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

[Trek]

Yeah, I'm slightly less concerned than I was a couple of days ago. (I've also spend about £20 in the C-Store making sure I have everything unlocked that I want to be account wide.)

I'm still not happy about how prolific dilithium has become. Playing normally over the past two weeks I've only amassed 5000 refined (so not even a full days worth of refining), so it'll take me years to get a full outfitted purple ship.

 

[Rocketeer]

I like the Duty Officer (DOFF) system. My computer was out of commission, but my loyal DOFFs continued their assignments. Had a lot of dilithium and xp waiting for me when I logged back in. I've only lost one DOFF to a critical failure so far. Usually I get a Success or Critical Success. I've completed Tier 1 Diplo and Military and getting close on a couple of others. I should make Cmdr this evening. I've progressed through LCDR just using xp from the DOFF system. For someone that doesn't have a lot of time during the week, the DOFF system is a great way to continue advancing your character.

I've got green or better in all the space and ground positions. The DOFF I find most useful is the Projectile Weapons Officer.

I think that I have one of every career type, even the exotic ones like Medic and Flight Deck Officer.

I buy and sell a lot of DOFFs on the Exchange. Send me an ingame msg if you're looking for something specific. Jam@Rocketeer_7

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Well I think I know what Cryptics original plan to slow down progression was and I preface this by saying this is only what I think they were planning, but I could be wrong. So here it is in a nutshell

You know the more I think about some of the previous information we were given i.e. remastering the story missions and increasing feature episode production as well as folding them into the storyline and the current info we have about game changes ie chaning story missions and making leveling slower I think I know what the ultimate plan was.

I think that they were always planning to chain the missions which may have been done at remastering them and then placing them within the storyline to lengthen and then slow down progression while still giving us plenty to do.
the problem is that they are trying to impliment what I think their final plan is without a large chunk of the planned components and as such this is why it is such a bad change. If they had finished all the needed parts before implimenting this chnage it would possibly have slowed down content while steal giving us plenty to do so it wouldn't have really felt like a grind.

Though this is just what I think about this based on what I remember from previous Dev posts so I could be wrong.

 

[Rocketeer]

Well I went through LCDR using xp gained from DOFF assignments. I'm now a CMDR.

One of the DOFF assignments was to evaluate a science bridge officer. They gave me a Rare Saurian with the Efficient skill. I looked on the exchange and the cheapest was 15 mil. I kept mine and added him to the crew.

 

[Rocketeer]

I have two crafters on Holodeck. One on FED and one on KDF side. I would hate to see the system implemented that would require every char to be a crafter to get decent equipment.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Currently the newly enabled dilithium exchange has a shared Dl pool any character can access. So you can transfer some DL that way. This will be changed most likely to prevent that exploit from happening on Holodeck.

 

[Trek]

With the new dilithium exchange going live, I did some maths and made an interesting discovery today that probably means I'll stay at my current subscription level when the game goes f2p.

Thanks to picking an annual sub when the game launched, I'm only paying £6.14 a month and the monthly stipend will be worth £3.20. This means I will effectively pay £2.94 for gold membership.

£2.94 in c-points is 367.5 (call it 368), which is worth between 18,400 and 184,000 dilithium (or between 2.3 days and 23 days refining limit) based on the exchange limits. This means that it shouldn't be too hard to actually make back my remaining sub in c-points.

This compares to a lifetime subscription which costs £192.49 and would take just over 2 years and 7 months to pay off at the same rate as my current sub or just over 5 years if just the monthly 400 c-point stipend is taken into account.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Well they finally told us how much dilithium were are getting for hitting captain. It's 80,000. Though apparently we can onlky claim it on one character.

Also they mentioned a nice Gold perk, basically if you don't play every day to refine dilithium what you have will be automatically refined when you next log in, but a week is the longest time this will cover.

The 500 day reward is being replace by a VA ship token.

And their adding an automatic refine feature that will cover the time between log ins up to a week.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Well they finally told us how much dilithium were are getting for hitting captain. It's 80,000. Though apparently we can onlky claim it on one character.

Also they mentioned a nice Gold perk, basically if you don't play every day to refine dilithium what you have will be automatically refined when you next log in, but a week is the longest time this will cover.

The 500 day reward is being replace by a VA ship token.

And their adding an automatic refine feature that will cover the time between log ins up to a week.

