store track ON LINE

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BombermanX: Jan 13, 2011; I'm afraid of other people's opinions when they differ from my own. Please do not hurt my feelings.

Aleth posted:

Kobali Spock agrees with this line of thinking.

Zombie Spock standing by.

Also for added hilarity: Desired petition by idiot hellfucker pubbies to add more poo poo to an already poo poo game to make everyone else feel special because nimoy got a statue and they didn't.

The names are the best part.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 06:19

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# ? May 25, 2024 02:02

Cyberball 2072: Feb 17, 2014; by Lowtax

The best way I can explain it is the current game makes you as a player feel like you are constantly spinning wheels, stuck in place. Up until Delta Rising, you could log on for an hour or ten hours and still feel like you're getting somewhere. You could come back from a break and make a lot of progress.

With the current state of the queues and everything being a giant resource sink you never seem to get anywhere, the costs seem to keep getting greater but the ability to generate revenue gets less and less each patch.

As a new player it must be maddening and as an old player it has you asking "why bother?" more and more. As I've said a lot, "I grinded up a bajillion EC and dil to upgrade all my poo poo to UR gold status and then do what with it? Play the same infected and cure missions I've been playing for literal years now?* And for rewards easily half or less than what they used to be? No thanks."

*yes, there are some new missions but due to hard fails and player stupidity you will never complete them without a dedicated team and good luck getting that many people (5) to agree to play this game.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 06:22

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

That's a pretty good way of putting it, come to think of it. I noticed that a lot with specialization XP (and leveling up to 60) in particular... it wasn't too bad at launch since at least you could roll elite patrols in a 5-man and get them relatively quickly. But then that was nerfed... and then XP was nerfed again, and again... then patrols were nerfed... and after all of that there's no efficient non-annoying way of getting spec XP in the short term and I'm at the point where I stopped bothering or caring. I can't even imagine how obnoxious it must be for a new player or someone who didn't grind them up when it was possible, and I suspect the next spec tree that comes out is going to see next to no player interest.

And it's not just that. There's been nerfs to credit gains, nerfs to dilithium gains, the huge nerfs to queues....

# ? Mar 5, 2015 06:39

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

And nerfs to the special events, too. When special events are the only lifeline this game has left.

As far as events go, daily bonus marks don't get poo poo. Rep capstones don't get poo poo. Event completions don't get poo poo. Mark turnins don't get poo poo.

It's pretty bad.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 07:45

Jethro_E7: Dec 11, 2014

Is there a way to get a plasmonic leech without paying 36 million EC?

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:23

kafziel: Nov 11, 2009

Be a Klingon and pay 1000 Zen instead.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:27

Bloodly: Nov 3, 2008; Not as strong as you'd expect.

I suppose I should care more, especially since I've spent money in the past on it.

I don't. There's only a few things I vaguely want(but I know I'll never get, so why bother?). I've done my grinding time previously. I have little will to mess with the upgrading system as far as is required. Never been space rich, either.

And yet...the base game can be considered enjoyable. There are certainly worse things out there.

Perfect World needs to be tossed out on it's ear.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:28

Cyberball 2072: Feb 17, 2014; by Lowtax

Jethro_E7 posted:

Is there a way to get a plasmonic leech without paying 36 million EC?

Be KDF aligned. Can't remember which but it comes with a ship. Feds gotta buy that lockbox reward pack.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:32

Lafarg: Jul 23, 2012

Cyberball 2072 posted:

Be KDF aligned. Can't remember which but it comes with a ship. Feds gotta buy that lockbox reward pack.

Vandal Destroyer, Nausicaan fish looking whatchamacallit.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:39

Jethro_E7: Dec 11, 2014

Well, so for the KDF that's $10. It's a crap ship, really just for the leech.
Let's see, at current gold miner rate - $24 for 100,000,000, so that's a bit less when you see it that way?

