Why 2019 was the worst year for Star Trek Timelines
Shadowconmaster
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
New Content(Borg Faction)—
IMO the only real significant addition to the game. However, with ALL GOOD THINGS it also leads to the desire not to do any of the other factions during the week. This is primary due to the best items from each faction is available as Borg Faction missions.
New Content(Chapter 9 and 10)—
While this was great, these additions are short-lived. They also didn’t fix the main issue of having more than 1 way of getting most items. For the Galaxy events, several items are 1 mission specific. This gets incredibly boring and you end up with have thousands of unusable items.
New Content(Campaigns)—
The Premium track was a great addition for people who are semi-whales to full on whales. Essentially the items located in the Premium track is significant for people who were already willing to spend money. The Premium track also created more of a fixed revenue steam for DB(a lot of online gaming is heading to this structure apparently WoW had it right).
The non-paid track also gives great rewards for the casual player and just side bonuses for the people who are willing to pay.
I do believe this also has created an issue with people wanting to buy both the campaign and the monthly Dil card. I personally no longer see the benefits of the monthly DIL card. There was 22 new 4* from Fraction and Skirmish only events added this year. Assuming an average of 2 packs to get new crew, you would need 28600 DIL a year. Each campaign gives 1105 DIL or 13260 a year. The net difference is around 15340 DIL. If you use the extra citation from the non-paid track this drops down to zero.
Note: I understand that the Premium track costs $6 USD more, but the Legendary citation is worth roughly 6500 DIL by itself which is $8 USD or 2 monthly cards.
Note: If you love the Exclusive Treasure packs, then continue to get the Monthly card before you drop $25 USD a pack on something that is worth 4ish(about $16 USD) monthly cards or 13000 DIL.
The Campaign also created the effect that all the other “sales” by DB are way overpriced and IMO completely killed the DYC offer.
Events—
I believe we have seen the last of Expedition events. Thus DB has removed 25% of all event combinations ever. While I understand that those events required a more work on DB’s part, that is an extremely weak response.
When people complained that we had Faction events for 6 weeks straight, I was expecting DB to come up with something exciting. Instead we got FLASHBACK events. Yep, the event that is even worse compared to the Replay events since they don’t even give the 400k event Gold.
The other issue with the Fraction events 6 weeks straight, is the fact DB doesn’t have anything else besides that, skirmishes, and galaxy. THE GAME HAS THE SAME AMOUNT OF EVENT TYPES SINCE IT’S ORIGINAL CREATION. The only thing that has changed is that we have no more time consuming Expedition, but now we have time consuming skirmishes(if you want to place top 1500).
Event Timing—
Faction events are the ONLY event that require you to participate every day of the event to get threshold+ rewards. For skirmishes and Galaxy, you simply need to dedicate about 4-5 hours to it to place top 1000 during the whole weekend. (For the math people each skirmish takes about 2.5 minutes. That’s 24 skirmishes an hour or 120 skirmishes in 5 hours. At an average of 6300 points per skirmish, that 756k points. Galaxy events are very similar and require significantly less points to place top 1000.)
Online Time—
Most games desire people to be on more often and want to participate more often. Due to Events, I am personally only on Thursdays for any length of time. Excluding Thursdays, I only sign in about 3 times a day.
The 1st time, I do Cadet Challenge, Arena, then do the Voyage thing(either set it up, do dilemma, or recall it), after that I hit scan, send 4 shuttles, and make a 3x purchase(usually banked 90k basic pack). By that time, I can do the Cadet again and the Arena. I then do all the leveling for a character and the 20x away and ship missions. After that I do Cadet and Arena and sign off.
The 2nd time, I do Cadet, then Arena, then Voyage, then Scan, Scan adwarp, and send last of my shuttles. Then I wait and do Cadet and then Arena.
The 3rd time is generally to hit Cadet warp and then Voyage one last time.
(Since CADET and ARENA will no longer have cool down(7.4), I may be on even less)
There is not a lot of additional incentives to sign on more often or do anything else these days.
Star Trek Timeline Thursdays—
Usually starts for me right at 11pm my time. I do the Ad Warps getting the 10x shuttle things a total of 19 times throughout the day(I buy 6 more attempts for 150 DIL). For Galaxy only or skirmishes, I get to about 600k points and then stop. (Skirmishes I also do a little Sunday night due to “free” buildup of intel).
