I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here. The problems with lack of content precede Covid by literally years.
And the lack of good communication must be apparent even to someone who hasn't been around very long. It's not new and it's not unique to DB/TP, but there are plenty of companies who do it a million times better than TP. Honestly, they really should have regular development blog posts (at least once a month), they should have developer Q&As etc. Lots of companies do this. Instead we get some random dude on a vodcast that only a few people watch.
The reason for this is that for the longest time they've had nothing to say, serious development hasn't been happening.
Not new at all. Been around for several years. I was addressing some people discussing quitting because of disappointment on the eve of the 5th anniversary. But assume whatever you will 🤷♂️
And if you think this bad, you must not play a lot of mobile games. This is absolutely nothing compared to some. Where there are game breaking issues daily, players are literally getting ripped off, and customer service deal with issues by telling players to "GFY, not our problem."
You have literally just described my experience with TP.
This thread was about the festive period, not Convergence day. The festive period IS over and people were disappointed.
And if you think this bad, you must not play a lot of mobile games. This is absolutely nothing compared to some. Where there are game breaking issues daily, players are literally getting ripped off, and customer service deal with issues by telling players to "GFY, not our problem."
I dunno, this response has come up from a few people lately, this thread and others, and it bothers me every time. I dont think we should be lowering our expectations to say "well it could be worse" and calling that success. Saying that "other games are failing more" isn't exactly the ringing endorsement TP should want us to have of them nor should it be the one we hold them to.
I'd much rather measure success as compared to the top performers in the category, not basing it off the low hanging fruit.
And if you think this bad, you must not play a lot of mobile games. This is absolutely nothing compared to some. Where there are game breaking issues daily, players are literally getting ripped off, and customer service deal with issues by telling players to "GFY, not our problem."
I dunno, this response has come up from a few people lately, this thread and others, and it bothers me every time. I dont think we should be lowering our expectations to say "well it could be worse" and calling that success. Saying that "other games are failing more" isn't exactly the ringing endorsement TP should want us to have of them nor should it be the one we hold them to.
I'd much rather measure success as compared to the top performers in the category, not basing it off the low hanging fruit.
I have only played one other mobile game for longer than a couple weeks. What practices do these top performers implement that put them at the top?
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
Sometimes I feel like I was in this forum with a bunch of people who are totally unable to read between the lines or recognize irony or sarcasm if they encounter it. Maybe that is the reason why this is such a boring place as everyone tries to be as clear as possible instead of making puns or funny comments. I quit doing it myself as there is so little sense of humor here.
For the records: "You must be new here" imo does not refer to how long someone has been around, and writing "not being sarcastic either" when you clearly are does not help the reader.
@Thurthorad is right regarding the lack of innovation in STT. But this is unrelated to the festivities which are rather about offers and gifts instead of groundbreaking content.
I guess TP really saved it all up for CD. The first announcement was promising. Overall I think it was a bad business decisions though, they should have split the sugar between Advent and CD instead of angering many people with almost nothing over the holidays.
You're right. I could stand to lighten up. It's been a while since the last big change to the game. The comment about innovation is definitely a fair one. I disagree about the communication comment, but that's pretty subjective. I think Shan on the forum daily and Ben on Idol's show every few months is enough. More would be great and I can see how others might think more is definitely necessary.
I also would have done the winter holidays differently. I would have announced that a few offers would come with citations (since that actually happened). Then maybe leave the teaser that more special events and offers would follow randomly through January as a fairly long Convergence Day celebration. I think that would have helped manage expectations a little better.
This is a great example of their poor communication and a good response to it. They are not used to just being forthright and honest with us unless something has gone awry. I think having regular blogposts where they talk about their future plans and try and drum up some enthusiasm would be a great idea for them just to discipline them into active expectation management. They could talk about their plans for future characters, future sales and future development projects. This is quite common in the industry. Some games publish one monthly, others weekly.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
I really enjoy the game. All the character art lately have been insanely good, the stories are interesting, new crew are relevant (from latest disco), quality of life issues fixed quickly, no intrusive offer wall. The balance of FTP and offers for big spenders seems fine to me.
As others have pointed out, the festive season isn't quite done. I expect the employees of WRG largely celebrate Xmas and New Year, so it has been their holiday too - and since they have come back, it looks like great things on the horizon! We got a legendary today, new rewards structure, some big announcement tomorrow. Sure, there have been hiccups but I still enjoy going on STT pretty much every day so it must be alright. I'm excited!
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Annoyed. No real difference from the rest of the year apart from the disappointing “festive” anticlimax.
Since the compensation, for a clearly "generous" overestimation of our crafting abilities, I want to say my initial vote may have been too harsh.......
