Incline Official codex Star Trek Online topic :salute:

[Norfleet]

The inflation is caused by an unpatched EC exploit that may or may still be at large.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Hate seeing this thread bumped because STO was one of the more charming and unique MMOs I've played.
But a lot of the interesting bits were falling apart and they have no idea how to maintain it beyond adding more whale bait to the cash shop.

 

[Drakron]

There is neglect, they redone the animation system years ago and it fucked up a lot of cutscenes since they were set using the old system but they never gone back to make sure they play correctly ... too busy making cutscenes or whatever ... maps too because the lighting upgrade were some are obviously broken since who would had guessed that just running then by a script would not be enough, the one that is obviously broken is the lab ground map with lighting problems as well gaps were the walls should connect, its in terrible state ... the whole Iconian Arc mission maps are all kind of fucked be it lighting or animation or even geometry (the lab map) and nobody really complains about it.

And then there is the DOFF system, I done the chains on the KDF Recruit (the ones worth doing, I ignore the biochemicals, bartender and culinary as they arent really worth the hassle) but since they unified the map as well removing the exploration clusers they really fucked the way to find then because you need to check guides to know were the borders are, I still think it died because the dev responsible left and the guy that replaced it didnt care for it even if he had threaten with "plans" for the DOFF system.

I like the game being there but honestly, Cryptic been just trunking without really adding and even the whole new event campaign were you get a Promo/Lock Box ship of your choice (as a character unlock of course) doesnt really get me up since ... there been so many and yes, I have a few but they became so common there is no longer the same sense as flying a D'kora back in 2013, I am sure many people will be happy about getting one but its not content, its like having a new Hero in Overwatch to play the exact same old maps or something like that, its simply a way to engage with the content and not content by itself.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

doff system is really fun, they could have even easily monetized it with paid doffs or whatever. It fits in really well with the Star Trek theme. They were stupid to let it rot.

 

[Norfleet]

The issue with the doff system is that they sacked the guy who made it, thus leaving nobody to really understand it.

 

[Drakron]

The issue with the doff system is that they sacked the guy who made it, thus leaving nobody to really understand it.

Heretic left after he worked in the Fleet System and that was a very long time ago ...

The system also had the occasional additions, not just the Loot Box assignments but the ones in the Dyson Sphere and Delta Quadrant, its just Delta Rising was ... 6 years ago? They simply just made new DOFFs with broken op abilities to sell DOFF packs, the system was relegated to just slots to give buffs and the rest of the system was more or less ignored and I think what Heretic wanted to do was simply give things for players to do besides running missions, the chains were both a way to level up (before DR also fucked that up) as well make players move around in sector map looking for assignments, it seems there was plans for more but the whole DOFF system after his departure became simply ... equipment slots.

I dont think its not understanding, its that his replacement didnt care for the system and more or less left it to rot ... maybe his "plans" are just like when people remember about the very old Veteran BOFFs and ask about then and he goes on how he wants to work on then so they get available again blah, blah,blah ... but nothing comes out of it and I honestly think its just lip service, he says that to shut people up for a while without having any intention of actually doing it. They know the borders are fucked yet they do nothing because of Jeremy have a "plan" for the DOFF system that after 5 years are still in the same state ...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

MMORPGs need more varied content, too many of them focus on just doing one or maybe two activities over and over.
STO's doff system is a good example of well designed alternative content. It encourages traveling around the gameworld, trading with other players, and the bulk of it is done passively plus it fits thematically with the game itself. STO being primarily about combat now is to some degree the opposite of Star Trek.

The problem isn't that nobody understands the system, the problem is that Cryptic doesn't see it as an easy way to milk the whales. Just like with the foundry, another example of alternative content. Killed because they didn't see an obvious way to monetize it ergo they didn't want to pay someone to fix it/maintain it.
Remove enough features and people will just start leaving and there will be no whales left.

I spend stupid amounts of money on online games, more than I probably should. But I hate when games make monetization their most important aspect. If I like the game and appreciate the work, I'll spend the money.