New Content(Characters)—
While they have increased crew slots significantly, it fails to address the main concern of too many characters. Assuming you immed and froze ALL the new 2*, 3*, and 4*, they added 101 new 5* characters. For most people those 101 well remain un immed for sometime, if ever. If we assume you got 1* for each, that would mean you would need an additional 5.5 MILLION honor to imm those 101 characters. On average, I have been getting about 80k honor a month or 960k honor a year. It will take me another 6 YEARS to imm the crew that were available this year alone.
Also remember that 5.5 million number, the mess-up for rewards this Xmas equated to about 200k honor. It would take 27x that flaw to make up for that number.
The other major issue is due to power creep. We now have several 4* crew that have better stats then FULLY IMMED 5*. While this happens in every game, the weaker 5* crew need to be made readily available. It really bothers me that some of the more iconic characters are now near worthless compared to characters I have to look up on Memory Alpha.
To add to this, IAMPICARD was a great system that for people(although it was abused). The fact that there was a major need for people to use this as a QoL is a major indicator that the crew situation has gotten out of hand.
Overall Content—
I currently play 2 other Freemium games. Compared to Star Trek Timelines, they have significantly more daily/weekly content. Here are some similarities and differences:
1. Daily missions—All 3 games have it.
2. Campaign—While the name is different all 3 games have this
3. New items/crew(non event)—Only STT has this via pay only. Each of the others gives out free stuff by simply playing.
4. Events—STT has 1 event every weekend, another has 2 or 3 events every week, while the last has 4+ events per week.
5. Event thresholds—All 3 follow a similar Threshold events
6. New Event Types—In the last year, One game has had 14(which is a lot) + holidays, another game has only had 6 including holidays, and STT has had ZERO.
7. In-game sales—Each game has this and STT’s 12 days of XMAS sales was nothing special comparatively.
8. Story mode—Each game has a story mode that you go through as you level up
9. Obtainable end game—The other two games have an obtainable “end” game. STT with the additional crew and crew cost does not.
10. Achievements/Collections—While Collections is a STT exclusive, it still boils down to an achievement which is something all 3 games have.
IMO the only real significant addition to the game. However, with ALL GOOD THINGS it also leads to the desire not to do any of the other factions during the week. This is primary due to the best items from each faction is available as Borg Faction missions.
New Content(Chapter 9 and 10)—
While this was great, these additions are short-lived. They also didn’t fix the main issue of having more than 1 way of getting most items. For the Galaxy events, several items are 1 mission specific. This gets incredibly boring and you end up with have thousands of unusable items.
New Content(Campaigns)—
The Premium track was a great addition for people who are semi-whales to full on whales. Essentially the items located in the Premium track is significant for people who were already willing to spend money. The Premium track also created more of a fixed revenue steam for DB(a lot of online gaming is heading to this structure apparently WoW had it right).
The non-paid track also gives great rewards for the casual player and just side bonuses for the people who are willing to pay.
I do believe this also has created an issue with people wanting to buy both the campaign and the monthly Dil card. I personally no longer see the benefits of the monthly DIL card. There was 22 new 4* from Fraction and Skirmish only events added this year. Assuming an average of 2 packs to get new crew, you would need 28600 DIL a year. Each campaign gives 1105 DIL or 13260 a year. The net difference is around 15340 DIL. If you use the extra citation from the non-paid track this drops down to zero.
Note: I understand that the Premium track costs $6 USD more, but the Legendary citation is worth roughly 6500 DIL by itself which is $8 USD or 2 monthly cards.
Note: If you love the Exclusive Treasure packs, then continue to get the Monthly card before you drop $25 USD a pack on something that is worth 4ish(about $16 USD) monthly cards or 13000 DIL.
The Campaign also created the effect that all the other “sales” by DB are way overpriced and IMO completely killed the DYC offer.
Events—
I believe we have seen the last of Expedition events. Thus DB has removed 25% of all event combinations ever. While I understand that those events required a more work on DB’s part, that is an extremely weak response.
When people complained that we had Faction events for 6 weeks straight, I was expecting DB to come up with something exciting. Instead we got FLASHBACK events. Yep, the event that is even worse compared to the Replay events since they don’t even give the 400k event Gold.
The other issue with the Fraction events 6 weeks straight, is the fact DB doesn’t have anything else besides that, skirmishes, and galaxy. THE GAME HAS THE SAME AMOUNT OF EVENT TYPES SINCE IT’S ORIGINAL CREATION. The only thing that has changed is that we have no more time consuming Expedition, but now we have time consuming skirmishes(if you want to place top 1500).
