Some ideas to improve the game for long-time players
John Luck Pikkard
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I've just hit my 50th ten-pull in a row without a legendary behold. I know that this is statistically possible, but it still irritates me.
In the past, I've spent quite a bit of money on this game. So I have all SR in the portal, except Bokai, Coffee Janeway, and Mutated Paris (need those two to make more Lizard Janeways). Plus, I have most of the ships at max. In other words, a premium pull is pretty much useless to me at this point and the game is no longer fun to play. There's nothing really to do between events. And even then, getting one copy of the new legendary is all I can hope for. And I already have plenty of 1/5 cards. From other posts I know that many players are in the same situation.
I have a few suggestions to improve the situation so that we can enjoy the game (and premium pulls) again:
All of these could kick in at a very high VIP level, for example, when players reach twice the amount necessary for level 14.
1) Kill the purple straight drop. At least give us the purple behold on every pull so that the chance of receiving one of the very few missing cards increases.
2) Increase the honor you get from dismissing crew. It takes ridiculously long to get to 50,000 honor.
3) Give us a chance to exchange other stuff for honor. Since I have no crew to level, I'm drowning in trainers and replicator units. I'd love a starbase room where stuff like that could be exchanged for honor. I wouldn't even mind a high exchange rate.
4) Increase the chance of begolds. To get to such a high VIP level, we've paid a lot. We have almost all the SR cards. Legendary ones are the only ones we need. This one could kick in at three times the VIP Points necessary for level 14.
I know that these suggestions will increase the spread between paying and non-paying players, but hey, when you pay money you should get something out of it.
I'm curious to see how others feel about this.
In the past, I've spent quite a bit of money on this game. So I have all SR in the portal, except Bokai, Coffee Janeway, and Mutated Paris (need those two to make more Lizard Janeways). Plus, I have most of the ships at max. In other words, a premium pull is pretty much useless to me at this point and the game is no longer fun to play. There's nothing really to do between events. And even then, getting one copy of the new legendary is all I can hope for. And I already have plenty of 1/5 cards. From other posts I know that many players are in the same situation.
I have a few suggestions to improve the situation so that we can enjoy the game (and premium pulls) again:
All of these could kick in at a very high VIP level, for example, when players reach twice the amount necessary for level 14.
1) Kill the purple straight drop. At least give us the purple behold on every pull so that the chance of receiving one of the very few missing cards increases.
2) Increase the honor you get from dismissing crew. It takes ridiculously long to get to 50,000 honor.
3) Give us a chance to exchange other stuff for honor. Since I have no crew to level, I'm drowning in trainers and replicator units. I'd love a starbase room where stuff like that could be exchanged for honor. I wouldn't even mind a high exchange rate.
4) Increase the chance of begolds. To get to such a high VIP level, we've paid a lot. We have almost all the SR cards. Legendary ones are the only ones we need. This one could kick in at three times the VIP Points necessary for level 14.
I know that these suggestions will increase the spread between paying and non-paying players, but hey, when you pay money you should get something out of it.
I'm curious to see how others feel about this.
7
Comments
To be fair of course, I should say I'm a mostly FTP player. I spent about $35 CAD early on to kickstart my game, and nothing since. That obviously makes me a bit biased. But as kind of an "outside observer" to the whale scene, the phrase in your post that worries me is "the game is no longer fun to play".
I've seen that so many times from so many people, and I'm all for adding more ways to have fun to the game, but if you're not having fun playing then...don't. I don't mean that as a criticism or that I want you gone or anything. It's nothing personal. I appreciate that the money you and others spend keep the game alive for people like me to play. But when people aren't having fun, but can't bring themselves to stop, that's an addiction. And I'm not convinced that what the game really needs is more things for addicts to pay for that don't really change anything beyond delaying the point at which you plateau.
If DB really wants to do something to reduce boredom for veteran players, I'd prefer that they focus on adding more variety to the gameplay, ie/ having more than 3 event types, and maybe even shaking up the schedule of them from time to time. Fixing gauntlet so it's not just walls of the same few characters, the only variety provided by marginal proficiency bonus differences. Adding more meaningful results to voyage dilemmas. Things that make the game itself more fun, instead of the time portal.
