Incline Official codex Star Trek Online topic :salute:

Star Trek Online is actually pretty good for MMO.

 

And it wasn't developed or even originally published by Perfect World either, they got it when they bought Cryptic Studios from Atari (a deal that appears to have resulted in Perfect World making out like a bandit at Atari's expense).

 

I know it was developed by Cryptic. I kept tabs on its development for years, starting almost a decade ago when I still gave a damn about MMOs and thought another good one might show up someday. STO was actually in development by Perpetual Entertainment to begin with, but Perpetual went tits-up and development was passed to Cryptic, who set about doing what Cryptic does best: developing incredibly shallow, casual MMOs.

Shortly after early adopters were Jewed by lifetime subscriptions, the game went F2P, and at some point (haven't been paying attention, game's shit) Perfect World acquired STO. Perfect World is like the EA of the MMO scene, just utter exploitative garbage. STO passed through the proverbial colon and out the sphincter into what is truly the toilet of MMOs, namely a casual Cryptic game gone F2P and currently being run by Perfect World.

I'd try it just to know exactly how and why I should slam it, but that Perfect World logo is a brick wall.

 

Uhm... Just to point out, nearly two years isn't exactly a short time. The game launched in February 2010, and went F2P in January 2012.

 

It's not a lifetime either, though, is it?

Are you actually defending what happened, or just nitpicking me because I'm poking the hornet's nest in here?

 

If you consider that the largest and overall best quality content updates (and lion's share of new content in general) have all occurred AFTER F2P conversion and that the game also has a considerably larger population than before, yes it's already good in that sense.

Furthermore, a lifer has some very good benefits as well, including a monthly stipend that will eventually "pay back" the cost (which for yours truly it has).

In short form, yes it's a better thing to be a lifer in a game that's actually healthy and getting new content, rather than one withering away slowly. It's more of a case that you're making a counter-factual drive-by for dubious reasons.

 

What about the people who wanted to play a subscription game without F2P elements for free for the duration of the game's lifetime? They don't matter at all?

That was the original selling point of lifetime subscriptions.

 

They obviously weren't so many, given they had to choose between going F2P or going under.



And I doubt anyone here would say the game wouldn't be far better if the ships played like Nexus, the fighter wings like Star Wolves, the away teams like X-Com, and the DOFFing like stat heavy party based text adventures, and Lord that sounds smexy as bleep, but the game isn't terribad. Neither is it awesome, but given its casual nature you can simply go in for some spaceship action whenever you feel like it and then leave again whenever you have something better to do.

And the space combat is actually fun once you are of a high enough level, as the scaling isn't linear. Once you have acceptable equipment, good BOFF abilities, and your final ship, you can replay some of the story missions on the hardest difficulty for some pretty brutal and exiting battles. The rewards aren't worth it, but it is pretty fun to do so. Or you can do it from the very beginning if you like it rough. It will slow down your advancement through the storyline to a crawl, and it will thus make it hard for you to get equipment at first, but if you don't mind the slow pace it is actually ridiculously fun and stupidly challenging.

And then you get to the mission in which you pilot a shuttle and have to fight waves upon waves of elachi fighters and elachi walkers, and you rage quit for a month or three, because that bleep, it is bloody impossible on Elite without some serious cheating. >.<

Anyway, I did play the game on and off since it went F2P and until I had to move back here, and Cryptic actually seems to care about trying to make the game better. Sure, it is hit and miss - At first it was a glorious mess, but ever since LoR they seem to have a better grasp of what makes the game fun and they seem to have accepted they can't write to save their lives, so they went all pointy eared space cowboys vs space nazis and grey aliens and lazordinos and anime robots, and the game seems to have become better because of it.

And now I want to go back for a while just to fight the lazordinos and the anime robots with mah pointy eared space cowboys and my Kun-Fu mini-godzilla with a space shotgun. >.<

What other game allows you to do that?

So in the end it is just as all other Cryptic games are. As in, sure, it is casual, but it can be made IMBA hard if you want to make it so, and sure, it is a glorious mess, but it is so charming a trainwreck you can't help but smile and hug it. Just drop in when you have nothing better to do, make some friends to chat with while you run the hamster wheel, run ESTF with an organized all carrier battlegroup to witness the miracle of perfect cross healing, intercepted invisitorps, and permanently shut down enemies, and whenever you are bored leave for a month or three. It is pretty enjoyable, even if a guilty pleasure.

 

Not to mention STO is one of those examples where going F2P was not a bad thing at all for the game as a whole

Besides what BC said, I'm not entirely sure what this question is even about, so if you may you can define what exactly you mean by "F2P elements".

 

Well there is something called history.

STO was started by Perpetual Entertainment that due to many mismanagement ended up going under, then Cryptic got the license under the terms they had to finish within the original timetable ... soon after a company known at the time as Atari acquired Cryptic, said company was already on the path of destruction and before it collapse sold Cryptic and by extension STO, Neverwinter and Champions to Perfect Entertainment that operates F2P games mainly.

So no, they dont ... STO would have gone under if Cryptic wasnt sold or would be snapped up someone that would simply turn it into F2P, LTS didnt had a choice because they made the decision to buy it, not that they would ever had any assurances the game would pass its first 2 months, let alone 2 ... this is why it was sold in the first place, they knew what they were getting in.

The "F2P elements" are what? Store? Lock Boxes? I dont like the direction the game have headed in the last year but at least I fucking played it for the last year ... most of the time ... and yes, its really going to the Freemium model that I abhor because I cannot progress due to timegames and everything is now a fucking farmfield but then again, its not as if it wasnt before, its just far more pronounced and not exactly different that other games, at least gear isnt RNG bullshit like Neverwinter.