🖖🏿🖖🏾🖖🏽🖖🏻🖖🏼🖖
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
This is one game mode of many though. And even without those additions you can "easily" reach 10 hours (and yes, I know, some find joy in reaching even higher numbers) with a good selection of older cards. The power creep compared to other games is not too wild in STT. And for a reason: For a really massive one we would need the fitting game modes in which superpower cards would be needed (otherwise no incentive to go for them/buy them). And we do not have these new game modes. Well, hopefully this coming big feature will be one.
For the players who like to do the same things over and over again with some constant QOL improvements, better offers etc. the game is still fine as we see by many postings. For many players who want new game modes, new challenges etc. it has become boring. Simply different views of the same product...
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
You may indeed have found a significant difference in our views. After the dust-up regarding Adira Tal's art, I tend to think that the art is more like content in the context of this game. That, coupled with the story in each event, qualifies as content in my book. The art is partly a vehicle for the story each week. It's not the chapter mode, but the events are part of the story all the same.
When it comes to power creep, I tend to agree with @Emperor Borg Drone . There needs to be a balance. You want your investment in some crew to last a while. You're not going to spend 4 citations on crew that will be power creeped in 3 months when it takes 4 months (roughly) to earn 4 citations.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
This was asked in the context of what other successful games do. In all of the big games that I play, MMOs, Battlers, ARPGs, nothing that's 2 yrs old is meta relevant. They are still useful to be sure, and can do the content just fine like any card we have now. But all the hotness is relatively recent.
Typically what happens is that a new meta crew will be created for some aspect of the game and that's rotated every 12-18 months. So about 2 years of high usefulness for a card and then it's colour or depth. This is similar in CCGs where card sets older than a few years are rotated out of the most common tournament formats. Or in MMOs the level cap rises and all that top tier gear is old hat and new raids need to be done. This is how you get people to keep playing and spending.
DB had a surge of meta breaking cards at one point with Burnham, Gary Seven and Braxton coming out within a few months of each other. Braxton is still the #1 Voyager by stats. Why would I buy other similar tools to him when I have him. It's particularly bad with CMD/DIP/SEC characters like Luau Paris. He's cool, but honestly he isn't of any major use to me. I have a ton of characters just like him or better than him. If he improves my roster at all it will be barely noticeable. Why would I spend money for a character like that?
There was a time when we'd get excited by new skill combinations on characters and we'd dive into those Tuesday packs to get White Rabbit or work hard at an event to get Leonardo Da Vinci. But years after that whilst they are slightly off they are still as good as most modern cards. That's just too long for a healthy game.
It's also bad for new players. You want the game to move on so that people just joining are getting access to the new more powerful cards and where the assets that mature rosters have become less important over time.
The power creep is reasonable and understandable. New episodes have higher skill requirements than the one before and if new crew weren't better, most of the time, then the year before, older players would have less incentive to get them.
You have mostly overlooked the converse. Old cards eventually lose their utility with power creep, but the vault and collection system restores that. They may not help your active roster, but investing in them grants buffs and rewards. This gives new players the incentive to keep older crew and be happy even with old crew they didn't have. I expect most crew will be in a collection at some point. All the low value cards already are.
I often say that some cards are worth more frozen than in quarters. They add to you achievement count, collection totals, and free a slot. I have never dismissed a new card. I remember when someone tossed a bunch of unfinished crew after maxing a collection, just to have new milestones added soon after. I felt bad, but I had to laugh a little too. We KNOW they increase milestones, sure it may take a while (my list is growing steadily), but it does happen. I half expect new milestone or collection rewards with any update. There is a pattern 1, 5, 10, 25, 40, 60, and 80. They just need to decide on the rewards to add a milestone and choose the criteria and rewards for a new collection.
They keep power creep reined into a reasonable rate and they offset the lost value in creeped cards with the vault.
Have they made mistakes? Yes, who doesn't. Do they try to set it right? Usually. It may take a bit, but they are trying to figure out the cause, the effects, and the outcome that satisfies the most of their player base. The Adira solution can only be implemented after CD ends, because of the nature of it.
Between CD, whatever new content they promised this quarter, the Disco/Mirror Mega, and two new collections, I'm not really surprised something happened. They are working from home with multiple holidays in there. That just makes things worse. It's like coming home after a day or two away and finding the freezer opener or a leaking pipe. You could have caught it sooner in a normal situation and they longer it goes on, the worse it is.
The three things I'd like to see most are:
*New episodes- These are big investments, but maybe they could retire some older Expedition events by converting them into episodes. That would save them some of the development costs and recupe some of what they had previously invested. Maybe some of those older gold crew could become rewards for the episodes or missions, like how they included Quinn in the Q episode.
*Added milestones and maybe collections- This usually happens a couple times a year, but I always look forward to it. Love to see who gets A collection next. The Andorions? The Soong family? Caregivers? "The Killing Game"?
*An exchange of some kind- Even if it is just fleet based. I'd like to help the new players with surplus from my inventory or trade with my friends.