# ? Mar 5, 2015 08:52

Just Another Lurker: May 1, 2009

Jethro_E7 posted:

Well, so for the KDF that's $10. It's a crap ship, really just for the leech.
Let's see, at current gold miner rate - $24 for 100,000,000, so that's a bit less when you see it that way?

Vandal and the leech is account wide unlock so anything KDF aligned has access to it, i assume Fed side is per character only?

# ? Mar 5, 2015 09:03

Asimo: Sep 23, 2007

Yeah, it's a character bind on equip item from a lockbox.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 09:49

super sweet best pal: Nov 18, 2009

Not like there's a reason to play more than one character anymore. Well, as far as actually playing and not just ruining players' immersion.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 10:53

Lord Ludikrous: Jun 7, 2008; Enjoy your tea...

Jethro_E7 posted:

Well, so for the KDF that's $10. It's a crap ship, really just for the leech.

It was actually a very good ship, especially for klankroms.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 10:59

Jethro_E7: Dec 11, 2014

Critical update..

* Created a memorial for Spock as well as a tribute to some Star Trek icons no longer with us:
o We have replaced the central structure on the fountain on Vulcan with a stone statue of Spock with the inscription �Live Long and Prosper."
o We have added the same statue to New Romulus with the inscription �The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few�.
o We have added a memorial plaque to ESD, Qo�Nos, and New Romulus Command for those of the Star Trek family who have passed.
+ Players will be able to interact with this memorial and read the names, the dates of their birth and passing, and a personal quote where possible.
o Through the next week there will be black flags of mourning in Earth Spacedock, Qo'noS, and New Romulus.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 11:02

Aleth: Aug 2, 2008; Pillbug

Jethro_E7 posted:

Critical update..

* Created a memorial for Spock as well as a tribute to some Star Trek icons no longer with us:

Finally, Marquisnoir's dead gay son will get the love and respect that he deserves.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 11:58

DonDoodles: Aug 18, 2010; by general anime

Aleth posted:

Finally, Marquisnoir's dead gay son will get the love and respect that he deserves.

Freaking iceburn out of nowhere. That's hilarious.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 12:07

ugh its Troika: May 2, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

Aleth posted:

Finally, Marquisnoir's dead gay son will get the love and respect that he deserves.

aaaaaa

# ? Mar 5, 2015 13:10

LordCo: Jun 25, 2005

BombermanX posted:

Zombie Spock standing by.

Also for added hilarity: Desired petition by idiot hellfucker pubbies to add more poo poo to an already poo poo game to make everyone else feel special because nimoy got a statue and they didn't.

The names are the best part.

The petition is open for editing again with the following notation added:

quote:

Any harassers or trolls will be reported to law enforcement.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 18:10

hakimashou: Jul 15, 2002; Upset Trowel

LordCo posted:

The petition is open for editing again with the following notation added:

Someone who wasn't me added druk@repetitiveepic

Wat?

# ? Mar 5, 2015 19:36

Aleth: Aug 2, 2008; Pillbug

The Spock statue needs a few modifications to really make it shine:

# ? Mar 5, 2015 19:56

AndyElusive: Jan 7, 2007

I have a feeling those rainbows are really going to piss people off.

Also, I still play this game every once and a while because I like flying Star Trek ships and the pew pew sounds my phasers make when I shoot at Borg Cubes (and Borg Tubes).

The fact that STO is apparently on its downward slide barely registers to me but it's sad to read from you guys that this recent expansion has rear end hosed this game so much.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 20:15

Filthy Lucre: Feb 27, 2006

Korgan posted:

All sorted, your account has been deleted. Let me know your new account name and I'll authorise it.

Re-registered as MoronAtLarge, thanks.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 21:03

WD40: Nov 25, 2005

drat. I'm actually sad to read about the state of the game currently. Even though seeing how miserable it's making the pubbies is funny, contemplating its actual end and consequently the end of Dental proper makes me slightly wistful.