 

[Drakron]

The Foundry was ... a way for Cryptic NOT having to actually make content as the players would do it for then, this was (of course) way back when the game was subscription based and NW also had the same system because development started way back when Cryptic was part of Atari (and why NW even exists) and at the time likely would had the same model, subscription based.

The problem was that the Foundry was not user friendly and was rather lacking, even the "highly ranked" Foundry missions honestly were as basic as STO launch missions that were very MMO staple of "go there, kill mob" as the game progressed and more "detailed" maps appeared the limitations of the Foundry were entirely obvious as we not talking about TES Creation Kit that people could do things with but something that was so basic it was even dated by the time STO launch as quest design goes.

The Foundry died for several reasons, Cryptic simply could not afford to make it a better tool as they lacked the personal for that and also because on a F2P game there is less of a focus on retaining players in the same way there is on a subscription based, of course the F2P model is heavily pushed towards events but the Foundry depending on player creation wasnt a good bet as ... well there were a few good missions and I do mean good in the sense they had a idea, didnt drag and had a good balance but most were either grinders or incredible long badly paced stories, you could tell they were bad when the author describes in length what facial expressions the NPC is doing with paragraph long dialog and even those good missions you could see the limitations of the level editor as the author was forced to make do with the limited tools. It got worst when Cryptic tried to make people use the Foundry using the good old tried method of bribery ... ah those days of 2013 with the "Daily 3 clickers" followed by attempts at curbing that, not as bad as NW version were it launched with a massive Astral Diamond exploit that was so bad Cryptic didnt even dare to remove then from the players inventory.

That said, I did enjoy to a degree Black Desert Life Skills so I am not against varied content but user generated content is always going to be a can of worms, in fact in my characters I tended to complete most of the DOFF chains ... except one were I simply couldnt deal with the horseshit of "is it there or not" assignments chains, this is because not only the borders are broken but also the exploration clusters were their own maps and assignments could spawn there and since they were removed and replaced with a "intractable zone" that as far I can tell only spawns the cluster colonial chain they became much harder to track down.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Heretic wanted to do was simply give things for players to do besides running missions, the chains were both a way to level up

I miss the days when a Klingon's main occupation was violently ending Gorn uprisings.
"The Gorn are getting restless again."
Those lizard were like the french, revolutions are their favorite pasttime activity.

 

[Bliblablubb]

even the "highly ranked" Foundry missions honestly were as basic as STO launch missions that were very MMO staple of "go there, kill mob"

They mostly axed it because players were making missions with endless waves of enemy X to farm chievies. Like the salt vampire.
Cryptic does not like players playing the game in a way they did not envision.
Banning people for leveling ship mastery through patrols. Never forget.

I for one miss foundry gems like Bijor, that showed Bajorans as the hospital bombing terrorists they are.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Star Tlek Onrine is still alive?

Well, I guess those concentration camps and biological weapons aren't gonna finance themselves..

 

[Norfleet]

I miss the days when a Klingon's main occupation was violently ending Gorn uprisings.

You could also foment those same Gorn uprisings only to then suppress them. A Klingon's man occupation was apparently trolling.

 

[Jarpie]

even the "highly ranked" Foundry missions honestly were as basic as STO launch missions that were very MMO staple of "go there, kill mob"

They mostly axed it because players were making missions with endless waves of enemy X to farm chievies. Like the salt vampire.
Cryptic does not like players playing the game in a way they did not envision.
Banning people for leveling ship mastery through patrols. Never forget.

I for one miss foundry gems like Bijor, that showed Bajorans as the hospital bombing terrorists they are.

When did they ban players for leveling ship mastery through patrols? :D

 

[Drakron]

When did they ban players for leveling ship mastery through patrols? :D

Delta Rising.