W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
And many of those added were Tuesday pack people which are hard to get.
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
You may indeed have found a significant difference in our views. After the dust-up regarding Adira Tal's art, I tend to think that the art is more like content in the context of this game. That, coupled with the story in each event, qualifies as content in my book. The art is partly a vehicle for the story each week. It's not the chapter mode, but the events are part of the story all the same.
When it comes to power creep, I tend to agree with @Emperor Borg Drone . There needs to be a balance. You want your investment in some crew to last a while. You're not going to spend 4 citations on crew that will be power creeped in 3 months when it takes 4 months (roughly) to earn 4 citations.
There's a straw man there. I am not saying power creep should be so fast that a character becomes non-meta relevant in 4 months. But I do think 2 years for non-relevance is totally fine. At the moment characters are born relevant or irrelevant and just stay that way. I am not advocating super fast power creep, but I do think healthy games have power creep that is faster than what we have here.
This approach to arguing is a constant problem here btw. Every time this argument comes up the same people resort to the same straw man. You're just resorting to rhetoric in an effort to win an argument instead of actually listening to the opposing views. You asked me what a healthy game looked like and now you are resorting to this style of argument? You go to great efforts to appear reasonable, but you do not argue in good faith.
The power creep is reasonable and understandable. New episodes have higher skill requirements than the one before and if new crew weren't better, most of the time, then the year before, older players would have less incentive to get them.
You have mostly overlooked the converse. Old cards eventually lose their utility with power creep, but the vault and collection system restores that. They may not help your active roster, but investing in them grants buffs and rewards. This gives new players the incentive to keep older crew and be happy even with old crew they didn't have. I expect most crew will be in a collection at some point. All the low value cards already are.
I often say that some cards are worth more frozen than in quarters. They add to you achievement count, collection totals, and free a slot. I have never dismissed a new card. I remember when someone tossed a bunch of unfinished crew after maxing a collection, just to have new milestones added soon after. I felt bad, but I had to laugh a little too. We KNOW they increase milestones, sure it may take a while (my list is growing steadily), but it does happen. I half expect new milestone or collection rewards with any update. There is a pattern 1, 5, 10, 25, 40, 60, and 80. They just need to decide on the rewards to add a milestone and choose the criteria and rewards for a new collection.
They keep power creep reined into a reasonable rate and they offset the lost value in creeped cards with the vault.
Have they made mistakes? Yes, who doesn't. Do they try to set it right? Usually. It may take a bit, but they are trying to figure out the cause, the effects, and the outcome that satisfies the most of their player base. The Adira solution can only be implemented after CD ends, because of the nature of it.
Between CD, whatever new content they promised this quarter, the Disco/Mirror Mega, and two new collections, I'm not really surprised something happened. They are working from home with multiple holidays in there. That just makes things worse. It's like coming home after a day or two away and finding the freezer opener or a leaking pipe. You could have caught it sooner in a normal situation and they longer it goes on, the worse it is.
The three things I'd like to see most are:
*New episodes- These are big investments, but maybe they could retire some older Expedition events by converting them into episodes. That would save them some of the development costs and recupe some of what they had previously invested. Maybe some of those older gold crew could become rewards for the episodes or missions, like how they included Quinn in the Q episode.
*Added milestones and maybe collections- This usually happens a couple times a year, but I always look forward to it. Love to see who gets A collection next. The Andorions? The Soong family? Caregivers? "The Killing Game"?
*An exchange of some kind- Even if it is just fleet based. I'd like to help the new players with surplus from my inventory or trade with my friends.
All great ideas and points. I hope they implement at least some of them. Kudos!
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
You may indeed have found a significant difference in our views. After the dust-up regarding Adira Tal's art, I tend to think that the art is more like content in the context of this game. That, coupled with the story in each event, qualifies as content in my book. The art is partly a vehicle for the story each week. It's not the chapter mode, but the events are part of the story all the same.
When it comes to power creep, I tend to agree with @Emperor Borg Drone . There needs to be a balance. You want your investment in some crew to last a while. You're not going to spend 4 citations on crew that will be power creeped in 3 months when it takes 4 months (roughly) to earn 4 citations.
There's a straw man there. I am not saying power creep should be so fast that a character becomes non-meta relevant in 4 months. But I do think 2 years for non-relevance is totally fine. At the moment characters are born relevant or irrelevant and just stay that way. I am not advocating super fast power creep, but I do think healthy games have power creep that is faster than what we have here.
This approach to arguing is a constant problem here btw. Every time this argument comes up the same people resort to the same straw man. You're just resorting to rhetoric in an effort to win an argument instead of actually listening to the opposing views. You asked me what a healthy game looked like and now you are resorting to this style of argument? You go to great efforts to appear reasonable, but you do not argue in good faith.