Event Timing—
Faction events are the ONLY event that require you to participate every day of the event to get threshold+ rewards. For skirmishes and Galaxy, you simply need to dedicate about 4-5 hours to it to place top 1000 during the whole weekend. (For the math people each skirmish takes about 2.5 minutes. That’s 24 skirmishes an hour or 120 skirmishes in 5 hours. At an average of 6300 points per skirmish, that 756k points. Galaxy events are very similar and require significantly less points to place top 1000.)
Online Time—
Most games desire people to be on more often and want to participate more often. Due to Events, I am personally only on Thursdays for any length of time. Excluding Thursdays, I only sign in about 3 times a day.
The 1st time, I do Cadet Challenge, Arena, then do the Voyage thing(either set it up, do dilemma, or recall it), after that I hit scan, send 4 shuttles, and make a 3x purchase(usually banked 90k basic pack). By that time, I can do the Cadet again and the Arena. I then do all the leveling for a character and the 20x away and ship missions. After that I do Cadet and Arena and sign off.
The 2nd time, I do Cadet, then Arena, then Voyage, then Scan, Scan adwarp, and send last of my shuttles. Then I wait and do Cadet and then Arena.
The 3rd time is generally to hit Cadet warp and then Voyage one last time.
(Since CADET and ARENA will no longer have cool down(7.4), I may be on even less)
There is not a lot of additional incentives to sign on more often or do anything else these days.
Star Trek Timeline Thursdays—
Usually starts for me right at 11pm my time. I do the Ad Warps getting the 10x shuttle things a total of 19 times throughout the day(I buy 6 more attempts for 150 DIL). For Galaxy only or skirmishes, I get to about 600k points and then stop. (Skirmishes I also do a little Sunday night due to “free” buildup of intel).
New Content(Characters)—
While they have increased crew slots significantly, it fails to address the main concern of too many characters. Assuming you immed and froze ALL the new 2*, 3*, and 4*, they added 101 new 5* characters. For most people those 101 well remain un immed for sometime, if ever. If we assume you got 1* for each, that would mean you would need an additional 5.5 MILLION honor to imm those 101 characters. On average, I have been getting about 80k honor a month or 960k honor a year. It will take me another 6 YEARS to imm the crew that were available this year alone.
Also remember that 5.5 million number, the mess-up for rewards this Xmas equated to about 200k honor. It would take 27x that flaw to make up for that number.
The other major issue is due to power creep. We now have several 4* crew that have better stats then FULLY IMMED 5*. While this happens in every game, the weaker 5* crew need to be made readily available. It really bothers me that some of the more iconic characters are now near worthless compared to characters I have to look up on Memory Alpha.
To add to this, IAMPICARD was a great system that for people(although it was abused). The fact that there was a major need for people to use this as a QoL is a major indicator that the crew situation has gotten out of hand.
Overall Content—
I currently play 2 other Freemium games. Compared to Star Trek Timelines, they have significantly more daily/weekly content. Here are some similarities and differences:
1. Daily missions—All 3 games have it.
2. Campaign—While the name is different all 3 games have this
3. New items/crew(non event)—Only STT has this via pay only. Each of the others gives out free stuff by simply playing.
4. Events—STT has 1 event every weekend, another has 2 or 3 events every week, while the last has 4+ events per week.
5. Event thresholds—All 3 follow a similar Threshold events
6. New Event Types—In the last year, One game has had 14(which is a lot) + holidays, another game has only had 6 including holidays, and STT has had ZERO.
7. In-game sales—Each game has this and STT’s 12 days of XMAS sales was nothing special comparatively.
8. Story mode—Each game has a story mode that you go through as you level up
9. Obtainable end game—The other two games have an obtainable “end” game. STT with the additional crew and crew cost does not.
10. Achievements/Collections—While Collections is a STT exclusive, it still boils down to an achievement which is something all 3 games have.
4
Comments
I think the following things can greatly improve the game
Mini Event Suggestion—
While QoL is being discussed, I would recommend adding a mini event between Monday and Wednesday.
1. Start—Have the event start on Monday at 6pm ET and end 6pm ET on Wednesday
2. Content—Use individual phases from previous events. Use old events exclusively and then go in order. Start with They Came from the Holodeck.