Thatauto refine was a suggestion on STOked podcast...
VA ship toke is useless for anyone who already has received a VA ship the way i understand it. personally I can live with it, since I got 250 emblems on 8 toons before they pulled that one...

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

FTP testing is going ahead with giant strides... today the first part of the skill tree revamp has been released for testing.

Space skills have been simplified a lot.

 

[Scout101]

VA ship toke is useless for anyone who already has received a VA ship the way i understand it. personally I can live with it, since I got 250 emblems on 8 toons before they pulled that one...

Sucks in an "i got mine, screw you" kinda way. Can you explain how you think it works? I mean, appears to be true, as I just collected my 500 day reward yesterday, and I don't appear to be able to get a VA ship, but why is that?

Why would they lock that out like that and call it a reward? Seems if you're collecting a 500-day reward, it's probably a good guess that your character might be a VA (what with the severe lack of content and short time it takes to get there), so why give something that's useless to VA ranks?

It's ok for alternate toons, I guess, as they won't have to grind to get that ship when they get to VA, but that really sucks compared to what used to be the reward. Heck, until they dicked with it, that VA ship was free when you hit VA anyway, so this only helps restore something they TOOK from us.

One logistical question: any chance if I dropped my VA ship, the token would kick in and let me buy another one? Or is this entire thing geared towards the F2P release, and useless right now either way? Since I've got the Galaxy-X, my galaxy class exploration cruiser is kinda pointless, and wanted to try to get a Defiant instead...

 

[Ayelbourne]

The 500 day reward is being replace by a VA ship token.

OH COME ON!!!

I just finished grinding 500 emblems for the Kar'Fi carrier and I'm about 30 days away from the 500 day reward.
Had I known that, I would have continued grinding for the Guramba.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

VA ship toke is useless for anyone who already has received a VA ship the way i understand it. personally I can live with it, since I got 250 emblems on 8 toons before they pulled that one...

Sucks in an "i got mine, screw you" kinda way. Can you explain how you think it works? I mean, appears to be true, as I just collected my 500 day reward yesterday, and I don't appear to be able to get a VA ship, but why is that?

Why would they lock that out like that and call it a reward? Seems if you're collecting a 500-day reward, it's probably a good guess that your character might be a VA (what with the severe lack of content and short time it takes to get there), so why give something that's useless to VA ranks?

It's ok for alternate toons, I guess, as they won't have to grind to get that ship when they get to VA, but that really sucks compared to what used to be the reward. Heck, until they dicked with it, that VA ship was free when you hit VA anyway, so this only helps restore something they TOOK from us.

One logistical question: any chance if I dropped my VA ship, the token would kick in and let me buy another one? Or is this entire thing geared towards the F2P release, and useless right now either way? Since I've got the Galaxy-X, my galaxy class exploration cruiser is kinda pointless, and wanted to try to get a Defiant instead...

The 500 day reward is being replace by a VA ship token.

OH COME ON!!!

I just finished grinding 500 emblems for the Kar'Fi carrier and I'm about 30 days away from the 500 day reward.
Had I known that, I would have continued grinding for the Guramba.

I don't think it goes live untill free 2 play.

 

[Ayelbourne]

Probably not, but we'll get the token retroactively, once it does go live.

 

[syberghost]

Seems if you're collecting a 500-day reward, it's probably a good guess that your character might be a VA (what with the severe lack of content and short time it takes to get there), so why give something that's useless to VA ranks?

Leaving aside the fact some people *LIKE* having more than one ship, making a ship token not useless, Dan Stahl did say a few months ago that the vast majority (yes, he said vast) of players didn't have a single character at Rear Admiral or higher.

In any event, are all veteran rewards supposed to be non-cosmetic and of immediate gameplay value for all players?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

No, but for some players it will be considerably less and I can understand feeling shafted in their place.
i got my emblems on 9 toons... future VA veterans will get the new token.
it's those players who already have one Vice Admiral, picked a single character VA ship and never got the emblems even for only one character, who get left behind a bit...

 

[Scout101]

Which is exactly what happened to me. Only one toon at VA, and been there for quite a while. Already have a VA ship, so my understanding is that even with the new token, I won't be able to get a different one, correct?

So, don't get the emblems that everyone else got, which would have been nice upgrades to a few weapons. Don't get a ship, which is the replacement reward.

Why wouldn't I be pissed, exactly?