Sorry, wasn't trying to create a straw man, or anything. Just stating that I am comfortable with the current power creep and why. Looking back at Braxton, G7, and FO Burnham though, you are right. I've been sitting on Braxton at 1/5 for probably a year or more because I assumed someone better would come along (I also have other reasons, so let's not get sidetracked here). No one has topped his voyage numbers in 2 years. What's more is that he even had an event last year. G7 may never get an event, so him being up there bothers me very little. Investing in him is one-dimensional.
As it was pointed out, there is some power creep near the top, but as you point out, there is not enough power creep at the top. Both valid points. I wouldn't mind seeing a new voyage beast at the top of the list. I'd say we're about a year overdue. Basically, I think there is some balance on power creep, but I wouldn't mind seeing that balance shift a little bit toward the top.
Annoyed. No real difference from the rest of the year apart from the disappointing “festive” anticlimax.
Yeah i agree with some power creep being needed at the top.
With all of the skill combos, traits, ship abilities, hidden traits and event potential....they could basically unveil anew crew every 4-6 weeks with tier 1 level power, and current tier 1-3 would still be relevant and powerful for 2-3 years. Maybe longer.
I just want them to break away from introducing the new ultra powerful crew in tuesday 6 packs. Or, if they need the income from those crew to keep the company going, they could at least get portal updates on a more steady schedule. Maybe once a quarter the portal gets updated with crew released between 6 and 12 months ago. Not sure if that is the right balance, but it would give the whales 6 months of exclusivity for the powerhouse crew.
Should power creep be judged by when all the cards are out rated or the average? Statistically, there are always outliers.
This is the event lineup from two years ago. This was when I first started. "Temporal Trespassers" was my first event.
Looking at the purple crew, especially the new crew, there isn't A single one that I have done that is still out of the freezer, except Test Pilot Archer. He is still my 10th best science base and I expect to freeze him this month. If I scroll down, I see Medic Paris and Grathon Tolar in May and both of those were top purples in their skill when introduced, though Tanis has displaced Tom since. I wouldn't be surprised if a 4* of Adira tops Grathon this year.
Okay, golds. I don't have a lot of these and the ones I have aren't finished and don't get used. I know Braxton is still good. The EMA does get some use. L'Rell, Number One, and Kol I've heard about with some regular use. I don't hear about them as often though. The rest weren't really superior when introduced, I think. I'm not sure. Any gold was a big deal to me back then. Anyone with more prospective want to chime in?
If my thoughts are right, most of the cards from the first half of 2019 have been creeped with just a handful of holdouts. With 3 new crew in a typical week, factoring in a mega or two, extras...say about 42 new crew a quarter. If only about five are still major players, with maybe another five finding work here and there, that would mean around 87% are unconditionally creeped and 75% are depending on circumstances. Where will we be in June?
I think there is more creep than is often thought of. Just because they are good, it doesn't mean they are necessary either. Several have a similar crew that you can use in their place. Purples, which are usually half the new crew, have short shelf lives. Golds last longer, but Golds often top most purple crew to begin with, but how often to they top the top?
We got our Bones whose Med cup overfloweth last year this time. Pupcard was the February mega last year and took the top Science spot. I'm not really sure when Prof. Sato, Ru'Afo, PW Keiko, and High Roller Sisko were introduced. I wasn't on the boards or a competitive player then, at least. They haven't been replaced, but their edge is fading. Keiko is still tops, but I can distinctly remember when eleven of the top twenty for Command base were added, so all within the last two years. Maybe more if I overlooked someone.
There are a few outliers holding out, but most have been creeped within my time. Don't discount availability either. Pupcard was mega reoccurring. Bones the '20 CD crew. Sato, Sisko, and Keiko have been campaign premium tracks. Only Ru'Afo hasn't been easily available in the last two years. Enough players had access to five of the top six that they could be competitive against older players in raw stats, at least. They may not have the buffs, roster depth, and experience, but they had the crew access. That is another form of creep.
W.W. CarlislePlayed since January 20, 2019Captain Level- 99 (May 9, 2022)VIP 14Crew Quarters: 485/485Most recent/Lowest- Anbo-jyutsu Kyle Riker (1/5* Lvl 30) 5/29/23Immortalized x-866 5* x184, 4* x 490, 3* x91, 2* x62, and 1* x27Most recent Immortal - Tearful Janeway 4* 5/25/23Current non-event project- Improving my Science base skill. Retrieval Project- Mestral 1/5*
Yeah i agree with some power creep being needed at the top.
With all of the skill combos, traits, ship abilities, hidden traits and event potential....they could basically unveil anew crew every 4-6 weeks with tier 1 level power, and current tier 1-3 would still be relevant and powerful for 2-3 years. Maybe longer.
I just want them to break away from introducing the new ultra powerful crew in tuesday 6 packs. Or, if they need the income from those crew to keep the company going, they could at least get portal updates on a more steady schedule. Maybe once a quarter the portal gets updated with crew released between 6 and 12 months ago. Not sure if that is the right balance, but it would give the whales 6 months of exclusivity for the powerhouse crew.