If you want to bring Lock Boxes I will say this, most of them are simply subpar gear not worthy of the cost, there are some gems but things arent really P2W outside DOFFs and thats due to Cryptic ineptitude and not by design, too much stuff is just a gimmick thats not worth the cost, its vanity pure and simple.

Plus LTS still get all subbers perks plus extras, they still have their exclusive Liberated Borg option ... they get 500 zen per month like subbers do and pretty much most of pre-F2P LTS already got their money back, in fact anyone that was LTS pre-launch should have reached zero at 16 months in when the game was still subscription so ... what they have to way? That they got their money worth if they had subbed anyway?

 

Wait a moment: did Drakron just defend the game instead of starting a one man crusade? This is either not the real Drakron or he is reeeeeally loving it!

 

Benefits are not terrific and in no way worth paying $200 given that the package keeps getting smaller while the cost remains the same. Every time, the deal gets worse. If it wasn't good enough then, why would it be good enough now, given that "lifetime" is a year shorter, but the price remains the same?

Besides, the stipend is a joke. 500 a month. If you had the thing for the entire duration of game, 4 years, you would accumulate a whopping 24K Z. This is jacksquat, about 5% of the puny amount that I've managed to acquire without paying anything, and I am not even particularly rich in the game.

 

Maybe but pre-F2P your choices were sub or LTS ... after the math gets far more complicated.

But still people that got LTS before F2P back at launch knew what the deal was, it payed for itself when the game was still sub only ... of course if you actually played, I would not be surprised many LTS dropped out of the game during that time and this renders the "pay for itself" argument moot because they would not "renew the subscription", they were not playing what they paid for but still had access, the service was being provided that is what they payed for.

Post-F2P is a different matter.

 

what a crock of shit!
i had two max crafting xp toons and all of them are back to nothing, all the previous efforts have been wasted.

 

Crating was useless, now its still useless.

And yes, they are timegate it even further just now (only one research of that school at one time instead of four/five)... Jesus, I wonder if they would be happy if I just handle them my account and they could run things according to their "this is how you have fun" schedule.

 

It might be timegated but it doesn't appear to take much effort.

It's just like the rep grind except you can buy the "marks" of the exchange.

Personally I think I'll just buy some stacks of whatever you need and then sloooowly grind the shit with a few characters while I do my other daily stuff.

 

I wouldn't say WASTED. You get a doff! And be honest here: Grinding crafting in the old system involved NO real effort. I know this because I went and leveled a bunch of guys for that doff, purely out of the junk people (probably me, I don't think anyone else plays) dumped in the fleet bank.

It took like 10 minutes. Woo. Soul-crushing effort indeed. The loss of your maxed old-system crafting skill, TRULY A HORRIBLE TRAGEDY. Remind me again what you could actually craft with it? Not kits...they took that away. Really, man, when even Drakron isn't giving a fuck, you shouldn't either.

 

i hate when youngsters come tell me how easy is life when they have all the help we old men didn't have.

 

Season 9.5 main damage wasnt to crafting, it was to DOFFing were not only we got a shittier UI designed for the Gateway (they dont have plans to integrate it in the Gateway) but also the removal of clusters completely fucked up assignments availability, I cannot get the 2/7 DV chain to show up on a KDF character.

 

Where would that task pop up anyway now? In the Fed main sector block, Sirius? Or can it, for Feds, also appear in ESD, SFA, etc like the asylum tasks. Would suck for KDF though.
BTW: do you still need marauding party buff to enter Sirius as KDF, or is finishing the ESD feature episode enough these days (same for Feds and OL)?
Removing the clusters does make the OL colonization a lot faster (and the colo chains in general), I hated checking all those clusters daily with all chars!

 

Clusters are now nebula-like objects in Sector, Delta Volaris is just south of Sol, just fly close to it and the interaction should pop up.

And no, Colonial Chains were always on the associated cluster and since clusters were their own maps we could always check department heads to see if the assignment was there, they cannot move colonial assignments to sector because even if most sectors only have one cluster, Leonis (KDF home sector) have four and that would play havok with the system as they would knife fight to show up and Leonis is already overburden with assignment as it is.

There are ways to solve this but this would involve work instead of taking the easy way out, there was no reason to remove clusters at all and they only seem to have done so to push people into buying their packs, the whole argument about "not up to standard" is a load of cock, it was we could just enter a cluster and fly around for mats, a little honesty would have serve them better by keeping the clusters and remove the mats spawns were at least it would not fuck everything in the process.

And no, its slower because they are lazy and just copied the Dyson Sphere that is 20 hours reset so welcome to it refreshing once per day since it seems they didnt change the refresh timer to be in sync with sector as clusters were and since its a interaction in sector, they dont show up on Department heads so its considerable much slower, its a lazy over-the-knee rush job.

And yes, you can enter Sirius if you finished that featured episode, no need of Marauding/Diplomacy T4 or someone giving you DI/MF.

 

Nice, they finally fixed the ultra-shit performance I've been having since 9.5 launched.

Also, I lucked out on the doff grinder and turned 5 blues into a purple technician. This specific one is going for 17.5 Mil EC on the exchange, but I can only post up to 10 mill...

 

You haven't bought the EC cap increase?

I guess you could join some trade channel or something and exchange it for keys or some other valuable items.

 

I thought only gold or lifetime suckers members got those

But then again, the account bank is also available to us plebs now so maybe this is too.

 

You could mail it to me, I'll sell it for you and dump it into the Fleet Bank once it sells.