That's a lot of negativity. And as has been said, chat issues and admiral tools are issues that are almost 5 and 3 years old and are still on backlog? Do appreciate the communication and summary from Shan just disappointed that there wasn't much there that was encouraging (imo)
I think you missed a few key highlights, such as a new game mode coming around Q1 2021.
To be fair, it has to be difficult to whiteboard and game design things when you can't meet in person, but I also don't understand why certain things take so long.
That's a lot of negativity. And as has been said, chat issues and admiral tools are issues that are almost 5 and 3 years old and are still on backlog? Do appreciate the communication and summary from Shan just disappointed that there wasn't much there that was encouraging (imo)
I think you missed a few key highlights, such as a new game mode coming around Q1 2021.
To be fair, it has to be difficult to whiteboard and game design things when you can't meet in person, but I also don't understand why certain things take so long.
Didn't miss anything. I specifically said "wasn't much" not "nothing at all". More specifics would be nice, such as backlog. What exactly does that mean. 6 months, a year, 3 years, never - **tsk tsk** it up it ain't changing? I pointed out 8 or 9 issues, you brought 1 that might happen "around Q" or it could be Q3 as other features have been delayed/pushed back before. Don't get me wrong, I still play everyday, and I still spend (more than I should) but issues that remain issues 3, 4 or 5 years gets a bit discouraging from time to time.
Founding ADM - PoF family of fleets (POF, POF2 & POF3) - Dear TP: Non sequitur. Your facts are uncoordinated.
Also, the events are glorified slot machines, and it seems like that's what the players want. The optimizations that have been made to events have just made them even more mindless and quicker to click through. Players keep asking for mindless events that are won by seeing who can click the same buttons with 0 thought while doing something else, so DB/TP keep making the events more mindless for that. I've often argued for events that require thought and are won based on skill not mindless grinding, but too many players seem to love the grind.
Also, the events are glorified slot machines, and it seems like that's what the players want. The optimizations that have been made to events have just made them even more mindless and quicker to click through. Players keep asking for mindless events that are won by seeing who can click the same buttons with 0 thought while doing something else, so DB/TP keep making the events more mindless for that. I've often argued for events that require thought and are won based on skill not mindless grinding, but too many players seem to love the grind.
I agree, more expedition reruns please
Problem with the expedition is the grind, honestly. Once you clear it once, you have to grind it out repeatedly to get a higher rank.
I'd love events that didn't have a player rank attached to them. If they made an Expedition event where you got the top prize possible once you met all of the objectives ... I think that'd be my favorite event. With the player rankings, it is my least favorite.
CABTools.app
Ov (Overall) | Vo (Voyage) | Fa (Faction) | Ga (Gauntlet)
Sb (Ship Battle) | Bt (Boss Battle Traits) | Co (Collection) | (Cd (Cadet)
The problem is, at the end of the day, this is a glorified CCG. The point is to collect the cards. There is nothing to do with the crew, because collecting the crew is supposed to be the goal in itself
This is an interesting point. I guess for me collecting for the sake of collecting is not enough, I'm looking for a strategic benefit in the game. Maybe that puts me in the "more strategy less grind" camp? This aspect btw was there earlier, so maybe I've just played too long.
I get people getting frustrated but I am not sure what they want exactly from the game. I think TP is doing well considering the challenges of this year. An event every week. A new collection and some other new content. I would say wait till we are in 2021 to make a determination on how TP is doing.
Also, the events are glorified slot machines, and it seems like that's what the players want. The optimizations that have been made to events have just made them even more mindless and quicker to click through. Players keep asking for mindless events that are won by seeing who can click the same buttons with 0 thought while doing something else, so DB/TP keep making the events more mindless for that. I've often argued for events that require thought and are won based on skill not mindless grinding, but too many players seem to love the grind.
I agree, more expedition reruns please
Problem with the expedition is the grind, honestly. Once you clear it once, you have to grind it out repeatedly to get a higher rank.
I'd love events that didn't have a player rank attached to them. If they made an Expedition event where you got the top prize possible once you met all of the objectives ... I think that'd be my favorite event. With the player rankings, it is my least favorite.
Yep. I think expedition events have been made worse through the iterations. Once they let the missions stay unlocked and provided the guaranteed crit it removed any remaining strategy. You used to have to think about which crew to use on normal/elite so your best crew was left for epic. You used to have to think how many times to try to crit one star before you weaken your crew so much that you won't be able to do other missions. Now it's just work your way backwards. Occasionally there is a little thought on the early tickets to figure out how to use secondary/tertiary skills of event crew to maximize stars, or which other crew can be used for their skill combo so you only use the event crew for the star, but once you figure that out, it's just wash and repeat.
I'd love to see expedition missions be made harder. Have longer node paths. Incorporate locked nodes. Have all 6 skills on a mission. Make me think about what rare skill combo crew I should use to clear the mission. Then find a way so I don't need to mindlessly repeat the mission as many times. Have less tickets, but make me spend longer on each ticket figuring things out so the time is the same but it's active time thinking about the mission, not just a simple work backwards like I did the last 5 tickets.
I get people getting frustrated but I am not sure what they want exactly from the game. I think TP is doing well considering the challenges of this year. An event every week. A new collection and some other new content. I would say wait till we are in 2021 to make a determination on how TP is doing.
I may be alone, but I'd rather see less events (they've become a tedious grind anyway) and more development around the non-event parts of the game. I was drawn into the game by the challenge of the missions I did by myself, as I built and strengthened my crew.
I feel like somewhere along the line the idea of plot development and single-player action was all but ignored, in favor of promoting more grind-happy events and the idea that competition would drive spending. Whether it's a mobile game or console game, I may be old-school, but I miss well designed and in depth single player action, and find multi-player engagement can't help but get repetitive and stale over time.
Yes, DB/TP has allowed certain people to try out new features - and some of those people have used it to their advantage when it comes to events before DB has rolled it out to everyone.
I am going to attempt to splice together a couple different metaphors here, apologies in advance if it fails to land
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As @Prime Lorca [10FH], @Banjo1012, and @Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
And when TP makes improvements to enable new game modes, the same people complain or just say it's sales or not a new feature.
Work done to make temporary achievements easier for TP to deploy so they can happen more often: " minimal development"
Event hub to allow for mini events: Event hub **tsk tsk**
That's a little unfair, as the event hub was introduced as an inconvenience rather than an addition. All it did - and is continuing to do - is get in the way of events. Even now, I fire up the game and have no idea if an event is active, or counting down. Last weekend's event was the most apathetic I've ever felt towards a skirmish, and although that was certainly due to a number of different (TP-related) factors, I think the bad event hub implementation is on the list there somewhere.
And it's such an obvious design problem. It took me somewhere between one and two seconds of seeing the event hub button (before the event was even live) to realize it was a block to events, rather than a helpful conduit - and I wasn't the only one. It was badly planned and it was badly implemented. All they needed to do was introduce the event hub as a new button, and everything would have been fine.