You talk about tiers, but that kind of over-simplifies things, in my opinion. There's a lot of metrics that leave a lot of room for power creep. There's top voyage score, but there's also top base and proficiency for each skill. There's number of events, top skill for each variant (mostly relevant to only main cast), total gauntlet score, base pairs for shuttles, voyage triplets, voyage traits... probably a few other things. I don't know how much turnover there has been at the top for these metrics. It looks like they should focus on total voyage power at least a little bit in 2021. I'm curious which other metrics were largely stagnant in 2020. I know Picard had some strong variants released. Maybe 2021 will be another banner year for Burnham.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
This was asked in the context of what other successful games do. In all of the big games that I play, MMOs, Battlers, ARPGs, nothing that's 2 yrs old is meta relevant. They are still useful to be sure, and can do the content just fine like any card we have now. But all the hotness is relatively recent.
Typically what happens is that a new meta crew will be created for some aspect of the game and that's rotated every 12-18 months. So about 2 years of high usefulness for a card and then it's colour or depth. This is similar in CCGs where card sets older than a few years are rotated out of the most common tournament formats. Or in MMOs the level cap rises and all that top tier gear is old hat and new raids need to be done. This is how you get people to keep playing and spending.
DB had a surge of meta breaking cards at one point with Burnham, Gary Seven and Braxton coming out within a few months of each other. Braxton is still the #1 Voyager by stats. Why would I buy other similar tools to him when I have him. It's particularly bad with CMD/DIP/SEC characters like Luau Paris. He's cool, but honestly he isn't of any major use to me. I have a ton of characters just like him or better than him. If he improves my roster at all it will be barely noticeable. Why would I spend money for a character like that?
There was a time when we'd get excited by new skill combinations on characters and we'd dive into those Tuesday packs to get White Rabbit or work hard at an event to get Leonardo Da Vinci. But years after that whilst they are slightly off they are still as good as most modern cards. That's just too long for a healthy game.
It's also bad for new players. You want the game to move on so that people just joining are getting access to the new more powerful cards and where the assets that mature rosters have become less important over time.
I think the issue here is that without new game features (Episodes, Event types, etc...) too much power creep also unbalances the existing ones, if they aren't changed in substantial ways (which would require time and resources while not being of any particular interest to the players or increasing the company's revenue in a relevant way).
I know that you're in favor of new game features, but I don't think that WRG have the resources to add some on a constant basis, or they probably would.
There's also the issue of whether all the long-time players who appreciate a repetitive and easy gameplay would like these changes. I don't know how many of us exactly fall in one or the other group and how that relates to spending, but displeasing the "coasting" players in favor of the "bored" ones would be expensive in terms of time and resources, whereas the opposite isn't. The returns might be the same.
Power creep for Gauntlet is the worst. Apart from RA there was zero in ages.
Power creep for voyages is an aspect that leaves many people unconcerned. Some because they have so few FF crew that they are still working towards 8 or 10 constant hours, and others like me because they are fine with constant 10 to 11 hours and have no desire to hunt additional minutes or 12 hours, as there is no huge benefit to gain from it.
Serious power creep could only work with new away missions or additional tiers to the existing ones which could only be passed with a new generation of crew not available yet. Voyages with legendary rewards starting from 12+ hours could also create a desire for significantly better crew.
I rather hope for an extension to keep the growing amount of FF crew busy. Seeing like 25 of 80 (?) being busy at best is discouraging to the ambition to add even more.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
I wonder somedays, does Tilting Point want us to quit? Not being sarcastic either. Very little new content and flashbacks / reruns being added in.
At this risk of sounding rude, why would you even think they want players to quit? What business wants their customers to stop coming/spending money? That doesn't make any sense to me.
The lack of new content/flashbacks is likely due to:
• difficulties encountered due to staff being forced to work from home
• other pandemic related issues (staff getting sick, their family being sick/hospitalised, their children being homeschooling, etc.)
• focusing limited staff/resources on new features, upcoming anniversary events and other key issues, which has led to more flashbacks/reruns, which are easy to program into the calendar
Ben is going on Timelines Talks in two days and has teased that he has news. Convergence Day is about a week after that. Maybe it’s premature to declare the “festive period” over or give up on the game. If you’ve been playing for years then you can wait another week to see what they have planned.
Agreed with this completely, @Sky Cap 18. If anyone was to leave the game now, it would be silly.
You're obviously new here.
This is getting old. The phrase gets tossed around like an old rag. It's not "awesome" and it's not well said. It's rude. Worse than that, @IceCat has explained in at least one, but I think a couple other threads that he has lurked for a long while and recently decided to speak up. If you haven't read that, then I recommend reading more of the forum. It's an interesting place. Feel free to complain about the game. That's why the forum is here. But let's try to embody some of the Star Trek spirit that we all love. Let's treat our fellow captains with respect.
