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Better Cryptic?
Captain's Blog Stardate 92730.74
So Cryptic opened up a poll to see what people want more of. The options were More PvP Queues, More Episodes, Exploration Missions, More Fleet Functionality, and More Foundry Functionality. To be honest, all of these are great options and Cryptic should be working equally hard on all of them, but the majority voted and we had a clear winner.
Players want more exploration, and I can't blame them. Exploration is the very core of Star Trek. Being able to go to new places and learn new things is what made Star Trek great, and it's the one thing that Star Trek Online is lacking. Sure we had "exploration" sectors at one time, but those were fun for about 5 minutes.
The problem is that we obviously can't have true exploration because it's a game limited to what developers create. To me this means that we'll probably get exploration missions, but once you play through them there is no longer a point to them.
What really surprised me was that Foundry Functionality was the lowest. My guess is that there are a few people who actually use it, but the Foundry can be tied into so much. Frankly, if Cryptic worked hard on it, that tool could be used by players to improve the other four options.
Do you agree or disagree with the majority vote and why? If you agree, I'd like to know what ideas you have to make exploration an awesome part of STO.
Written by Attilio on February 16, 2015 at 08:32 am
Comments
February 16, 2015 at 02:53 pm
like to see more and better ways to get fleet marks.
Reply to DaleFebruary 16, 2015 at 03:06 pm
Apart from the obvious bug fixing which won't be fixed anytime soon ( The amount of time my "loyal crew" aren't at their atations )To be completely honest with you ... I would like more of a clear-defined role for the 3 .. ( 2.5 ? ) Factions.
Federation are behaving like Klingons, Romulans are behaving like the federation should and the Klingons .. seem to be lost in all this. They're sub-par to the Fed and Romulans.
Secondly, more cross-faction things. Like your last dev-blog, let the walls come down, cross-faction fleets, communication, quest sharing and the like.
Its saddening that Cryptic have to actually ask the community what we'd like. Obviously we'd like some things more than others but there are a hell'uva lot of things that can be done.
"What would you like in your star trek game people?"
"oh well, we'd like to boldly go .. out there, you know.. Star Trek"
From a completely personal point of view, I'd like it to *be* Star Trek online and not mass effect online as it seems to be lately. :(
Sorry for the Rant :P
February 16, 2015 at 06:52 pm
People pick the best option on the list, that's all.
People are really mad at the PVP crowd always asking for Nerfs because they dont like this or that.
The PVE crowd is you took my toys away to make them happy.
Talking about not having a clue as to what people want, nobody gives a rip about the foundry. One the least used functions in the game. Cryptic screwed that one up also who wants to do a 1 hour mission for so little of a reward.
February 17, 2015 at 10:32 pm
To put it simply, more content and less grinding. In my opinion grinding is like a condiment on a sandwich. At this point the game is mostly condiment with no sandwich. I don't know about you, but I'd like some sandwich with my condiments thank you.
Reply to GameversemanFebruary 18, 2015 at 02:12 pm
I agree with you entirely, the foundry does offer vast untapped potential. It would be good if we could pick up foundry missions on the fly, and we're starting to see that some, but it would be great if there were locations in-map to activate them. Also, they would do well to streamline the officer reports thing, make it an automatic reward and simply limit repeating missions to 20 minutes.
The exploration point doesn't surprise me, I've always observed this limitation. For me, the claustrophobic feeling comes only from the fact that the "planets" feel more like cities than worlds, and this is really more a symptom of a lack of general stuff to do. I know a lot of people who hang out on Nimbus simply because there's some random shit to do. It's a good location for naturally meeting other players by the basic virtue of fighting side by side. We just need more things like this to mix it up and make things interesting. Bajor is way overdue for some riot control, for example.
All in all, I don't entirely agree with the results, but I'm glad they're open to asking for a change. It could indicate they're having trouble converting free players to revenue streams, but it's a good change and, if they act on it, should promote positive growth. MMO players come and go, but Trekkies are forever.
February 21, 2015 at 01:35 pm
It might just be me but I thought Nimbus series of missions were some of the worst in the game, next to "the vault" and Azure nebula "Temporal ambassador" and "Everything old is new" from the Specters questlines.
I would like there to be more content, I agree entirely. Who wouldn't love to be on the floor of the Dyson sphere and to look up at questing peeps whilst you grab a vehicle and go from point to point doing some ground stuff? Ships are an integeral part of the game but they make the 'world' so much smaller.