3. Thresholds/Rewards—Only have Threshold rewards. No crew sharing, no leaderboard, no squad rewards.
4. Threshold structure—This will have to be new, but below is a suggestion.
a. 1000 points— One 2* crew
b. 5000 points—One 3* crew
c. 10k points—3* crew top equipment
d. 25k points—The 4* event specific crew
e. 50k points—4* specific crew top equipment
f. 100k points—The 5* event specific crew
g. 125k points—5* event specific crew top equipment.
h. Don’t add too much. Keep it simple. The above format would let people get 2 5* of the old events.
5. Pay pack—Have a Tuesday $10 crew be a crew member that helps with mini event.
Monthly reward changes—
1. Remove 2 of the Blue Crew and replace it with a Blue Citation and a Purple Crew. Keep the Purple crew constant for 4 months.
2. Replace the Purple Crew, with a rotation of old Pack-only Gold Crew.This incentive people to get to VP 14 to be able to double this reward and reward loyal people who have already obtained it.
Drop the DIL costs in the faction store by 60%
This is pretty straight forward. But I also recommend making the Roulette ½ off forever. Do not change the price of adding the shuttle or adding more crew slots. I believe DB is on the right track with offering discounts on those more often.
How this well affect P2P—
As a person who understands that paying customers are what keeps a business going, I do not think the above changes well decrease the revenue generated by the game. In fact, I believe it would increase it.
Currently, each Event DB tries to sell packs for shuttles speed ups or chronitions. Personally, I have never bought either and don’t need them to place in the current set-up. The shuttle-speed ups and chronitons are easily obtained through cadet missions and are more than enough in the current system. If you increase what you need them for, it makes it more desirable to purchase more.
From a business stand point, the majority of the money made by the game is probably related to NEW characters and the campaign/Dil card. All my suggestions have also stayed away from Citations. Citations build-up would decrease revenue.
PREACH!
Hopefully 2020 will see a few shake ups and surprises to liven things up.
Actually, the number of event types has more than tripled since launch. Events were originally faction only. Galaxies were added later, then hybrids, and skirmishes are the newest.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
So in Hybrids you dont send shuttles, fight space battles, or craft items. Trying to justify more event types by rehashing the same stuff doesn't make it new just different. Since launch was a little strong, but we had 3 different types within the 1st year and still only have three different types.
Could the game get better? Sure. But I think it is heading in the right direction.
2016 would naturally make for the best year ever as that was the inception of the game. This also means everything was new. It doesn't mean that everything was easy, but everything was inventive and new with respect to the game.
2017 was amazing for the introduction of Convergence day. It got even better in February because of the first ever Hybrid event. This was coupled with in May when they introduced the 1st Mega event. Later that year they added Voyages(you know the non-nerfed ones that we wish we still had), Daily Missions and Starbases. Achievements were introduced providing people with honor and Dil. It ended with a bang with the 1st ever non cannon characters and hosted the infamous Picard scandal. 2017 was my personal favorite year over 2016.
2018 saw the start of lack of innovation and DB went through some major changes. However it was focused primary on QoL changes. Significant changes were made too Voyages and Starbases and achievements were updated. The introduction of Collections also occurred. And the best event type skirmishes was introduced. Skirmishes were an answer for the cry of change for events.
For non-paid players all 2019 gave was a reward for signing in and completing challenges more than 1 day.
Objectively, game design has ground to a halt and the games population has plummeted. My guess is that we will continue to get more and more stuff in an effort to get us to spend money that otherwise we wouldn't and that when that ceases to work the game will fold.
No effort is being made to keep the game interesting, it's just being made cheaper. That just cannot work longer term. The population will keep falling or move to spending less. My spending has fallen, not because I am unhappy, but because there is no point anymore. There's nothing to do that I can't do with what I already have. This is directly related to campaigns and megaevents. It's not long til everyone has so many immortalised legendaries that no one will need to spend money.
We need something to do with all this stuff or it really will be just a passive collection game.