I'm happy to see the Luau Paris and temporary achievements. That was better than I expected. It's nice to see them repeat the Bones give-away and temporary achievements. The announcement said there's more to come. I look forward to see what else there might be.
I don't look forward to playing gauntlet, though. Oh well. The reward will be worth it.
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
This was asked in the context of what other successful games do. In all of the big games that I play, MMOs, Battlers, ARPGs, nothing that's 2 yrs old is meta relevant. They are still useful to be sure, and can do the content just fine like any card we have now. But all the hotness is relatively recent.
Typically what happens is that a new meta crew will be created for some aspect of the game and that's rotated every 12-18 months. So about 2 years of high usefulness for a card and then it's colour or depth. This is similar in CCGs where card sets older than a few years are rotated out of the most common tournament formats. Or in MMOs the level cap rises and all that top tier gear is old hat and new raids need to be done. This is how you get people to keep playing and spending.
DB had a surge of meta breaking cards at one point with Burnham, Gary Seven and Braxton coming out within a few months of each other. Braxton is still the #1 Voyager by stats. Why would I buy other similar tools to him when I have him. It's particularly bad with CMD/DIP/SEC characters like Luau Paris. He's cool, but honestly he isn't of any major use to me. I have a ton of characters just like him or better than him. If he improves my roster at all it will be barely noticeable. Why would I spend money for a character like that?
There was a time when we'd get excited by new skill combinations on characters and we'd dive into those Tuesday packs to get White Rabbit or work hard at an event to get Leonardo Da Vinci. But years after that whilst they are slightly off they are still as good as most modern cards. That's just too long for a healthy game.
It's also bad for new players. You want the game to move on so that people just joining are getting access to the new more powerful cards and where the assets that mature rosters have become less important over time.
I think the issue here is that without new game features (Episodes, Event types, etc...) too much power creep also unbalances the existing ones, if they aren't changed in substantial ways (which would require time and resources while not being of any particular interest to the players or increasing the company's revenue in a relevant way).
I know that you're in favor of new game features, but I don't think that WRG have the resources to add some on a constant basis, or they probably would.
There's also the issue of whether all the long-time players who appreciate a repetitive and easy gameplay would like these changes. I don't know how many of us exactly fall in one or the other group and how that relates to spending, but displeasing the "coasting" players in favor of the "bored" ones would be expensive in terms of time and resources, whereas the opposite isn't. The returns might be the same.
Yeah, it is an issue I have recognised. Basically your existing player base is primarily people who are happy, most seriously disgruntled players have already moved on.
However, I will counter that with new features slowing or preventing churn and potentially drawing back former players. Star Trek players tend to be fairly sticky and don't wander too far from channels where they'd find out if there were major changes. I know that I get Timelines news from time to time in my STO podcast.
Power creep for Gauntlet is the worst. Apart from RA there was zero in ages.
Power creep for voyages is an aspect that leaves many people unconcerned. Some because they have so few FF crew that they are still working towards 8 or 10 constant hours, and others like me because they are fine with constant 10 to 11 hours and have no desire to hunt additional minutes or 12 hours, as there is no huge benefit to gain from it.
Serious power creep could only work with new away missions or additional tiers to the existing ones which could only be passed with a new generation of crew not available yet. Voyages with legendary rewards starting from 12+ hours could also create a desire for significantly better crew.
I rather hope for an extension to keep the growing amount of FF crew busy. Seeing like 25 of 80 (?) being busy at best is discouraging to the ambition to add even more.
Agreed on most counts. If WRG wants to ramp up power creep, adjusting rewards for long voyages (add dil as a rare drop after 10 hours) or raising the shuttle difficulty + rewards is one way to incentivize. As of now, there's not much difference between the 20th best gold crew and the 120th best.
Gauntlet churns too slow for my liking too. We really only had about two and a half competitive gauntlet crew added last year; Red Angel, Twilight T'Pol, and Mycelial Culber.
We're getting more power creep from collection bonuses on average than we are from new crew. First Officer Burnham was #1 for voyages and base when she debuted 1,138 days ago, now she's #4 and #2 respectively. They may be stuffing the meat a bit higher in the sandwich's ranks, but the top end is moving very slowly outside of very few names like Bones.
Comments
You have literally just described my experience with TP.
This thread was about the festive period, not Convergence day. The festive period IS over and people were disappointed.
I dunno, this response has come up from a few people lately, this thread and others, and it bothers me every time. I dont think we should be lowering our expectations to say "well it could be worse" and calling that success. Saying that "other games are failing more" isn't exactly the ringing endorsement TP should want us to have of them nor should it be the one we hold them to.
I'd much rather measure success as compared to the top performers in the category, not basing it off the low hanging fruit.