I remember the first few days of playing. I sucked and didn't know how it worked, but somehow I was hid in a bush with Ludicro outside ESD with about 4 other people, all crammed into this drat bush, watching some pubbie fall victim to the culmination of a social engineering prank. I don't even properly remember what it was about, but I do remember laughing my rear end off for a solid hour. Holy crap, when we did that free bugships prank and got that guy mobbed on Droz I was just in hysterics.

That's what made the game unique. I'd end up hysterically laughing at the ridiculous and convoluted schemes which would run over several months with the input of several people just to piss off one person. Our approach to each other was always 'just have fun and don't ruin it for the rest of us', and it worked. I've never laughed the way I have playing STO with you loving idiots with any other game. I'd have loved to play more, but work took over. When I stopped playing I still sucked, and I still didn't know how it worked, but it never stopped being fun.

STO is a cancer riddled patient lying semi conscious and close to death in a hospital bed. You guys still manage to sometimes rouse it to life, to get it to open its eyes and smile, to wring a few last drops of fun from it, but it looks like the writing's on the wall. The patient is dying and I admit that I will mourn its passing somewhat when it does.

WD40 fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Mar 5, 2015

# ? Mar 5, 2015 22:44

DonDoodles: Aug 18, 2010; by general anime

hakimashou posted:

Someone who wasn't me added druk@repetitiveepic

Wat?

Hahaha whoever added me should have put my name next to Marquisnoir's.

Edit: dental requests Gregor Mendel to get the gently caress back on STO so said pub-baiting can continue in earnest.

# ? Mar 5, 2015 23:50

Jethro_E7: Dec 11, 2014

Could someone please add my ALT - Drakenbake@MohammadKoush to the fleet and to chat please, thanks (KDF)

# ? Mar 6, 2015 01:42

WarLocke: Jun 6, 2004; You are being watched.

RIP STO

# ? Mar 6, 2015 03:23

Korgan: Feb 14, 2012

Filthy Lucre posted:

Re-registered as MoronAtLarge, thanks.

Done.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 03:23

mags: May 30, 2008; I am a congenital optimist.

It's too bad, I kinda liked this game for a while.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 04:51

BombermanX: Jan 13, 2011; I'm afraid of other people's opinions when they differ from my own. Please do not hurt my feelings.

CAT BRUSH posted:

It's too bad, I kinda liked this game for a while.

This game is going to die and I'll be riding it down with it. I want to make sure it dies for good when it does die.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 05:00

IPCRESS: May 27, 2012

BombermanX posted:

This game is going to die and I'll be riding it down with it. I want to make sure it dies for good when it does die.

I and a few other goons have been in negotiations with PWE for the studio, but with the flight of the devs we actually wanted, we stopped pursuing that option and have now presented an offer to buy the product and license.

So, if you're lucky, look forward to less rapacious greed on show. And the odd bug leading to mass-teleports to ERP bridges.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 06:09

SugarAddict: Oct 11, 2012

Someone PM me what's going on?
Also I've been gone for a year and a half with a lifetime account so I have some zen to give away (if I can transfer zen, I don't know)

# ? Mar 6, 2015 06:15

WarLocke: Jun 6, 2004; You are being watched.

SugarAddict posted:

Someone PM me what's going on?
Also I've been gone for a year and a half with a lifetime account so I have some zen to give away (if I can transfer zen, I don't know)

This, basically:

g0del posted:

The current doom is based on a leak on the wiki, but I'll try to explain the reasons for the DR hate as well as I can remember them. Long post incoming, feel free to skip it.

It started right before DR, when they released the upgrade system, and the announcement that upgrading would be the only way we could get Mk XIV gear. An in-depth look at the upgrade system shows that it's a massive EC and Dil sink, and relies on a bunch of psychological tricks to hide the actual costs of upgrading. Merely upgrading everything to Mk XIV was more expensive than buying all new Mk XII gear (the previous top of the line), and upgrading rarity was insane - costing literally millions of dil to get everything to epic quality.