I understand that you don't want to be personal. But also want to make clear that this is not about an addict needing the next fix.
I'm a massive star trek fan (as most other people here) and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment from this game. I'm trying to make suggestions for getting back to that stage. And what made it fun was that I had a lot of stuff to do, mostly trying to level several crew at the same time, making strategic decisions, like which one to focus on.
At that time getting a premium pull was an actual reward, because you had a really big chance of improving your crew and thus getting better at events or the game in general. Now it is really, really hard to improve your crew and see actual progress. Of course I could just move on to the next game, but I'd rather have this game be fun like it was again.
You are right. It gets boring waiting for events you want to make a run at. On some days when there are weak cadet days (Tuesday and Sunday) all I have to look forward to is voyage dilemnas and gauntlet refreshes
This is why I no longer buy the 10 for 10, 15 for 15 etc packs. Straight purple drops **tsk tsk**. They should also have a "re-roll" mechanic for beholds. The re-roll should not cost more than 10 dilithium, but preferably it would be credits or merits.
An "older" legendary should also drop at the 10 hour mark.
Even if falling short of a full-blown addiction, there is a level of play is a rote, formed habit. There have been times when I've felt that was how my experience with Timelines had started to become, or even had become. Honestly, a key reason I play is to keep up with conversation here on the forum. I still enjoy that (thanks in part to the ignore button), ergo I still get something out of the game during those periods when the game itself doesn't have much to offer me.
Something that might be more appealing than Expeditions--and I have no idea whether it's even possible, let alone practical--would be to set it up so that once we've 3-starred an Away mission, it replaces the original one-time only special items with new ones. That would get us playing Away missions again, at least for awhile.
Oh, and bring back Expeditions, which require playing Away missions. But give the format the 2-phase Community Rewards structure so the haters have a carrot.
Or something of that kind. Some new feature that is linked to captain level and reduces the frustration of long-time players.
And to be honest, this will never happen, but I think that a guaranteed behold in premium packs and a refresh option for beholds should actually be available to everyone. Given the amount of crew available now even a new player will have mostly useless drops and a crew full of 1/4* the same way we have one full of 1/5*.
Buying pulls is the antithesis of fun, it's a fix for gambling addicts and it's very short term income for the company, but that kind of game is only made for the short term, once you no longer have fun you quit to make room for the next sucker in the line.
If the devs wanted to, they could add more things to look forward, gold cards don't work as they're nearly impossible to complete. I don't know what this could be and frankly I don't want to do some unpaid job thinking about it, but overall since the last new in game activities were added nearly two years ago, I think DB is fine with their game being on the decline and in semi-maintenance mode to rake in more cash until no one plays it anymore. They're probably working on new games for new suckers who will willingly spoil their game buying their way to completion.
All in all I'd say, don't think too much about it, when you're done you're done, take a break, you can always come back later if you feel like it.
With the citations from the Campaigns + the returns from Voyages and other ways to create honor at minimum one card every 2 months even for small spenders. Yeah, that is nearly impossible for sure
I'm VIP 8 so this is first hand experience.
It's also much, much slower than that for the average player. I don't know how many packs you buy and this is none of my business but for most it takes at the very least a month to get 50k honor. That makes 3 full golds a year. Yawn.
There was also a thread about new rewards. It seems like they have either a new game feature or they will be expanding an existing feature. Hopefully that addresses some of the boredom issues.
I don't know if these two things will be released at the same time or what the devs have in mind. But there does seem to be something in the works. All I can say is "hang in there." Not sure if it will be worth the wait, but there's stuff in the works. I certainly wouldn't throw in the towel until we see what the devs have in store.
I used to think that a good RPG required about 70-100 gaming hours to fully complete. Considering I'm only a few months shy of 3-years playing STT, for more total time than I care to add up, it's hard not to think I've already gotten great value from the game.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see new missions added regularly (a new chapter even twice a year would be great), new events tried out (even if they fail miserably, or just work in the odd expedition), with more creative ways to acquire 5* crew and/or honor than we currently have available to us.