But this is part of the TP pattern. I don't want to type paragraphs (again) explaining problem after problem after problem with TP's performance, but what it boils down to is three things: 1) they're not doing enough work on the game: I think overall Timelines development is adequate - just barely - but it's inexplicable why they haven't taken just a few hours to improve the game with achievement extensions, trait fixes, collection extensions (they started... but then they got bored and gave up?) - none of this is programming-intensive or bureaucratically-challenging. Bigger issues like portal dilution don't have an easy fix, and TP have my sympathy there, but these smaller improvements could be done... later today, right? Why not? 2) what work they do is badly planned: Ben once claimed that they play the game, but ever since he said that, I've found him difficult to trust. Adding ship selection improvements... to skirmishes, rather than voyages, even though that feature has been highly requested for years? Hundreds of dil for a pack with exclusive... RARE crew? Didn't bother to count Arena battles for last month's temporary achievements. And look at this nega-event's recap legendaries: EV Suit Spock, yay, but then Awaiting Amanda Grayson, T'Pring, Captain Solok, and Leila Kalomi..? They could have made any one of Sarek, McCoy or Pike a legendary and doubled how compelling this nega's legendaries are. 3) what work they do is badly implemented: the event hub button, as above. WHY isn't it its own separate button? Temporary achievement technical/counting issues - and we have to take the time to file a ticket if we were affected. Implementing new, faster space battles midway through a skirmish, but only for one (or two?) platforms. Changing mega-events to nega-events, where there's no build-up to an almighty faction event - consistently, and increasingly egregiously. Nanoprobe Phlox in the Honor Hall - yay! Fantastic, finally another gauntlet crew who will change up the game on a weekly basis, who will be the envy of those who don't have him, who will... wait a minute, his proficiencies are awful, he's just another voyage crew, and that's only if you spend 100K and four citations on him. Ben's favorite? Make him a gauntlet regular like Kahless and Captain Bev, then, so we can see him and use him regularly! You do play the game, right, Ben?
That's not even close to an exhaustive list, but overall it speaks to a highly incompetent team - and yet, they do sometimes get it right. Red Angel, introduced, appropriate for gauntlet, gauntlet collection updated without us having to remind them, bam! Job's a good'un. Old packs on the weekends dropped from 650 to 490 - nice nice. Mirror collection - "stay tuned", they said, months ago, but now it's finally here. Done. In a way, this is more frustrating for me, as if they'd only be Totally Pathetic, I could have given up on them already, instead of lingering on in this slow, drawn-out spiral of decline.
What I want to be doing is nit-picking. I want to be asking why the Mirror Collection improves Sec bases, when 1500+ Dip and Sci bases are almost non-existent and in need of shoring up. I want to be scoffing at the use of exclamation marks in the announcements for completely routine messages or tepid one-offs. I want these to be the 'big' Timelines issues, instead of dozens of impactful problems highlighting a pattern of incompetence and neglect on the part of TP.
But at least I avoided typing out paragraphs about the problems this time!
I am going to attempt to splice together a couple different metaphors here, apologies in advance if it fails to land
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As @Prime Lorca [10FH], @Banjo1012, and @Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
Having reread your post quite a few times, I really appreciate your positive sentiments and disposition. Indeed many of the points you make are very worthy – particularly in relation to fleet management and player education – growing your personal game in a different direction, as it were. These are attributes our fleet is very big on too, and we take it on with gusto. Yet these only go so far.
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
This approach has served you well, and very good luck to you with it. However, many posters on this thread share a need and expectation for something additional after some years of play . Either an indication of a planned evolution or some scope to evolve the current model to engage player interest (drawing on some of the many fine, free ideas catalogued thus far on this thread); but most importantly the nature and timescale of the progress envisioned and articulated in-game and accessible there. As @NX9B points out, the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
I am going to attempt to splice together a couple different metaphors here, apologies in advance if it fails to land
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As @Prime Lorca [10FH], @Banjo1012, and @Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
Having reread your post quite a few times, I really appreciate your positive sentiments and disposition. Indeed many of the points you make are very worthy – particularly in relation to fleet management and player education – growing your personal game in a different direction, as it were. These are attributes our fleet is very big on too, and we take it on with gusto. Yet these only go so far.
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
This approach has served you well, and very good luck to you with it. However, many posters on this thread share a need and expectation for something additional after some years of play . Either an indication of a planned evolution or some scope to evolve the current model to engage player interest (drawing on some of the many fine, free ideas catalogued thus far on this thread); but most importantly the nature and timescale of the progress envisioned and articulated in-game and accessible there. As @NX9B points out, the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
LLAP
Oomox
I'd go a little further than this and say that I'd be far more amenable to - playing with the box - as it were, if we weren't paying so much for the privilege. Why should we pay $15/month to make up our own games? Who ends up paying for this game in the medium run?
I am going to attempt to splice together a couple different metaphors here, apologies in advance if it fails to land
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As @Prime Lorca [10FH], @Banjo1012, and @Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
Having reread your post quite a few times, I really appreciate your positive sentiments and disposition. Indeed many of the points you make are very worthy – particularly in relation to fleet management and player education – growing your personal game in a different direction, as it were. These are attributes our fleet is very big on too, and we take it on with gusto. Yet these only go so far.
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
This approach has served you well, and very good luck to you with it. However, many posters on this thread share a need and expectation for something additional after some years of play . Either an indication of a planned evolution or some scope to evolve the current model to engage player interest (drawing on some of the many fine, free ideas catalogued thus far on this thread); but most importantly the nature and timescale of the progress envisioned and articulated in-game and accessible there. As @NX9B points out, the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
LLAP
Oomox
I'd go a little further than this and say that I'd be far more amenable to - playing with the box - as it were, if we weren't paying so much for the privilege. Why should we pay $15/month to make up our own games? Who ends up paying for this game in the medium run?
If you don't want to pay $15/month for the game, then don't. There is plenty you can do without spending money.
I am going to attempt to splice together a couple different metaphors here, apologies in advance if it fails to land
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As @Prime Lorca [10FH], @Banjo1012, and @Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
Having reread your post quite a few times, I really appreciate your positive sentiments and disposition. Indeed many of the points you make are very worthy – particularly in relation to fleet management and player education – growing your personal game in a different direction, as it were. These are attributes our fleet is very big on too, and we take it on with gusto. Yet these only go so far.
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
This approach has served you well, and very good luck to you with it. However, many posters on this thread share a need and expectation for something additional after some years of play . Either an indication of a planned evolution or some scope to evolve the current model to engage player interest (drawing on some of the many fine, free ideas catalogued thus far on this thread); but most importantly the nature and timescale of the progress envisioned and articulated in-game and accessible there. As @NX9B points out, the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
LLAP
Oomox
I'd go a little further than this and say that I'd be far more amenable to - playing with the box - as it were, if we weren't paying so much for the privilege. Why should we pay $15/month to make up our own games? Who ends up paying for this game in the medium run?
If you don't want to pay $15/month for the game, then don't. There is plenty you can do without spending money.
The point was that if no one pays the money then the game goes away. I'll go further and say that even just with IP costs and salaries and such this game needs to bring in some fairly decent minimum to keep the lights on. Someone needs to pay for it. Who are these people?
If DB told us what was coming maybe we'd react differently, but they don't so it's on them.
Honest question, did you watch the interview with WRG Ben?
What interview? Who's WRG Ben?
You are an super active User of this Forum, as ur 5 stars nxt to ur Nick show,
and you wanna tell us that you missed it and not even know who WRGBen is, regardless he posted some News/Announcements in here, when Shan
was on vacation? 🤔 Sorry, i don t buy it. 🤗
@Bylo Band & @Oomox both make good points. Yes Bylo, we've done the game within the game.. We do fleetwide coordinated gauntlets where we've taken top 5, issued the arena challenges where we try to finish #1 on all 3 arena classes simultaneously, or as a fleet take the top 5 spots in admiral division. But that only takes us so far..