2/29/16 Ships become upgradable
2/29/16 Chronitons displayed on the main screen HUD
3/1/16 Temporal Agent Seven is the first crew member added via a "Best Chance" pack
3/31/16 "They Came From the Holodeck!" is the first ever event (Faction)
4/14/16 Dismissing crew now grants XP based on crew rarity
5/3/16 Cadet Challenge: The United Federation
5/17/16 First to Max meta data tracked and displayed
5/17/16 Shuttle Boosts
5/5/16 First "Elusive Treasures" packs offered
6/14/16 Cadet Challenge: A Certain Formality
6/14/16 Distress Call: Celestial Temple
6/16/16 "Contingency Plan" is the first Galaxy Event
6/29/16 Battle Arena
7/15/16 "The Game's Afoot" is the first Expedition Event
7/26/16 Episode 7 "When Falcons Clash"
7/28/16 Event Replays begin with "They Came From the Holodeck! 2"
8/9/16 Cryostasis Vault
8/9/16 Tap and Hold Training
8/30/16 Ad Warps
8/30/16 Replicator
8/30/16 Squadrons
8/31/16 Aviator Yar and Tuskegee Mayweather become first Timelines Originals/non-canon crew
10/5/16 Waitress Ezri, the only Ezri added since the game's launch
11/23/16 STT becomes playable on PC via Facebook Gameroom
12/8/16 Event Rank Rewards Become Cumulative
12/20/16 Supply Kits
1/30/17 Gauntlet
4/27/17 Crew Reenlistment Window
4/27/17 Honor Hall
4/27/17 Search by Name in Crew Quarters
5/4/17 Mega-Events
6/1/17 Critical hit now guarantees rare items drop from mission nodes
6/13/17 Achievements
6/13/17 Quick Build
6/19/17 Fleet Target Rewards
7/11/17 Distress Calls: Klingon Empire
7/25/17 STT launches on Steam
8/28/17 Starbases
9/7/17 #Justice4Smudge
9/20/17 Lieutenant Commander Saru introduces Star Trek: Discovery content into Timelines
9/20/17 Voyages
12/5/17 Episode 8 "The Killing Syndrome"
12/6/17 Merit Packs added to Time Portal
2/27/18 Collections
5/24/18 Jonathan Archer finally appears in an event (Xindi Prisoner Archer, in "The Longest Day")
5/31/18 Skirmish Events
6/28/18 Rank 5*'s Added to Thresholds in Event Replays, beginning with "The Isthmian Games 2"
10/4/18 Event Rank 5* Featured in Following Week's Featured Crew
10/5/18 Distress Calls: Infinity
11/13/18 Shuttle Requisition
11/15/18 Event Thresholds Expanded to include Voyage Revival Token and Premium 10x Pull
11/15/18 "Peldor Joi" (i.e. "The Combs Event")
1/9/19 Cadet Challenges Became Warpable
1/15/19 Borg Faction
1/15/19 Episode 9 "Strange Bedfellows"
1/22/19 Event rewards table schema revised; top 1500 now get 5*, top 1000 also get dilithium
3/14/19 U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-E
3/19/19 Campaigns (Beta)
4/18/19 Campaigns
5/31/19 STT launches on Microsoft Store
7/10/19 Episode 10 "Shadow of a Doubt"
In fairness to 2019, most of the obvious big stuff had already been done. Personally, I would argue 2018 was weaker overall, though I wouldn't call any of them a "bad", let alone "the worst" year for the game.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. I’d like to visit your points and make some counterpoints.
TL:DR – I think 2017 was the ‘worst year’ and 2019 was the best year.
So, to recap your qualifications list that made 2019 the worst:
1) We got the long requested new Borg Faction, which is more or less a one-stop shop for items. This is positive development and time investment from the developers on a 4 year old game. It is listed as a 'bad' thing because it lowers your desire to use other faction options during the week.
2) We got not one, but TWO new story missions, complete with a really good 5* crew as the top tier reward, along with DIL and ship schematics. Again, development from the team on a 4 year old game to add more challenging content requiring crew depth to complete it and not copy/paste like previous story mission additions had been. DB before late 2018 had never given away DIL in any method, and now they hand it out regularly. It is listed as a 'bad' thing because like all consumable content, you consumed it - also Galaxy Event items sometimes have only 1 farmable mission for them and this did not solve that pain point.
3) Campaigns are listed by you as 'great addition' for medium to big spenders, and great rewards for non-spenders. The 'bad' about this you have listed it is created for you a dilemma of not wanting to spend $4 a month for a daily DIL card and the monthly campaign as well, so you went from a fixed $4 a month spend to a fixed $10 a month spend.
4) Events are listed as a stunted growth item as we did not see an Expedition event in 2019, and among the larger issues is that Flashbacks were introduced, which smell like re-runs but take away the chance at earning an 'old gold' at 400k
5) Event participation time requirements are too taxing, and I'm not sure which one you hate more: faction events where interaction is only needed every 3 hours but once every 3 hours over the span of 4 days, or galaxy events where 4 hours of crafting is needed across 4 days, or skirmish which requires 5 hours of direct play over 4 days - all above for top 1000ish placement.