Then DR was released, with higher max level and more importantly, higher level ships. They did release a method to upgrade older ships to make them almost as good as the new T6 ships, but the upgrades cost money. And the new T6 ships now cost $30 instead of $25 for the old T5 ships. And for the first time, there weren't enough story missions to level up. Previously, if you did nothing but story missions, you'd hit level 50 long before running out of story missions to play. But levelling from 50-60 through the new DR story missions left huge gaps, and the story missions were level-gated so you had to grind up your levels to continue the story.

DR also did some bad things to the STFs. Rewards were lowered across the board, and for any difficulty higher than normal the old optional objectives were made required objectives, without any thought about what that would, or even updating the in-mission text in many cases. This completely destroyed the queue population almost overnight. Previously you could almost always finish a queue, no matter how bad your team was. It might take forever, but you could finish it. Now, having a couple of bad players on your team meant failing the queue, getting the loser's prize of 10 marks, and still getting the 1 hour time-out before you could try again. Oh, and several of the 'optional' objectives had been bugged for awhile, so now that they were mandatory it was possible to get in an STF which was completely un-winnable no matter how good your team was.

At first the level grinding wasn't too bad. This game is so bad at explaining how to properly build/fly a ship that it's not uncommon for a decent player to do 10-20 times as much dps as a random pubbie. So grinding up the in-between levels wasn't so bad at first - a handful of runs through the Argala patrol on elite (or other patrols which were quick) would get you a level. This is when the first post-DR nerf hammer came out. Because people quickly realized that doing a single patrol over and over would let them level pretty quickly. And then players found an unintended interaction between old patrols in the Tau Dewa sector (which no one in their right mind had played in years), the new improved XP for elite difficulty, and a scaling issue where if the team leader was really low level the enemies would also be low level but give high level XP. This meant that if you grouped right, you could grind the Japori patrol to level up extremely quickly. As in, people hit max level + max specialization in a few days, and then started grinding more spec levels which gave dil.

Cryptic freaked out. They removed all the dil rewards for gaining spec levels after max, and made a nasty post calling people who levelled too fast exploiters, saying they levelled 17x faster than they should have (this is why you still see people joke about doing something 17x faster). Then they removed a whole bunch of levels/spec points from people. but they didn't just hit a handful of people who were using the japori group with a low level trick - they hit tons of people. All the people who had gained a bunch of levels in the few days that DR had been out - i.e. all their biggest players/fans. They also nerfed Tau Dewa patrols into the ground - at this point only patrols in the new Delta quadrant gave decent XP. They also heavily nerfed the amount of XP given at higher difficulty levels, nerfed it so hard in fact that it's now more efficient to play at normal difficulty.

The forums exploded, with complaint threads being created faster than the mods could delete them. So they put a cool-down timer on forums posting (one post every 5 minutes), and eventually relented and gave everyone their levels/spec points back, but by this point a lot of the damage had been done, and the average forum-goers were pretty unhappy with Cryptic.

A few weeks later came the big XP nerf. When DR came out they did a funny thing with XP - the XP you received from missions changed once you hit level 50. A story mission which gave 3,000 XP at level 49 might only give 900 XP if you ran it at level 51. They did this to slow down levelling, but it was weird and a few people had noticed and complained about it. So cryptic magnanimously decided to 'fix' it. They more than tripled the amount of XP needed to get each level after 50, but made mission rewards give the same amount of XP no matter what level you were when you ran them. Their announcement post used a bunch of math to prove that levelling speed would be unchanged, and that this was merely a cosmetic change to make things look more consistent. The problem is that there are three main ways of gaining XP in the game - story missions, doff jobs, and killing mobs. They increased the amount of XP needed to level, and increased the amount of XP from story missions, but they didn't touch the XP given from doffing/killing mobs. Since the majority of XP at end-game tends to come from doffing/killing mobs, this made gaining levels much slower than before.