That's the typical answer, players want bugs ironed out but when there's no new content they flee in droves. Do as I say, not as I do I guess, that's why all these polls about priorities are rather worthless. All online games that survive get new content at least twice a year, usually closer to 4 times. One of the games I play has new content on a fixed schedule, once every 3 months and no delays. They also hold regular events and they're often new and varied (unlike STT lol) and for some reason it's also a much cheaper F2P game. For the kind of money DB is making we're really not getting much.
Sounds like the other game is built on an interesting model. How long has that game been around? I also feel obligated to add that STT adds content weekly. There's usually new event crew about three-fourths of the weekends, then there's always the Tuesday packs. That's probably a little more cookie-cutter than what you're talking about, but it does take dev resources. The cookie-cutter factor makes it seem mundane and doesn't cure boredom.
Your point of new, varied events is interesting. There's a special mix of players in this community. Some want things to be consistent and predictable. Some want fresh and new. Personally, I'm more the fresh-and-new type, like you.
The polls that I've posted are more for my own curiosity than to "tell the devs what to do."
The game I was talking about released in may but before that it went through two years of beta, so make it two years and a half. You're right of course about STT adding content on a weekly basis but that's merely technically correct as it's at most new art and not adding new ways to play the game. Cards don't add anything to the game, they're a bunch of numbers with traits and sometimes cool art, that's why IMO it shouldn't count as content.
I'm not saying that merely collecting cards in itself can't hold interest, but compare STT's crew to let's say Magic cards and you will see where the flaws are and why Magic will survive decades after the end of this game. First PvP adds a lot of depth then it's not just about stats, it's about making cards work together in unique and creative ways. Also when you have the card, you have it, there are no stars, fusion and equipment shenanigans - less crap and more fun.
I don't know where this is going and this was probably not OP's original intent but overall I'd say that there's no way to make timelines a good game. It will keep it's awful, ungenerous and boring gameplay with a franchise we love and we're going to keep playing it because of that but that doesn't mean the devs shouldn't at least try to keep our attention by adding new in game activities. There's no way to escape that, cards collection can only do so much and they've reached the extreme limits given how the player population is falling quickly. I don't want to tell exactly how I found out because I don't want DB to cut access to that data but the game has lost nearly half of its active players since I played it last year and it's not getting any better.
I've noticed the collapse in population too, you can see it in the difficulty many fleets have with recruitment and in the arenas. The truth is that this game is in pseudo maintenance mode with a much reduced development budget seemingly dedicated to a couple of cards a week and QoL fixes.
This observation is not born of spite or malice, I really enjoy the game and wish it to continue, but the lack of any enthusiasm generated by DB themselves speaks volumes. I would love to have something to do with my immortalised legendaries, especially the poorer ones that never get a look in these days.
What I want is harder content to do to make use of the progress I've made in the game so far.
Adding extra VIP tiers with all/some/any of the following suggestions. Mixed by VIP lvl increment or just all if VIP 14 is double.
Increased honor for dismissal
Daily claims of citation or honor
Double claims of daily di purchase
(maybe no tue roulette rule will disappear)
No straight 4* or 5* drops. Behold only.
Some of the above may be added by cpt lvl or mixed with cpt lvl/VIP lvl.
Decrepit legendaries in voyages
I know alot of ppl are bored with the same weekend event types and i dont disagree but i would like to see some customer loyalty additions, long time requested upgrades
(Such as star base and QOL improvements)
take effect before new programming is implemented.
50 pulls without a legendary would be beyond annoying. This games needs talaxian furflys. As you miss out on a begold you keep getting more talaxian furflys, then when you get a begold, they fly-off. Rinse, repeat.
I've been on the receiving end of this kind of streak more times than I can count (streaks of 50, 47, 43, and 45), so I'm right there with you.
Would also love a reroll option, maybe something that costs 25k honor, or 650 dil or something, that lets you reroll a legendary behold a maximum of ONCE, to maybe get past those FF beholds. Maybe 10k/250 dil for purples.
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Was my obviously bad way of saying some kind of bad luck counter like you see in many games . Similar for making super rares in galaxy events. Each time you don't get a begold on a 10 pack, you get a slightly better chance next pack. When you get a begold, resets to normal chance.