies useful without nerfing tacs? It's almost like they know what they're doing, or somesuch rubbish.

Almost, because I hear scuttlebutt that scis lost most of their offensive capabilities, with nerfed debufs.

[Timelord_Victorious]

I tried it with a dedicated tank. Problem is, I lost aggro anyway, because when I switched to defensive mode my threat level vanished almost instantly and I suspect a couple of the damage dealers had points in Threat Control anyway.
Lots of people treat the skill as a free resistance skill and don't care about getting hate from the NPCs.

[LeadHead]

Is anyone else having trouble getting into STO right now? Can't even get on the website.