There were a lot of minor missteps they made along the way as well. They 'increased' the queue rewards to encourage people to play them, but the increased amounts were still lower than the amounts from before DR. This led to many chocolate rations jokes on the official forums by pubbies who had read 1984 once. When players complained that the queues were empty, Cryptic devs claimed that the queues were working fine, and that the in-game display which showed no one playing them was simply a display bug, not a consequence of no one playing them because they were worthless. The cryptic lead gave an interview where he claimed that DR was the best expansion ever and that the players loved it, which quickly lead to most of the STO forums regulars creating sigs to mock that statement. This in turn led to another Cryptic dev having a minor breakdown on the forums because the sigs hurt his feelings so much. They discovered that some people would afk in the voth ground zone and get rewards without actually helping complete objectives. So they fixed that, but somehow their fix meant that everyone got less rewards even if they didn't afk the zone.

And every single change was announced as a change that would make things better for the players, when they actually made things worse. It's been a constant grind down, one by one removing every single method players had for speeding up their progress. For the last couple of months, the only place in the game which allowed you to gain levels/spec points at a decent speed was a couple of patrols in the delta quadrant. Now those patrols are on a half-hour time gate, so no more grinding them.

If you really want to (and can) give away zen I'm Ryllynyth@Ryllynyth in game. :wink:

# ? Mar 6, 2015 06:44

Korgan: Feb 14, 2012

Jethro_E7 posted:

Could someone please add my ALT - Drakenbake@MohammadKoush to the fleet and to chat please, thanks (KDF)

You're in.

Also received this from a mate, this happened roughly 12 hours ago.

[5:37] [System] [GameplayAnnounce] Brandon@bfelczer was issued a Jemhadar Strike Ship!

What's the bet ol' Branflakes got this legitimately? Considering it occured in the first hour after the patch. :v:

# ? Mar 6, 2015 07:06

Bloodly: Nov 3, 2008; Not as strong as you'd expect.

60/40. He may have legitly opened the boxes for an hour. He may, however, have infinite keys. Or his account may have a modifier to rates. There's a few ways I can think of, all probably too much effort, but the appearance of legitimacy is important.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 07:16

SugarAddict: Oct 11, 2012

WarLocke posted:

If you really want to (and can) give away zen I'm Ryllynyth@Ryllynyth in game.

I'll log on in a minute or two and see if I can. If I can't I will see if I can buy something and trade it to you.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 07:23

Korgan: Feb 14, 2012

Oh my god, guys, the Strikeship unlocks the bugship pets for the dreadnought. The bugship is officially dead and useless. :allears:

# ? Mar 6, 2015 07:30

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

Korgan posted:

Oh my god, guys, the Strikeship unlocks the bugship pets for the dreadnought. The bugship is officially dead and useless.

That was pretty much a given, I think. Considering that the Strikeship comes with the bugship skin, it was pretty obvious that the strikeship was meant to be a one hundred percent replacement. They may have well just called it the Tier Six Attack Ship.

Hmm, I wonder if soon I'll be able to pick up an old JHAS for dirt cheap as a JHDC frigate unlocker.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Mar 6, 2015

# ? Mar 6, 2015 07:32

Lagomorphic: Apr 21, 2008; AKA: Orthonormal

Korgan posted:

Oh my god, guys, the Strikeship unlocks the bugship pets for the dreadnought. The bugship is officially dead and useless.

Not entirely useless, it's going to be a much cheaper option for people who just want the stupid pets. Also I wasted a pile of EC grabbing a strike ship off the exchange and it's pretty underwhelming considering the price. DHC's are just worthless with the current meta and with 4/3 weapons it's not that great for beam spam. I'm basically running it like a suped up Risian corvette which is fun but yeah don't spend actual money trying to get the stupid thing.

# ? Mar 6, 2015 07:43

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# ? May 25, 2024 02:02

BombermanX: Jan 13, 2011; I'm afraid of other people's opinions when they differ from my own. Please do not hurt my feelings.

Korgan posted:

Oh my god, guys, the Strikeship unlocks the bugship pets for the dreadnought. The bugship is officially dead and useless.

I have no idea what this means and it feels loving great!

# ? Mar 6, 2015 09:29

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