6) Overall online/interaction time - you will spend most of your weekly interaction with timelines on Thursday for event kickoffs, and outside of that every day it's 3 drop ins total - giving no further investment on your part.
7) New characters continue to stretch the limits of your crew quarters, and only increase your honor debt. New characters with power creep invalidate older cards, and new 4* crew start to creep on old 5* crew. Also, IAMPICARD is dead.
8) Finally in comparing this card collecting game skinned by a loose star trek theme to two other non-related and non-card collecting games you play, they all have similar mechanics, all being mobile games in the space, with the major exception of an endgame, which they have and STT does not.
If I misrepresented what you said, please correct me. Unfortunately, you can't correct me until after you've read this, and you've made it this far, so you may as well keep going.
1) Your personal lowered desire to use other factions is in no way a 'bad' thing globally for the game, only for your personal style of play which we will touch on later.
FRANK VERDICT: Disagree, but in context it really doesn't belong if we are saying why STT had a bad 2019.
2) The new missions came and went, you cleared the content and got the goodies, and are largely displeased as there is not more content and further more places to farm galaxy items. Working backwards, more places to farm galaxy items has not, to my knowledge, been a pain point of the community since 2016 when it was first introduced. Those recipes during events weren't fun at all. Now, it's fairly common stuff at a 4 chron per or 6 chron per cost average. Yes, there are higher, but most of the common items fit into that space. Don't know how you can get cheaper or better options than that. Also, again, not one but two new episodes with Quinn and DIL as rewards. Remember back in 2016 before stuff was balanced and rebalanced? The highest mission requirements in Episode 6 needed very specific 5/5 Immortalized crew which, even then, very few people had. It just wasn't passable at all. This was corrected. Now the top tier of the 10th episode has high marks to pass, but it can be done with any number of crew, most of which have been Mega Event 4/5 rewards so widely available to players of all types.
FRANK VERDICT: Disagree; two new eps are fantastic as are the rewards. We are lucky to have more development after 4 years like that.
3) Campaigns are flat out awesome for free, let alone for $10. Do nothing but log on and do your dailies and you get FREE STUFF, including a 4/4, a purple cite, premium portal pulls, DIL..the list goes on. Pay and that list grows substantially. You dislike it because...you started spending more money for more stuff, but won't spend more money for even more stuff. DB's goal is to, you know, make money, and they have done it with you by doubling your monthly spend.
FRANK VERDICT: Disagree, campaigns are wicked cool and your spending choices do not reflect how DB did or did not have a good/bad 2019. Those are your choices.
4) Events - ho boy. We haven't seen an Expedition since May of 2017 folks. Get used to it; it's dead and not coming back. Sure, it's appeared in a hybrid form for 2 days, but that's not really an Expedition event now is it? When the game started, there were zero events, or squads, or starbases, or Dabo, or cadets, or any of that. Over time, all of this has grown and been added. By the end of 2016, we had three event types, and even then the fabled Expedition was only featured 6 times, being shadowed by Faction and Galaxy types. The question of Flashback vs. Rerun is an odd one, I'll give you that. DB sold the Flashback event as one where no real work on it was needed by the staff, so more time could be spent making more content. However the old events that have been featured use the old reward tables that don't include gold at 1500 or whatnot, so absolutely work is needed by the staff to some degree.
FRANK VERDICT: Push. I'll agree flashbacks are weird, but the lack of expeditions in 2018 or 2019 at this point shouldn't be anything that anyone bemoans, because they aren't coming back.
5) Participation in events takes too much time - this hasn't changed from 2019 to 2018 to 2017 to 2016. Events are completely voluntary - your participation is rewarded by degree of free stuff. This is the same in your other mobile games.
FRANK VERDICT: Not an issue, at least not one specific to 2019.
6) Your interaction time is, well, it's just that. It's yours. That's not my problem or DB's problem. In fact, it's not even a problem. Time is finite, and you have elected to give so much of it to this card collecting game on your phone.
FRANK VERDICT: Not an issue.