I think my point was always this.. of course we appreciate the changes, updates, bug fixes TP has done recently. I'm looking tho I suppose for the game changer. Like the big 3.
Voyages.. totally removed the chron bottleneck and gave warp speed to character leveling and event scores.
Starbase.. Powered up your crew, gave fleet meaning by working to a common goal.
Skirmish event.. a winner event that most actually LIKED doing. Had the element of farming for intel, with the space battle element.
All game changers. Of course there are other great changes like honor for dismissed crew, merit pulls, supply kits, honor hall, etc. All welcome additions.
That's the kind of innovation I'd like to see again. Maybe the wells dry, but I'd like to think in the world of stt there is still more to come. I suppose some slack can be given due to the DB TP change over, CV restrictions, Etc. I appreciate wrg Ben giving us a glimpse, I really hope that can become a regular thing. If we know something's coming, there is reason to hope.
We have 6 or more in our Fleet that paused or dropped out, saying that if there's some new innovation, they may return. I'm sure they're not the only ones, they're just the ones who said it out loud. If nothing else gets heard, I hope that that is something wrg/ TP hears and understands.
the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
Here is one thing to consider, the population of active players is directly linked to COVID responses. I can give an example: one of the best players in my fleet (and one of the 6 original founders) has gone inactive for months. Without giving away details, this player works in a hospital and has basically had zero free time for quite a while, and STT was an unfortunate casualty of this. Who knows when or even if this player comes back, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. I will give you that the numbers are going down, but beyond that initial statement of fact no valuative conclusions can be drawn assigning reasons for the dwindling number of players. As for your closing remarks, like I said, I hear you on that one, I understand the desire to know, and my advice would be to not hold your breath
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
You are not wrong, but IMO you didn't take my meaning far enough! What I'm saying is the game has ALWAYS been about turning lemons into lemonade, there were just "game" things in place when we all started playing to distract us from this reality for quite a while. There has never been a "correct" way to play this game, and even if we snapped our fingers right now and doubled the content of the game, this would not change. I think it is great for people to want more stuff, everyone knows I'm one of the biggest "offenders" of trying to propose new ideas/content, but I cannot cross that mental bridge of getting worked up about a lack of innovation when my participation is 100% voluntary, you know? We are all free to quit at any time. I mentioned in my initial piece that I came VERY close to quitting multiple times, I even uninstalled the game once, but I came back and that was my choice and I did so with a clear understanding of what it was I was getting back into.
I'd go a little further than this and say that I'd be far more amenable to - playing with the box - as it were, if we weren't paying so much for the privilege. Why should we pay $15/month to make up our own games? Who ends up paying for this game in the medium run?
You are not forced to pay anything, if you are dissatisfied with the service you should consider playing for free or quitting, those are the choices you can control. I will however adjust your quote to give you a more meaningful response: "Why should we invest our time/energy to make up our own games?" Simple, because that is what the game literally is. The game is collecting cards. What you do with those cards and how you derive enjoyment from those cards is entirely your business. As is how much you choose to spend.
I am going to attempt to splice together a couple different metaphors here, apologies in advance if it fails to land
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As Prime Lorca [10FH], Banjo1012, and Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
Having reread your post quite a few times, I really appreciate your positive sentiments and disposition. Indeed many of the points you make are very worthy – particularly in relation to fleet management and player education – growing your personal game in a different direction, as it were. These are attributes our fleet is very big on too, and we take it on with gusto. Yet these only go so far.
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
This approach has served you well, and very good luck to you with it. However, many posters on this thread share a need and expectation for something additional after some years of play . Either an indication of a planned evolution or some scope to evolve the current model to engage player interest (drawing on some of the many fine, free ideas catalogued thus far on this thread); but most importantly the nature and timescale of the progress envisioned and articulated in-game and accessible there. As @NX9B points out, the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
LLAP
Oomox
I'd go a little further than this and say that I'd be far more amenable to - playing with the box - as it were, if we weren't paying so much for the privilege. Why should we pay $15/month to make up our own games? Who ends up paying for this game in the medium run?
If you don't want to pay $15/month for the game, then don't. There is plenty you can do without spending money.
The point was that if no one pays the money then the game goes away. I'll go further and say that even just with IP costs and salaries and such this game needs to bring in some fairly decent minimum to keep the lights on. Someone needs to pay for it. Who are these people?
Those of us who still enjoy what the game has to offer? I myself derive enjoyment chiefly from three things:
1) The strategy of staffing voyages. This goes double for voyages sent out during Faction events when some of my crew may be busy with the event.
2) Collecting favorite cards. T’Pring will likely never be useful for me in the game but I was still happy to get a copy in this last event. There are many crew I still pine for (Dr. M’Benga is probably at the top of that list, with Stranded La Forge and EV Suit Kirk not too far behind) and I look forward to getting them someday.
3) Strategizing shuttle crew. It really only matters during Faction events but it’s still fun to work on. I don’t run the same four missions, so constantly balancing whatever four missions I open so that I can maximize my success rate for all four presents a challenge.
4) Strategizing gauntlet crew choices. Once your choices are locked in, the gauntlet absolutely becomes a slot machine that you can either feed merits and dil to get a better chance at special rewards or feed time to get merits back and the occasional 5* crew (I do the latter and am up to 3/5* on the Red Angel). But figuring out how you’re going to match the featured traits while keeping the featured skill in mind and guessing at what crew other people are likely to have is a fun diversion every other day.
5) Event storylines. Although the last few megas have been a little iffy in terms of gameplay design (Factions work best at the end so you can use the crew you’ve amassed), I maintain that the stories have drastically improved over the last few months. They’re more engaging, more complex, and more interesting. The advantage of having all of the characters from 50+ years of Trek interacting with one another at the same time is that it opens up a whole new set of possibilities for what the characters do and with whom they do those things. McCoy being sympathetic to the Maquis was one thing I thought was really well done in the early going and it seems like we’ve only gotten back to that quality of storytelling very recently.
Are there issues? Sure. Are some of them simple? They certainly seem that way. Should we firmly, but respectfully, ask for continued improvement in communication? Unquestionably - Ben’s appearances on Timelines Talks are a good start down that path but they are just a start. Determine what value the game offers you and how much cash you’re willing to trade for that value. If you’re not receiving your money’s worth, don’t feel compelled to keep opening your wallet...your wallet is your most basic tool for evaluating the game and you perhaps shouldn’t expect change if you keep voting for something you don’t like.
A comment about player loss/retention/recruitment...
Obviously I have no idea what their advertising budget looks like, but that seems like the place to start. I assume we all get the same ads for various match-3 style games, fantasy RPG-style games, as well as a competing Trek game. I play some of those other games too, and in those games, I see ads for these same other games (a nice little round-robin advertising arrangement). What I do NOT see are ads for Timelines. I originally came to STT because of an ad in a dungeon crawler game I played. I've downloaded other games because I've seen them advertised in STT. But I never see STT advertised anywhere anymore. Maybe I'm in the wrong places on the internet, but that's my point - if I weren't already an STT player, I'd never know to consider becoming one. More of those investment dollars need to be directed toward advertising.