I have only played one other mobile game for longer than a couple weeks. What practices do these top performers implement that put them at the top?
By suggesting that they were new here I was giving them the benefit of the doubt. I don't widely read the forums, I come here to get official TP announcements to disseminate to my squad and whilst here I will read the 'hot' topics.
I find the fawning over TP by some on the forums very offputting as there really is very little evidence to back them up, but people will be people. It doesn't annoy me, I just find it silly. It's clear to me that you guys suffer from extremely low expectations. Just because another company is worse than TP doesn't mean we shouldn't hold TP to a decent standard.
We're trying to let TP know that there is a road to a longer term but they need to act. People defending them when they absolutely don't deserve it just makes the situation worse.
Again, I reiterate my earlier point about how expectations are affecting peoples attitudes. We all agree that TP has dropped the ball lately and that their communication has been historically atrocious. We all mostly agree that the game needs continuing development (and possibly retirement) of features to keep it alive longer term. What we seem to disagree on is what to expect from TP. I continue to believe that they can be better, but there are some here who obviously don't and are happy when they get a free Paris or an extra citation. This is akin to giving a child more sugar. It's a short term way to make you happy, but it doesn't make the game less stale.
(and just because I am expected to know personal histories of people on the forum now, here's mine)
I've been playing since Dec 2016? I am passionate about Star Trek and the game. I play it regularly, I have a great squad of RL friends. I don't play every aspect of the game, I think Gauntlet is a massive waste of time for example. I only send shuttles when I am going for the campaign or an event. I play voyages any time I login and I enjoy any event where I want the legendary and I'll mostly skip anything that doesn't interest me unless a squady needs the support. I buy any campaign with a useful legendary, but I'm also happy to take a month off feeling like I have to do things if the legendary isn't interesting. Typically when I take the campaign off I also stop the monthly card because I don't log in every day. I've been campaigning for more features since about 6 months after Voyages came out and it was apparent that DB weren't planning on giving us anything else to do with our crew.
I play lots of other mobile games and regular F2P PC games. I have done research on the business model as part of a PhD. I know what a good company looks like and what a bad company looks like and TP is definitely on the bad side,
This is a great example of their poor communication and a good response to it. They are not used to just being forthright and honest with us unless something has gone awry. I think having regular blogposts where they talk about their future plans and try and drum up some enthusiasm would be a great idea for them just to discipline them into active expectation management. They could talk about their plans for future characters, future sales and future development projects. This is quite common in the industry. Some games publish one monthly, others weekly.
I've seen your name around. Pretty sure I piggybacked off of at least one of your ideas. I'll post the same question to you that I posed to @dext74 since I do not play many mobile games: what practices do other devs implement that contributes to their success in your eyes?
As others have pointed out, the festive season isn't quite done. I expect the employees of WRG largely celebrate Xmas and New Year, so it has been their holiday too - and since they have come back, it looks like great things on the horizon! We got a legendary today, new rewards structure, some big announcement tomorrow. Sure, there have been hiccups but I still enjoy going on STT pretty much every day so it must be alright. I'm excited!
Successful games have regular content releases that keep their whales buying. They also have power creep which is again important because you need a moving frontier if you want players to keep spending. They introduce new features at least once a year, such as a new game mode or a big overhaul of an existing game mode. They talk about their product regularly and are excited by it. They explain their reasoning behind things and address questions from people who spend a lot of their time thinking about the game. They are responsive to activist player groups who share their passions.
F2P is a service model not a product model, you have to constantly improve the service to keep people paying for it. You are never finished development, you must always be generating more game for people to buy and play. You are also selling access to the IP and relying on consumer sentiment to generate sales, so it helps if you are hard core fans of the properties that you are involved with. But importantly you need to communicate that passion to your players and assure them that you love the game as much as they do.
WRG checks a lot of those boxes, but not all. Events and Tuesday packs cover the "regular content." Power creep is fairly obvious here. They seem to add something yearly, but... last year's temporary achievements were used so seldomly that they are easy to forget. Shan is here regularly and Ben had been on a sort of quarterly schedule to talk to players. Enthusiasm is pretty subjective, so I assume some think there's enough enthusiasm while others think it insufficient. I'm sure the majority would be happy with more all the same.
Responsiveness is kind of an interesting topic. Imo, their track record is good. From MJLP to Yar-gate to I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter Kirk to the offer wall to Towel Tal's art to Convergence Day community rewards, I would say they have been getting better at their responses. The offer wall is the only thing since Yar that I would say was not handled well. Sometimes it may take a few days, but I think things are usually handled equitably.
Last time, (I think) Ben mentioned some new currency or something to make the game more interesting. I think they projected Q1 of 2021. I hope it's as good as temporary achievements, but used more regularly. For now, I'll try to enjoy the Convergence Day festivities and see what comes down the pipes.