And I can say why they did it, they risen the level cap to 60 but simply by playing the missions you could not get enough XP to either reach the cap or reach the level requirement to unlock later missions they had added ... this was a deliberate delay to force people into grinding but this is Cryptic we talking about so they failed to realize how patrols XP gained worked, especially the older Romulan patrols and didnt take long for some players to realize how to use then to not only reach the level cap but also farm beyond even the new maximum that was with specialization points.

BTW that was REPORTED TO THEN ON TRIBBLE BEFORE RELEASE.

Cryptic reaction to Delta Rising was quite the knee jerking and I think the reason was, they had expectations on how players would act and what would they do and when players didnt followed what they expected they lashed out, banning was just one of the things they did because players were leveling "too fast", they also changed the XP curve to slow people down along with the bans but all they achieved was making a lot of the players to just leave the game, then they panic when they figured out something they should had fucking known since STO launch ... that grinding the same fucking patrols over and over isnt appealing, they did that shit on launch to also hide the fact there was not much content and were blasted for it so why the fuck they tried to pull the same stunt again thinking this time would work is beyond me but anyway, they eased up on XP in order to stop the exodus from draining all the players from the game.

 

[Bliblablubb]

"Delta Raisin is the best expansion and players love it!" PERIOD.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Mr. Roddenberry will be playing STO for the first time next week

 

[RobotSquirrel]

"Delta Raisin is the best expansion and players love it!" PERIOD.

Nice meme except for the Dilithium. Should be Lobi for added cancer.

 

[Norfleet]

It's an old meme. The Lobi thing didn't happen until later.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

It's an old meme. The Lobi thing didn't happen until later.

I might be misremembering so I thought they were introduced with Delta Rising.

 

[Bliblablubb]

I might be misremembering so I thought they were introduced with Delta Rising.

Nah, Lobi came 2012ish with the Ferengi Lockbawx, Derpa Raisin was the best STO expansion of 2014 and players loved it.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Derpa Raisin was the best STO expansion of 2014 and players loved it.

Ah that's why I remember them being there. I stopped playing in the 2012-2013 break because of how disgusted I was with the Lobi system. Came back for Delta Rising and the Voth expansion and was actually surprised they finally paid for quality VA lol. The initial release was dreadful and its such a shame that only Leonard did a good job, everyone else really phoned it in.

 

[Norfleet]

Nimoy? I don't think Nimoy really did much of anything for DR, since I seem to recall he...died.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Nimoy only did the sector exploration blurbs and a few lines in the very beginning of STO. Like JJTrek Spock did voiceovers for the old tutorial.
And after so many years some of his lines make no sense anymore, like his story about the Kuvamargh thingie in one of the sectors. The whole arc about B'vat, her and the Guardian of Forevah was put on a bus years ago.

Newer players will go "What is this old senile man talking about?"

A classic Cryptic. Redo missions with new VA, then remove them anyway because they "do not meet our standards anymore."
Because the new standard is playing as J'Ula, who is the best character ever and players love her!
Sad.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Nimoy? I don't think Nimoy really did much of anything for DR, since I seem to recall he...died.

I meant the initial release of STO v1.0. Delta rising was all voyager people and they did a good job but that isn't surprising since most of them have been regulars in video games anyway.

I think a lot of people have forgotten just how dreadfully bad STO was at launch. It's a shame they were never able to add the bridge officer VAs back into the game a lot of people probably don't even know that it was even a thing. Bridge officers used to have barks and you were able to customise how each BO sounded. It was an interesting idea but probably too ambitious seeing as how broken a launch the game ended up with.

A decade on almost and we still have no working PvP lol.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Bridge officers used to have barks and you were able to customise how each BO sounded.

That was way before my time, but in the days of chaining BOFFs they would just end up sounding like Leeta: "Make repair- REPAIRS COMPLE- we're taking too much damage, make rep-....."
But hey, they gave us a voiced Tovan Khev, that's great right?

A decade on almost and we still have no working PvP lol.

You seriously want PvP in a game were you would get instantly vaporized by people who spent 1000+ dorrar on one ship wherever you go? Sure, sounds like a lot of Norfleet approved NoFun, but... I'll pass.