7 & 8) Too many cards and no 'end game' - I think this has been said since 2016. One person right now in the game has every card immortal, every collection completed, every achievement completed. If one is able to define an 'endgame' to a card collecting game, I'd say that's it. So right now, Paladin27 has one. What's that? A new gold card is rewarded on Monday at event end? Well, looks like Paladin has to keep plugging away. Probably 5 people in the game have at least one copy of all 829 cards available in the game (And I was one of those people for all of a week, then I lost out on a Tuesday card..that was my 'endgame' and it lasted a whole week). So out of, very arguably 60,000 active daily players of this Star Trek themed casino, 6 have hit some form of definable 'End Game'. Outside of that, its personal achievements that people use (wanting to immortalize a 5* of every main captain) or it's not even thought of because...there is no endgame. It's the never-ending story. Until DB loses the license and the plug is pulled, new cards will come into being every week and new things to collect will be made available for your consumption. It may not be the best model of a game or a time-waster, but 4 years in and not showing signs of slowing, I'd say DB is on to something here.
FRANK VERDICT: Not an issue for 2019, it's literally the concept of the game - collect all, well, as many of the crew cards as you can. If you want a game with a definable 'endgame' to it, go dig up an old NES game. Those games have final stages and credits and everything. Mobile games are not designed to that.
We saw some great stuff in 2019. It's a 4 year old card collecting game delivered to a niche audience - and it's still getting development even while DB is starting to focus on other properties. I couldn't be happier with 2019 and hope 2020 is in the same neighborhood.
Brilliant assessment Frank. It’s good to have you back. You have always brought sense and reason to the table with you.
@Shadowconmaster's complaint was not about the cost of farming for Galaxy items, though:
I've complained about this myself. It contributes to the staleness of Galaxy events, having to run the same dozen missions over and over because the recipes require going to the same missions each time out. Remember when Galaxy Events were introduced and we were told a key impetus was to give us something to do with our excess inventory? Well, now I have an excess inventory of all the other things that drop from those dozen missions that aren't used by the event. At the very least, I would appreciate recipes that gave one comparably priced Space Battle option. No, I don't want to go back to the days of 0* Science Experiments in the recipes, but surely there's some kind of tinkering that can be done so I don't have a thousand 0* Starfleet Uniform Patterns and Constellation Class Schematics piling up each Galaxy event.
YOU TAKE THAT BACK! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! THEY'RE COMING BACK! THEY LOVE ME AND I LOVE THEM AND YOU CAN'T STOP OUR LOVE!
No, and to be honest, I kinda rather not go through the compromised version. It just hurts. And not in the fun way Expeditions are supposed to hurt.
Love how ya just glossed over expeditions... Cause they are dead
Example: This week, the rank reward is Admiral Forrest. Not really caring about him so much, so I thought I could take it easy this week and conserve resources, as next week is a galaxy (hate), and the rank 5* was Tourist Worf for the following week (also don't care much, but would be a fun card to have.)
When the Update changed to rank 5* from Worf to Belle Q – that changed my strategy for 3 weeks of events. This week I can no longer threshold-and-out, as I need Admiral Forrest for next week to get a better shot to get a Belle Q.
That one simple move on DB's part definitely improved the game!
Came in in 2018, but otherwise I agree with you.
Claiming that Picard-gate made 2017 one of DBs best years is trolling at its finest. I've been around since late 2016, and the only good thing about Picard-gate is that DB began the process of (slowly, with some backsliding) Doing Better.
2019, while not perfect, showed some promise, and, like many others, I am looking forward to 2020 and beyond.
I love the introduction of campaigns almost as much as I loved voyages. (It's worth repeating again, without voyages, I probably would have stopped playing.)
Cheers to 2020. May all your shuttles succeed, your voyages go long, and your gauntlets drop legendaries.
It still costs $15/month if you pay to play at the high value point. I expect some development for that price. I *want* to pay for the game, but if this was an mmo or even a moba we would expect the game to be kept fresh for that price.
Do you think that STT is near end of life?
I started playing at the end of January 2017 (almost at my 3 year anniversary!), and I have to agree that 2019 is the 'worst' of my 3 years of playing, somewhat be default.
There were a ton of new features and content added to the game in 2017 & 2018, which really enhanced the overall playing experience. Relatively speaking, I would argue that 2019 was mostly just status quo, with several glitches/issues along the way, the introduction of flashbacks that are by far the worst event, far too many faction events (despite them previously being my favorite event type), the promise of QoL improvements that never materialized or were poorly executed, and general malaise. Should that really be a surprise this far into a game, especially on the heels of 2 great years?
When coupled with the fact that I'm further along the maturation curve in my gameplay, whether you look at captain level, VIP level, no more glut of players needing levelling, no more missions to complete (the newly added chapters were by far the highlight of 2019), and insane stockpiling of chrons (almost 140k) because I have nothing to do with them (see comment about too many faction events above), it only makes the past year seem that much more like a plateau.