Regarding the main theme here:
I'm mostly on the side of the folks that remain positive about the game and its direction. They've done a good job of putting my own thoughts into words, so I won't rehash them. Of course there are issues, some of them long-standing, but I continue to see progress and effort being made on the dev side, so I will carry on as long as I continue to enjoy the game they produce.
If DB told us what was coming maybe we'd react differently, but they don't so it's on them.
Honest question, did you watch the interview with WRG Ben?
What interview? Who's WRG Ben?
You are an super active User of this Forum, as ur 5 stars nxt to ur Nick show,
and you wanna tell us that you missed it and not even know who WRGBen is, regardless he posted some News/Announcements in here, when Shan
was on vacation? 🤔 Sorry, i don t buy it. 🤗
I take decently long hiatus's from the forums. And depending on which games I am following at a time Reddit gets cluttered so I definitely miss things.
I was aware that there had been an interview of someone on the Timelines Talk thingy, but they are way too long to watch. I was also aware that someone had referenced a future project that would be of interest to veterans. I may have actually read that on reddit. But I didn't (and still don't) have the details.
Here is one thing to consider, the population of active players is directly linked to COVID responses. I can give an example: one of the best players in my fleet (and one of the 6 original founders) has gone inactive for months. Without giving away details, this player works in a hospital and has basically had zero free time for quite a while, and STT was an unfortunate casualty of this. Who knows when or even if this player comes back, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. I will give you that the numbers are going down, but beyond that initial statement of fact no valuative conclusions can be drawn assigning reasons for the dwindling number of players. As for your closing remarks, like I said, I hear you on that one, I understand the desire to know, and my advice would be to not hold your breath
I accept your point - and again point out that @NX9B calculated an approx 40% drop-off. I'm sure you'll agree that not all of this figure could be attributable to COVID. As you have indicated, there are people in our fleet in similar situations to the one you describe, whose game play has reduced dramatically in response to the crisis, but they have not (yet) dropped out.
You are not wrong, but IMO you didn't take my meaning far enough! What I'm saying is the game has ALWAYS been about turning lemons into lemonade, there were just "game" things in place when we all started playing to distract us from this reality for quite a while. There has never been a "correct" way to play this game, and even if we snapped our fingers right now and doubled the content of the game, this would not change. I think it is great for people to want more stuff, everyone knows I'm one of the biggest "offenders" of trying to propose new ideas/content, but I cannot cross that mental bridge of getting worked up about a lack of innovation when my participation is 100% voluntary, you know? We are all free to quit at any time. I mentioned in my initial piece that I came VERY close to quitting multiple times, I even uninstalled the game once, but I came back and that was my choice and I did so with a clear understanding of what it was I was getting back into.
LOL! I'm hearing all of that! And agreeing with much again. To quote Roddenberry " […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
But permit me a segue. You've mentioned twice that you've come to the brink of leaving the game yourself on three occasions. Did you in the course of any or indeed all of those occasions, attempt to communicate the cause of your frustrations with DB/WRTP?
I do fully accept that no one is holding a phaser to my head or yours and compelling our presence here. I and others here, just like Jack Nicholson, just want to know in as an expedient a manner as possible "Is this as good as it gets"?
And if it is, fine. This particular red shirt has done his best, and will obligingly vapourise into oblivion, faintly railing "Sufficiency was never enough".
You are not forced to pay anything, if you are dissatisfied with the service you should consider playing for free or quitting, those are the choices you can control. I will however adjust your quote to give you a more meaningful response: "Why should we invest our time/energy to make up our own games?" Simple, because that is what the game literally is. The game is collecting cards. What you do with those cards and how you derive enjoyment from those cards is entirely your business. As is how much you choose to spend.
I am not forced to pay anything for sure and indeed for the summer months I didn't. The offer wall left a bad taste in my mouth and the bad campaign crew just left meant there was no reason to. I did post when I decided to spend again, I asked how people were feeling about the game because I wasn't sure whether to start paying again. But, like so many people here I have a great squad and I am back at the $15/mth level again now.
Interestingly you use the word invest. I think one of the reasons I keep coming back is that I have 'invested' so much in this game. In time and in money, and I would rather live in the world where it survives and thrives rather than shrivels and dies. That's why I pop up here every few months to voice my irritation with the progress DB/TP is making. I can not recommend this game to a new player, but I do think that there is a path where DB makes the world a mildly better place by bringing back veteran players and continues to expand the endgame.
Maybe I am screaming futilely into the void at this point, maybe all of those ships have sailed and STT just can't be the game I want it to be. But until I know that for certain I am going to keep asking for it.
I play a lot of games. A few Star Treks ones to be sure, but also a few others currently and probably well into the 100's in total. I am well aware of the substitutes available to me. I see what regular game development looks like and I can tell when it is absent or poorly focused. My frustration is mostly with TP/WRG/DB, but I do get frustrated with people who defend them too. DB may have been the worst developer of any game I have ever played and I squarely blame management for that. I am hopeful that WRG/TP have some ambition for the game, but I am frustrated by both the lack of communication and some of the actual evidence we have of their direction.
One of the more frustrating elements with this game is that the players have added so much value to the game and DB/TP don't feel deserving of it. 90% of the reason that there's a player base at all is because of the IP and the community and very little of it seems to be the game itself.
Maybe I am screaming futilely into the void at this point, maybe all of those ships have sailed and STT just can't be the game I want it to be. But until I know that for certain I am going to keep asking for it.
I play a lot of games. A few Star Treks ones to be sure, but also a few others currently and probably well into the 100's in total. I am well aware of the substitutes available to me. I see what regular game development looks like and I can tell when it is absent or poorly focused. My frustration is mostly with TP/WRG/DB, but I do get frustrated with people who defend them too. DB may have been the worst developer of any game I have ever played and I squarely blame management for that. I am hopeful that WRG/TP have some ambition for the game, but I am frustrated by both the lack of communication and some of the actual evidence we have of their direction.
One of the more frustrating elements with this game is that the players have added so much value to the game and DB/TP don't feel deserving of it. 90% of the reason that there's a player base at all is because of the IP and the community and very little of it seems to be the game itself.
This. So much this! Thank you for this point which articulates so much of my frustration succinctly and eloquently!
Like anyone else, I've got criticisms and things I wish were added/improved.
But by far my biggest peeve is with older Legendaries being given the same value/rarity as newer ones. There are so many of these that we all have at 1-2 stars, and not any real hope of immortalizing them.
Permanently adding an old gold to every event's thresholds would go a long way in helping to rectify this. It would at least give progress a shove in the right direction. And it wouldn't mess much with player balance, as they'd still be out of reach for very new players, but be attainable and useful for people that don't have a lot of Legendaries yet.
There could also be more paths to getting these older, depowered characters, but including one as a final threshold reward in each event seems like an easy start.
I think adding these "weak" older legendaries to thresholds would make events a bit more competitive and it would also give those who can clear thresholds but not rank in events will get a decent crew to help them be more competitive faster. I can't tell you how sad it makes me to see new players come into our fleet and quit before getting to level 40
omg THIS was the best post of the year! He said exactly what most of us were thinking but unsure if we should say it. Just like the time DB had their spokewoman (I forget her name now, she has been missing for a couple of years) give us updates every few months on upcoming things the game was working on....like for example Fleet Leaderboards, or more missions, or fixing some if the issues with the game, etc. - which has still not come to pass. And instead we get an event hub that takes more time to get our information. Anyway....