Only part of this that helps is that for characters that aren't at VA yet, I'll be able to get a free VA ship when I get there. Of course, all that is is giving back something that they stole from me, as my last character got that for free anyway.

Taking away 2 things, and then giving one back, how are people supposed to be happy about that?

Honestly, unless things turn around pretty quickly, just about done with this BS. Game has gone to shit, no new content, all the changes are basically just geared towards forcing us to grind or pay to get around it. They've based their entire model around hypothetical new players that will join when it goes F2P, and completely ignored all the players that have kept the lights on for them for the past 2 years.

When the pissed off players leave, and the new players fail to materialize (or fail to pay for all the micro-transactions, given that it doesn't seem that the silver level is much more limited than the gold level), what happens then? Talk about taking a game that was on a nice upward trajectory and just driving it into the ground...

I'm pissed at this point that I have a LTS, so I can't vote with my wallet and cancel my subscription over this. Best I can do is quit playing. Which sucks, as I liked things well enough to buy the LTS in the first place. Waiting to see how things work if the F2P ever goes live, but based on how they've been treating their subscribers lately, can't imagine it's gonna make me wanna stick around.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Which is exactly what happened to me. Only one toon at VA, and been there for quite a while. Already have a VA ship, so my understanding is that even with the new token, I won't be able to get a different one, correct?

So, don't get the emblems that everyone else got, which would have been nice upgrades to a few weapons. Don't get a ship, which is the replacement reward.

Why wouldn't I be pissed, exactly?

Only part of this that helps is that for characters that aren't at VA yet, I'll be able to get a free VA ship when I get there. Of course, all that is is giving back something that they stole from me, as my last character got that for free anyway.

Taking away 2 things, and then giving one back, how are people supposed to be happy about that?

Honestly, unless things turn around pretty quickly, just about done with this BS. Game has gone to shit, no new content, all the changes are basically just geared towards forcing us to grind or pay to get around it. They've based their entire model around hypothetical new players that will join when it goes F2P, and completely ignored all the players that have kept the lights on for them for the past 2 years.

When the pissed off players leave, and the new players fail to materialize (or fail to pay for all the micro-transactions, given that it doesn't seem that the silver level is much more limited than the gold level), what happens then? Talk about taking a game that was on a nice upward trajectory and just driving it into the ground...

I'm pissed at this point that I have a LTS, so I can't vote with my wallet and cancel my subscription over this. Best I can do is quit playing. Which sucks, as I liked things well enough to buy the LTS in the first place. Waiting to see how things work if the F2P ever goes live, but based on how they've been treating their subscribers lately, can't imagine it's gonna make me wanna stick around.

Wait and see is the best thing you can do really...
I've decided that I will try the best I can to take advantage of any change in my favor.
I'm carefully testing out for example if i can't use the dilitium exchange to get around the grind.
buying Cryptic points low and selling them again high.
So get my investment back and turn the profit into more profit to get the better gear...
Sad, that they make you a broker like this. but at least I can play what I want in the meantime without getting gated into the repitive content they want me to do.

 

[Scout101]

Easier for you to be content, having received 2250 emblems for your 9 characters. Plus a VA ship (because they gave those out at promotion, just like every other rank).

What I got, by contrast? They've allowed me to get a VA ship. Unless my toon is a VA already, in which case, nothing. And seeing as how it's a reward for 500 days of subscribing, pretty damned good chance my primary toon is a VA, right?

Your VA toons got enough emblems to get purple gear for your ground troops, and a few purple weapons/shields/consoles/whatever for the ship, or half the emblems needed for another ship.

Mine literally got nothing.

Sad part is that it really wouldn't take much effort to do SOMETHING to make people feel better about it. If they're worried about messing up the planned economy that they haven't really thought through anyway, throw us a different treat. There was mention of some special BOFF, which while not nearly as valuable, would still be something to show they at least tried. Or at least make the stupid VA token redeemable for a VA ship, even if you already got one. What's the harm in being able to swap between the galaxy and defiant or intrepid?

Mostly annoyed/mad because I got the galaxy class for my VA ship, and then later bought the Galaxy-X, so have no use for my VA galaxy ship. Was hoping that the reward would give me enough to get me halfway to a different class, but instead I got a token I can't use. Yay?

 

[syberghost]

Still trying to get my head around how not receiving something you didn't already have on a character you haven't even rolled is theft.