If year 1 was when the game launched (obviously) and the following 2 years saw impressive game expansion and enhancement, why is it a bad thing to suggest the fourth year was the 'worst'? All that means is that it had been a fantastic game for 2+ years, with lots of opportunity for further growth, especially if there are significant QoL improvements delivered in 2020!
As a player since Oct 2016, I'll just say that there have been complaints about staleness and predictions of game shutdown every year. Yet, DB has continued to develop it and we appear to still be going strong (though with somewhat fewer players than in the past). For myself, I continue to enjoy the game for what it is, and enjoy the community it provides.
Best wishes to all for 2020 and beyond!
1. Originally, I had posted that the top couple new contents was overall good. DBs page wouldn't allow enough characters unless I wanted to split my original into 3 different posts. Thus I had to trim.
2. I have no issue with the $10 campaign pack. I first posted the poll that said it was an amazing deal.
3. Every year, has had alot of Free stuff for non-paid players. 2019 was just the weakest. This doesn't keep non-paid players around. The game has drastically lost people playing and something needs to be done to incentivize players playing everyday. Even the sorrytons were alot less last year.
4. I think the events don't require any time. 5 hours of playing isn't a major time consuming thing for me. The return of playing another hour or 4 or more is small. At 5 hours you already get the Gold, 100Dil and the extras. An extra couple hours might only increase that marginally. Note: A top position to get even the 10× premium requires around 20-22 hours of play. At minimum wage, you might as well work 2 hours and buy the ×10 10× deal.
5. What I was complaining about is the fact you don't have to do anything else. I love the game and have been playing since January 2017, I just want something to justify more time on it. I only started playing the other games because of this. And yes one of them is a card collecting game similar to STT.
6. I am not complaining about the costs of missions. Frankly, Frank(lol) I would rather do 240 chrono missions that also offer better complementary items then the 4 or 6. In all honesty, I currently have about 50k chronotons built up.
"Free stuff" is kind of nebulous. I don't track sorrytons, but I would point out that if we did get less in 2019 than previous years, that means DB had less to be sorry about, which in turn means they did better, which in turn I would say is a mark in the win column. One metric would be free crew given to all players. By that standard, 2019 was the second most generous:
12-19-2016 Wesley Crusher [1* to be airlocked to resolve a crew quarters glitch]
12-21-2017 Will Scarlett
01-02-2018 Mirror Jean-Luc Picard ["Picardgate I"]
01-09-2018 Mariachi Q
02-14-2018 Suus Mahna Sarek
05-20-2018 EV Suit Archer
09-08-2018 Dancing Chekov
10-02-2018 Tuxedo Nog
11-13-2018 Prince Bashir
12-19-2018 Niners Sisko
01-15-2019 Seven in Silver
04-05-2019 Phoenix Cochrane
06-16-2019 Mambo Picard
07-19-2019 Survivalist Kirk
09-05-2019 Solar Sails Sisko
Phoenix Cochrane was almost a full three years old when he was given to us and held little game value by then. Survivalist Kirk was one of the year's biggest debacles, though he's also a solid card.
As echoed in the thread, though...many improvements to the game have been made this past year. 2019 is by far, not the worst year for STT. However, there are always improvements that can be made, and these Forums do help to get ideas out there.
@Travis S McClain Ha! You sir, crack me up!
On topic: I started playing in Feb 2019. I cant speak for the other years as I have no ground to stand on there. But as a first year player, I've really enjoyed this game and its content. Its engaging just enough to keep me coming back. Whether I'm checking voyages or shuttles, gauntlet or arena, or trying to level up favorite crew. Early on I bought Christopher Pike because he's one of my favorite captains. He's not the best character in the game, but one I enjoy using for just about everything. I have no intention of trying to get every card, but just trying to compete with myself (ie. Personal best voyage; higher rank in events; finishing gauntlet top 5, and trying to complete Collections). For me, the idea of this game is awesome. You're pulling characters from all shows, and some movies, and combining them into a believable concept of why they would be thrown together. I think its awesome trying to collect your favorite cards, or even ones that get you further in the game. And I've enjoyed seeing new content added to the game (campaigns and episodes).
I look forward to what 2020 has in store. Mistakes get made at times, but I've really been impressed with how DB has handled them and apologized for them.
So in my opinion, 2019 was great. But I can only comment on 2019.