Once upon a time, I was a member of a cantankerous and tempestuous discussion forum where members who, when heartily disenchanted with the forum, or its policies, or its other members, whatever was killing their joy with the forum, or life in general, were encouraged to open a thread allowing them to thoroughly vent their spleens before heading off into cyber-oblivion. This was called a ‘flounce’ thread.
Right across this planet, 2020 has been an awful year, and IMO WRTP have contributed fulsomely to this awfulness with their treatment of the occasionally paying public. The offer wall and IronSource issues have not magically gone away, nor is the treatment of players legitimate concerns during that debacle forgotten. The haemorrhage of experienced long time players continues unchecked, such is their level of boredom with what this game has been allowed to become, and their disenfranchisement with Star Trek Timelines experience, which in turn blithely ignores their experience and loyalty since the early days. More recently, the cack-handed appearance of the much heralded “event hub”, mysteriously manifesting ahead of schedule (obviously Q playing with the time -space continuum again) which does exactly diddly-squat to improve gaming experience or game functionality, while genuine player concerns remain ignored or vaguely alluded to as ‘in development’ and then passed over.
And now coinciding with the latest event “First Doctrines”, the ‘offer’ of 10 citations (4 5*, 3 4*, 2 3* and 1 2*) issued forth Thursday last (20201015) for a local cost of €109.99! This is pure contempt – extravagant, eye watering costs for an utterly trivial and derisory return! Is there an assumption somewhere in WRTP that all players who occasionally pay have fallen from the apex of the stupid tree and smacked each branch of same tree exactly once with their heads and credit cards on their descent to finally smack the Earth again on their arrival, and will buy such dross unquestioningly?
Altogether, I put it to you that this amounts to an abominable treatment of the players – simultaneously attempting a mugging of them while contemptuously spitting them in the eye.
Someone in WRTP needs to wake up very soon and take a thorough and long hard look at customer experience and current functionality. Stop waving your arms about, waxing lyrical waffle about planned new features, and deal with the actual issues – lack of player engagement, abominable game chat and DM/PM facilities, boredom with outright formulaic sleep inducing events, events where every two bit extra in a one off episode now becomes a 5* character reward (Solok as a 5* - really? Why?), used once and never seen of or heard from again, lack of new conflicts/missions, to name a very few. From this perspective, WRTP are engaged in self-congratulatory wallpapering over profoundly serious structural fissures in the very foundations of their product, and they’re patting themselves on the back over the new colour scheme the unsolicited wallpaper over the cracks introduces while the whole edifice splits a few further metres apart and simultaneously sinks further into narcolepsy.
This thread is my proto-flounce.
I assume there will be a Christmas event later this year and an honour sale following this event. WRTP are on notice that they have the intervening time to attempt something concrete that genuinely engages the community and attempts to grow the game in step with that community and make amends. If not, then certainly I and my credit card are out, and I will not be the last one to go. The only reason now I remain now at all are my very excellent squad mates, a wonderful engaged fleet admiral, and the prospect of the end of year Christmas event and honour sale to help put 2020 out of its misery and firmly in the past.
I encourage other similarly motivated occasionally paying captains, or free to plays genuinely concerned about this community and game, who may also find themselves in proto-flounce mode, to add their voices and issues to this thread. I implore WRTP to both listen and act.
Thanks for reading, support if you have any to lend, and LLAP,
Oomox.
I may just be the one hit with the stupid branch, how do you WIN THE game?
omg THIS was the best post of the year! He said exactly what most of us were thinking but unsure if we should say it. Just like the time DB had their spokewoman (I forget her name now, she has been missing for a couple of years) give us updates every few months on upcoming things the game was working on....like for example Fleet Leaderboards, or more missions, or fixing some if the issues with the game, etc. - which has still not come to pass. And instead we get an event hub that takes more time to get our information. Anyway....
Once upon a time, I was a member of a cantankerous and tempestuous discussion forum where members who, when heartily disenchanted with the forum, or its policies, or its other members, whatever was killing their joy with the forum, or life in general, were encouraged to open a thread allowing them to thoroughly vent their spleens before heading off into cyber-oblivion. This was called a ‘flounce’ thread.
Right across this planet, 2020 has been an awful year, and IMO WRTP have contributed fulsomely to this awfulness with their treatment of the occasionally paying public. The offer wall and IronSource issues have not magically gone away, nor is the treatment of players legitimate concerns during that debacle forgotten. The haemorrhage of experienced long time players continues unchecked, such is their level of boredom with what this game has been allowed to become, and their disenfranchisement with Star Trek Timelines experience, which in turn blithely ignores their experience and loyalty since the early days. More recently, the cack-handed appearance of the much heralded “event hub”, mysteriously manifesting ahead of schedule (obviously Q playing with the time -space continuum again) which does exactly diddly-squat to improve gaming experience or game functionality, while genuine player concerns remain ignored or vaguely alluded to as ‘in development’ and then passed over.
And now coinciding with the latest event “First Doctrines”, the ‘offer’ of 10 citations (4 5*, 3 4*, 2 3* and 1 2*) issued forth Thursday last (20201015) for a local cost of €109.99! This is pure contempt – extravagant, eye watering costs for an utterly trivial and derisory return! Is there an assumption somewhere in WRTP that all players who occasionally pay have fallen from the apex of the stupid tree and smacked each branch of same tree exactly once with their heads and credit cards on their descent to finally smack the Earth again on their arrival, and will buy such dross unquestioningly?
Altogether, I put it to you that this amounts to an abominable treatment of the players – simultaneously attempting a mugging of them while contemptuously spitting them in the eye.
Someone in WRTP needs to wake up very soon and take a thorough and long hard look at customer experience and current functionality. Stop waving your arms about, waxing lyrical waffle about planned new features, and deal with the actual issues – lack of player engagement, abominable game chat and DM/PM facilities, boredom with outright formulaic sleep inducing events, events where every two bit extra in a one off episode now becomes a 5* character reward (Solok as a 5* - really? Why?), used once and never seen of or heard from again, lack of new conflicts/missions, to name a very few. From this perspective, WRTP are engaged in self-congratulatory wallpapering over profoundly serious structural fissures in the very foundations of their product, and they’re patting themselves on the back over the new colour scheme the unsolicited wallpaper over the cracks introduces while the whole edifice splits a few further metres apart and simultaneously sinks further into narcolepsy.
This thread is my proto-flounce.
I assume there will be a Christmas event later this year and an honour sale following this event. WRTP are on notice that they have the intervening time to attempt something concrete that genuinely engages the community and attempts to grow the game in step with that community and make amends. If not, then certainly I and my credit card are out, and I will not be the last one to go. The only reason now I remain now at all are my very excellent squad mates, a wonderful engaged fleet admiral, and the prospect of the end of year Christmas event and honour sale to help put 2020 out of its misery and firmly in the past.
I encourage other similarly motivated occasionally paying captains, or free to plays genuinely concerned about this community and game, who may also find themselves in proto-flounce mode, to add their voices and issues to this thread. I implore WRTP to both listen and act.
Thanks for reading, support if you have any to lend, and LLAP,
Oomox.
I may just be the one hit with the stupid branch, how do you WIN THE game?
Here is one thing to consider, the population of active players is directly linked to COVID responses. I can give an example: one of the best players in my fleet (and one of the 6 original founders) has gone inactive for months. Without giving away details, this player works in a hospital and has basically had zero free time for quite a while, and STT was an unfortunate casualty of this. Who knows when or even if this player comes back, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. I will give you that the numbers are going down, but beyond that initial statement of fact no valuative conclusions can be drawn assigning reasons for the dwindling number of players.
If anything, I would expect COVID to lead to a significant increase in players. For each player in the situation you describe, there would be many more who now find themselves with significantly more free time due to unemployment/lockdown/working from home. The population of some online games has surged during COVID (eg Team Fortress 2, which is at an all-time high despite few updates to the game).
Having said that, my position in events seems very stable, so players at the high end (where most of the money comes from) are either remaining or being replaced. 500,000 points in the last event wasn't even enough for a top-3,000 finish. I'd be more worried if I was suddenly finishing higher in events.
Comments
I think you missed a few key highlights, such as a new game mode coming around Q1 2021.
To be fair, it has to be difficult to whiteboard and game design things when you can't meet in person, but I also don't understand why certain things take so long.
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Didn't miss anything. I specifically said "wasn't much" not "nothing at all". More specifics would be nice, such as backlog. What exactly does that mean. 6 months, a year, 3 years, never - **tsk tsk** it up it ain't changing? I pointed out 8 or 9 issues, you brought 1 that might happen "around Q" or it could be Q3 as other features have been delayed/pushed back before. Don't get me wrong, I still play everyday, and I still spend (more than I should) but issues that remain issues 3, 4 or 5 years gets a bit discouraging from time to time.
I agree, more expedition reruns please
Problem with the expedition is the grind, honestly. Once you clear it once, you have to grind it out repeatedly to get a higher rank.
I'd love events that didn't have a player rank attached to them. If they made an Expedition event where you got the top prize possible once you met all of the objectives ... I think that'd be my favorite event. With the player rankings, it is my least favorite.
Ov (Overall) | Vo (Voyage) | Fa (Faction) | Ga (Gauntlet)
Sb (Ship Battle) | Bt (Boss Battle Traits) | Co (Collection) | (Cd (Cadet)
This is an interesting point. I guess for me collecting for the sake of collecting is not enough, I'm looking for a strategic benefit in the game. Maybe that puts me in the "more strategy less grind" camp? This aspect btw was there earlier, so maybe I've just played too long.
Yep. I think expedition events have been made worse through the iterations. Once they let the missions stay unlocked and provided the guaranteed crit it removed any remaining strategy. You used to have to think about which crew to use on normal/elite so your best crew was left for epic. You used to have to think how many times to try to crit one star before you weaken your crew so much that you won't be able to do other missions. Now it's just work your way backwards. Occasionally there is a little thought on the early tickets to figure out how to use secondary/tertiary skills of event crew to maximize stars, or which other crew can be used for their skill combo so you only use the event crew for the star, but once you figure that out, it's just wash and repeat.
I'd love to see expedition missions be made harder. Have longer node paths. Incorporate locked nodes. Have all 6 skills on a mission. Make me think about what rare skill combo crew I should use to clear the mission. Then find a way so I don't need to mindlessly repeat the mission as many times. Have less tickets, but make me spend longer on each ticket figuring things out so the time is the same but it's active time thinking about the mission, not just a simple work backwards like I did the last 5 tickets.
I may be alone, but I'd rather see less events (they've become a tedious grind anyway) and more development around the non-event parts of the game. I was drawn into the game by the challenge of the missions I did by myself, as I built and strengthened my crew.
I feel like somewhere along the line the idea of plot development and single-player action was all but ignored, in favor of promoting more grind-happy events and the idea that competition would drive spending. Whether it's a mobile game or console game, I may be old-school, but I miss well designed and in depth single player action, and find multi-player engagement can't help but get repetitive and stale over time.
Is it confirmed as a new game mode? I've seen it described as "a big new feature", but that is rather broad.
As of a year ago Minecraft was the best selling game in the history of the planet (it may still be, I'm not sure) and it is an open-ended sandbox game. Sure, there is an intended way for players to "beat" the game, but nearly everyone can and does find their own path. For example, I once created a game where I forbade myself from using a pickax and I set myself the goal of excavating a tunnel greater than 1,000 blocks. It was very hard, but very rewarding. I think in a lot of ways, STT works like a mobile CCG, Star Trek themed, sandbox game. We are free to set our own goals, set our own parameters, set our own obstacles, etc.
The Voyager episode "The Chute" I think is a fitting metaphor for addressing the reported staleness of STT. We've all been fitted with a clamp of sorts which causes many of us to become frustrated as it limits our perspective and only allows us to see one way to play, and when that one way becomes boring it manifests as a vocalized want/demand for more content. As @Prime Lorca [10FH], @Banjo1012, and @Dirk Gunderson can attest, I have struggled with this several times myself, having ALMOST quit playing at least 3 times. But each time I gave myself a few days to calm down, during that timeout I would eventually remember the clamp, and then each time I come back with a fresh perspective, a slight shift in goals, or some new game plan for keeping the game fresh for myself, and endure with a renewed sense of purpose, fulfillment, and energy.
I've done the standard things: I've pushed my voyages to the point where I can hit 10 hours at will, I've cleared every story mission, I've made top 5 event runs, I'm quickly approaching my 600th unique immortalized crew, I have all five Gauntlet exclusives immortalized, etc. Those goals were fun and challenging to pursue, but those things are not "the game", those are goals/challenges within the game. If you feel you have achieved all of your main goals in the game, pat yourself on the back, take a victory lap, and then sit down and get creative on some new challenges...
...for example, one of the things I've spent more and more of my game energy on is managing my fleet. It is very rewarding and satisfying to interact with the players in the fleet, helping them get stronger, offering advice, listening to their ideas (we have some SERIOUSLY smart folks in there!), coordinating starbase upgrade pushes, all of it. The most recent time I struggled with motivation I created a F2P alt account to experience the game a second time with Struggle Mode emphatically activated, and that has been hugely challenging but also rewarding. I have also made the mental shift after the last Honor Sale away from focusing on strong crew and toward focusing on vanity/fun/interesting/collections crew, and that shift has been the gift that keeps on giving, it is VERY liberating to free yourself from the shackles of the self-inflicted need to be focused on only "good" crew 24/7.
I realize this post is largely off topic and I apologize for that, but having read through the comments in here I felt people needed to hear this message. We are free to see the sandbox, we are free to ignore the clamp, we are free to set our own goals, create our own content, and experience the game how we choose. If the lack of new content through official channels has you frustrated, upset, anxious, or whatever, there is hope! And just know I have heard your messages in this thread of frustration with the perceived lack of updates, and if I can be of assistance please reach out to me, I will do what I can to help.
That's a little unfair, as the event hub was introduced as an inconvenience rather than an addition. All it did - and is continuing to do - is get in the way of events. Even now, I fire up the game and have no idea if an event is active, or counting down. Last weekend's event was the most apathetic I've ever felt towards a skirmish, and although that was certainly due to a number of different (TP-related) factors, I think the bad event hub implementation is on the list there somewhere.
And it's such an obvious design problem. It took me somewhere between one and two seconds of seeing the event hub button (before the event was even live) to realize it was a block to events, rather than a helpful conduit - and I wasn't the only one. It was badly planned and it was badly implemented. All they needed to do was introduce the event hub as a new button, and everything would have been fine.
But this is part of the TP pattern. I don't want to type paragraphs (again) explaining problem after problem after problem with TP's performance, but what it boils down to is three things:
1) they're not doing enough work on the game: I think overall Timelines development is adequate - just barely - but it's inexplicable why they haven't taken just a few hours to improve the game with achievement extensions, trait fixes, collection extensions (they started... but then they got bored and gave up?) - none of this is programming-intensive or bureaucratically-challenging. Bigger issues like portal dilution don't have an easy fix, and TP have my sympathy there, but these smaller improvements could be done... later today, right? Why not?
2) what work they do is badly planned: Ben once claimed that they play the game, but ever since he said that, I've found him difficult to trust. Adding ship selection improvements... to skirmishes, rather than voyages, even though that feature has been highly requested for years? Hundreds of dil for a pack with exclusive... RARE crew? Didn't bother to count Arena battles for last month's temporary achievements. And look at this nega-event's recap legendaries: EV Suit Spock, yay, but then Awaiting Amanda Grayson, T'Pring, Captain Solok, and Leila Kalomi..? They could have made any one of Sarek, McCoy or Pike a legendary and doubled how compelling this nega's legendaries are.
3) what work they do is badly implemented: the event hub button, as above. WHY isn't it its own separate button? Temporary achievement technical/counting issues - and we have to take the time to file a ticket if we were affected. Implementing new, faster space battles midway through a skirmish, but only for one (or two?) platforms. Changing mega-events to nega-events, where there's no build-up to an almighty faction event - consistently, and increasingly egregiously. Nanoprobe Phlox in the Honor Hall - yay! Fantastic, finally another gauntlet crew who will change up the game on a weekly basis, who will be the envy of those who don't have him, who will... wait a minute, his proficiencies are awful, he's just another voyage crew, and that's only if you spend 100K and four citations on him. Ben's favorite? Make him a gauntlet regular like Kahless and Captain Bev, then, so we can see him and use him regularly! You do play the game, right, Ben?
That's not even close to an exhaustive list, but overall it speaks to a highly incompetent team - and yet, they do sometimes get it right. Red Angel, introduced, appropriate for gauntlet, gauntlet collection updated without us having to remind them, bam! Job's a good'un. Old packs on the weekends dropped from 650 to 490 - nice nice. Mirror collection - "stay tuned", they said, months ago, but now it's finally here. Done. In a way, this is more frustrating for me, as if they'd only be Totally Pathetic, I could have given up on them already, instead of lingering on in this slow, drawn-out spiral of decline.
What I want to be doing is nit-picking. I want to be asking why the Mirror Collection improves Sec bases, when 1500+ Dip and Sci bases are almost non-existent and in need of shoring up. I want to be scoffing at the use of exclamation marks in the announcements for completely routine messages or tepid one-offs. I want these to be the 'big' Timelines issues, instead of dozens of impactful problems highlighting a pattern of incompetence and neglect on the part of TP.
But at least I avoided typing out paragraphs about the problems this time!
Thanks @Bylo Band for a very interesting post.
Having reread your post quite a few times, I really appreciate your positive sentiments and disposition. Indeed many of the points you make are very worthy – particularly in relation to fleet management and player education – growing your personal game in a different direction, as it were. These are attributes our fleet is very big on too, and we take it on with gusto. Yet these only go so far.
However, I do have some difficulty with much of the rest of your post. While I fulsomely acknowledge that your aim was not to do so, nonetheless much of the rest of your post I read as ‘when WRTP hands you the same lemons over and over, try to amuse yourself with the shape of the drinking glass from which you drink WRTP brand lemonade’ (I’m a jaded cynic, what can I say – I do not want to put words in your mouth - but nevertheless this is what I am hearing).
This approach has served you well, and very good luck to you with it. However, many posters on this thread share a need and expectation for something additional after some years of play . Either an indication of a planned evolution or some scope to evolve the current model to engage player interest (drawing on some of the many fine, free ideas catalogued thus far on this thread); but most importantly the nature and timescale of the progress envisioned and articulated in-game and accessible there. As @NX9B points out, the game is losing players at a formidable rate. Those of us currently on the fence about remaining here would like to know officially if WRTP intends a steady as she goes policy, and the game remains essentially a collection of cards. Or whether the concerns of many consumers on this thread and ex-consumers concerns will be addressed head on, and variety incorporated – perhaps some way to do so could be found that continues to respect the desire of those who wish to continue play ‘as-is’.
LLAP
Oomox
I'd go a little further than this and say that I'd be far more amenable to - playing with the box - as it were, if we weren't paying so much for the privilege. Why should we pay $15/month to make up our own games? Who ends up paying for this game in the medium run?
If you don't want to pay $15/month for the game, then don't. There is plenty you can do without spending money.
The point was that if no one pays the money then the game goes away. I'll go further and say that even just with IP costs and salaries and such this game needs to bring in some fairly decent minimum to keep the lights on. Someone needs to pay for it. Who are these people?
You are an super active User of this Forum, as ur 5 stars nxt to ur Nick show,
and you wanna tell us that you missed it and not even know who WRGBen is, regardless he posted some News/Announcements in here, when Shan
was on vacation? 🤔 Sorry, i don t buy it. 🤗
I think my point was always this.. of course we appreciate the changes, updates, bug fixes TP has done recently. I'm looking tho I suppose for the game changer. Like the big 3.
Voyages.. totally removed the chron bottleneck and gave warp speed to character leveling and event scores.
Starbase.. Powered up your crew, gave fleet meaning by working to a common goal.
Skirmish event.. a winner event that most actually LIKED doing. Had the element of farming for intel, with the space battle element.
All game changers. Of course there are other great changes like honor for dismissed crew, merit pulls, supply kits, honor hall, etc. All welcome additions.
That's the kind of innovation I'd like to see again. Maybe the wells dry, but I'd like to think in the world of stt there is still more to come. I suppose some slack can be given due to the DB TP change over, CV restrictions, Etc. I appreciate wrg Ben giving us a glimpse, I really hope that can become a regular thing. If we know something's coming, there is reason to hope.
We have 6 or more in our Fleet that paused or dropped out, saying that if there's some new innovation, they may return. I'm sure they're not the only ones, they're just the ones who said it out loud. If nothing else gets heard, I hope that that is something wrg/ TP hears and understands.
KopaceticK
Here is one thing to consider, the population of active players is directly linked to COVID responses. I can give an example: one of the best players in my fleet (and one of the 6 original founders) has gone inactive for months. Without giving away details, this player works in a hospital and has basically had zero free time for quite a while, and STT was an unfortunate casualty of this. Who knows when or even if this player comes back, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. I will give you that the numbers are going down, but beyond that initial statement of fact no valuative conclusions can be drawn assigning reasons for the dwindling number of players. As for your closing remarks, like I said, I hear you on that one, I understand the desire to know, and my advice would be to not hold your breath
You are not wrong, but IMO you didn't take my meaning far enough! What I'm saying is the game has ALWAYS been about turning lemons into lemonade, there were just "game" things in place when we all started playing to distract us from this reality for quite a while. There has never been a "correct" way to play this game, and even if we snapped our fingers right now and doubled the content of the game, this would not change. I think it is great for people to want more stuff, everyone knows I'm one of the biggest "offenders" of trying to propose new ideas/content, but I cannot cross that mental bridge of getting worked up about a lack of innovation when my participation is 100% voluntary, you know? We are all free to quit at any time. I mentioned in my initial piece that I came VERY close to quitting multiple times, I even uninstalled the game once, but I came back and that was my choice and I did so with a clear understanding of what it was I was getting back into.
You are not forced to pay anything, if you are dissatisfied with the service you should consider playing for free or quitting, those are the choices you can control. I will however adjust your quote to give you a more meaningful response: "Why should we invest our time/energy to make up our own games?" Simple, because that is what the game literally is. The game is collecting cards. What you do with those cards and how you derive enjoyment from those cards is entirely your business. As is how much you choose to spend.
Those of us who still enjoy what the game has to offer? I myself derive enjoyment chiefly from three things:
1) The strategy of staffing voyages. This goes double for voyages sent out during Faction events when some of my crew may be busy with the event.
2) Collecting favorite cards. T’Pring will likely never be useful for me in the game but I was still happy to get a copy in this last event. There are many crew I still pine for (Dr. M’Benga is probably at the top of that list, with Stranded La Forge and EV Suit Kirk not too far behind) and I look forward to getting them someday.
3) Strategizing shuttle crew. It really only matters during Faction events but it’s still fun to work on. I don’t run the same four missions, so constantly balancing whatever four missions I open so that I can maximize my success rate for all four presents a challenge.
4) Strategizing gauntlet crew choices. Once your choices are locked in, the gauntlet absolutely becomes a slot machine that you can either feed merits and dil to get a better chance at special rewards or feed time to get merits back and the occasional 5* crew (I do the latter and am up to 3/5* on the Red Angel). But figuring out how you’re going to match the featured traits while keeping the featured skill in mind and guessing at what crew other people are likely to have is a fun diversion every other day.
5) Event storylines. Although the last few megas have been a little iffy in terms of gameplay design (Factions work best at the end so you can use the crew you’ve amassed), I maintain that the stories have drastically improved over the last few months. They’re more engaging, more complex, and more interesting. The advantage of having all of the characters from 50+ years of Trek interacting with one another at the same time is that it opens up a whole new set of possibilities for what the characters do and with whom they do those things. McCoy being sympathetic to the Maquis was one thing I thought was really well done in the early going and it seems like we’ve only gotten back to that quality of storytelling very recently.
Are there issues? Sure. Are some of them simple? They certainly seem that way. Should we firmly, but respectfully, ask for continued improvement in communication? Unquestionably - Ben’s appearances on Timelines Talks are a good start down that path but they are just a start. Determine what value the game offers you and how much cash you’re willing to trade for that value. If you’re not receiving your money’s worth, don’t feel compelled to keep opening your wallet...your wallet is your most basic tool for evaluating the game and you perhaps shouldn’t expect change if you keep voting for something you don’t like.
Obviously I have no idea what their advertising budget looks like, but that seems like the place to start. I assume we all get the same ads for various match-3 style games, fantasy RPG-style games, as well as a competing Trek game. I play some of those other games too, and in those games, I see ads for these same other games (a nice little round-robin advertising arrangement). What I do NOT see are ads for Timelines. I originally came to STT because of an ad in a dungeon crawler game I played. I've downloaded other games because I've seen them advertised in STT. But I never see STT advertised anywhere anymore. Maybe I'm in the wrong places on the internet, but that's my point - if I weren't already an STT player, I'd never know to consider becoming one. More of those investment dollars need to be directed toward advertising.
Regarding the main theme here:
I'm mostly on the side of the folks that remain positive about the game and its direction. They've done a good job of putting my own thoughts into words, so I won't rehash them. Of course there are issues, some of them long-standing, but I continue to see progress and effort being made on the dev side, so I will carry on as long as I continue to enjoy the game they produce.
I take decently long hiatus's from the forums. And depending on which games I am following at a time Reddit gets cluttered so I definitely miss things.
I was aware that there had been an interview of someone on the Timelines Talk thingy, but they are way too long to watch. I was also aware that someone had referenced a future project that would be of interest to veterans. I may have actually read that on reddit. But I didn't (and still don't) have the details.
I accept your point - and again point out that @NX9B calculated an approx 40% drop-off. I'm sure you'll agree that not all of this figure could be attributable to COVID. As you have indicated, there are people in our fleet in similar situations to the one you describe, whose game play has reduced dramatically in response to the crisis, but they have not (yet) dropped out.
LOL! I'm hearing all of that! And agreeing with much again. To quote Roddenberry " […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there.”
But permit me a segue. You've mentioned twice that you've come to the brink of leaving the game yourself on three occasions. Did you in the course of any or indeed all of those occasions, attempt to communicate the cause of your frustrations with DB/WRTP?
I do fully accept that no one is holding a phaser to my head or yours and compelling our presence here. I and others here, just like Jack Nicholson, just want to know in as an expedient a manner as possible "Is this as good as it gets"?
And if it is, fine. This particular red shirt has done his best, and will obligingly vapourise into oblivion, faintly railing "Sufficiency was never enough".
I am not forced to pay anything for sure and indeed for the summer months I didn't. The offer wall left a bad taste in my mouth and the bad campaign crew just left meant there was no reason to. I did post when I decided to spend again, I asked how people were feeling about the game because I wasn't sure whether to start paying again. But, like so many people here I have a great squad and I am back at the $15/mth level again now.
Interestingly you use the word invest. I think one of the reasons I keep coming back is that I have 'invested' so much in this game. In time and in money, and I would rather live in the world where it survives and thrives rather than shrivels and dies. That's why I pop up here every few months to voice my irritation with the progress DB/TP is making. I can not recommend this game to a new player, but I do think that there is a path where DB makes the world a mildly better place by bringing back veteran players and continues to expand the endgame.
Maybe I am screaming futilely into the void at this point, maybe all of those ships have sailed and STT just can't be the game I want it to be. But until I know that for certain I am going to keep asking for it.
I play a lot of games. A few Star Treks ones to be sure, but also a few others currently and probably well into the 100's in total. I am well aware of the substitutes available to me. I see what regular game development looks like and I can tell when it is absent or poorly focused. My frustration is mostly with TP/WRG/DB, but I do get frustrated with people who defend them too. DB may have been the worst developer of any game I have ever played and I squarely blame management for that. I am hopeful that WRG/TP have some ambition for the game, but I am frustrated by both the lack of communication and some of the actual evidence we have of their direction.
One of the more frustrating elements with this game is that the players have added so much value to the game and DB/TP don't feel deserving of it. 90% of the reason that there's a player base at all is because of the IP and the community and very little of it seems to be the game itself.
This. So much this! Thank you for this point which articulates so much of my frustration succinctly and eloquently!
I read this as "We've all been the scarecrow, Q."
Thank you for making this thread entertaining. Seriously still laughing!
I think adding these "weak" older legendaries to thresholds would make events a bit more competitive and it would also give those who can clear thresholds but not rank in events will get a decent crew to help them be more competitive faster. I can't tell you how sad it makes me to see new players come into our fleet and quit before getting to level 40
Have you ever played Pokemon?
Gotta catch 'em all!
If anything, I would expect COVID to lead to a significant increase in players. For each player in the situation you describe, there would be many more who now find themselves with significantly more free time due to unemployment/lockdown/working from home. The population of some online games has surged during COVID (eg Team Fortress 2, which is at an all-time high despite few updates to the game).
Having said that, my position in events seems very stable, so players at the high end (where most of the money comes from) are either remaining or being replaced. 500,000 points in the last event wasn't even enough for a top-3,000 finish. I'd be more worried if I was suddenly finishing higher in events.