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Cards are not 'content', they are tools with which to do content. Some will get enjoyment out of owning or collecting said cards, but they are merely the pawns with which to play the game. Content is chapters of story, new events or new features. Content doesn't have to feature new mechanics, it can just be more of the same mechanics at a different difficulty with rewards commensurate to that difficulty.
This is, I think, where one our general disagreements may arise. TP want to sell us tools without giving us anything new to do with them. This links to power creep too. Power Creep is very low in this game which means that characters are often added that are worse than previous characters with the same or similar stats and traits. Why would I buy a new hammer when I already have one better? Maybe I'll buy it because it's prettier?? I might. I'll be going for Kevin Uxbridge next week and I doubt he'll improve my roster much if at all, but I still want to have him, If he's even half way decent I'll probably dip into the massive hoard of legendary citations I have to immortalise him. That's the current state of the game right now, buying tools I don't need because they're pretty.
I am in complete agreement with your post.
I disagree on the power creep issue. Of the current top 10 voyagers, 6 have been added this year. Of the top 20 voyagers, 10 have been added this year. This seems like reasonable power creep to me. If it became excessive, then it would make new cards less desirable too, as they would almost immediately lose their value.
This is one game mode of many though. And even without those additions you can "easily" reach 10 hours (and yes, I know, some find joy in reaching even higher numbers) with a good selection of older cards. The power creep compared to other games is not too wild in STT. And for a reason: For a really massive one we would need the fitting game modes in which superpower cards would be needed (otherwise no incentive to go for them/buy them). And we do not have these new game modes. Well, hopefully this coming big feature will be one.
For the players who like to do the same things over and over again with some constant QOL improvements, better offers etc. the game is still fine as we see by many postings. For many players who want new game modes, new challenges etc. it has become boring. Simply different views of the same product...
You may indeed have found a significant difference in our views. After the dust-up regarding Adira Tal's art, I tend to think that the art is more like content in the context of this game. That, coupled with the story in each event, qualifies as content in my book. The art is partly a vehicle for the story each week. It's not the chapter mode, but the events are part of the story all the same.
When it comes to power creep, I tend to agree with @Emperor Borg Drone . There needs to be a balance. You want your investment in some crew to last a while. You're not going to spend 4 citations on crew that will be power creeped in 3 months when it takes 4 months (roughly) to earn 4 citations.
This was asked in the context of what other successful games do. In all of the big games that I play, MMOs, Battlers, ARPGs, nothing that's 2 yrs old is meta relevant. They are still useful to be sure, and can do the content just fine like any card we have now. But all the hotness is relatively recent.
Typically what happens is that a new meta crew will be created for some aspect of the game and that's rotated every 12-18 months. So about 2 years of high usefulness for a card and then it's colour or depth. This is similar in CCGs where card sets older than a few years are rotated out of the most common tournament formats. Or in MMOs the level cap rises and all that top tier gear is old hat and new raids need to be done. This is how you get people to keep playing and spending.
DB had a surge of meta breaking cards at one point with Burnham, Gary Seven and Braxton coming out within a few months of each other. Braxton is still the #1 Voyager by stats. Why would I buy other similar tools to him when I have him. It's particularly bad with CMD/DIP/SEC characters like Luau Paris. He's cool, but honestly he isn't of any major use to me. I have a ton of characters just like him or better than him. If he improves my roster at all it will be barely noticeable. Why would I spend money for a character like that?
There was a time when we'd get excited by new skill combinations on characters and we'd dive into those Tuesday packs to get White Rabbit or work hard at an event to get Leonardo Da Vinci. But years after that whilst they are slightly off they are still as good as most modern cards. That's just too long for a healthy game.
It's also bad for new players. You want the game to move on so that people just joining are getting access to the new more powerful cards and where the assets that mature rosters have become less important over time.
You have mostly overlooked the converse. Old cards eventually lose their utility with power creep, but the vault and collection system restores that. They may not help your active roster, but investing in them grants buffs and rewards. This gives new players the incentive to keep older crew and be happy even with old crew they didn't have. I expect most crew will be in a collection at some point. All the low value cards already are.
I often say that some cards are worth more frozen than in quarters. They add to you achievement count, collection totals, and free a slot. I have never dismissed a new card. I remember when someone tossed a bunch of unfinished crew after maxing a collection, just to have new milestones added soon after. I felt bad, but I had to laugh a little too. We KNOW they increase milestones, sure it may take a while (my list is growing steadily), but it does happen. I half expect new milestone or collection rewards with any update. There is a pattern 1, 5, 10, 25, 40, 60, and 80. They just need to decide on the rewards to add a milestone and choose the criteria and rewards for a new collection.
They keep power creep reined into a reasonable rate and they offset the lost value in creeped cards with the vault.
Have they made mistakes? Yes, who doesn't. Do they try to set it right? Usually. It may take a bit, but they are trying to figure out the cause, the effects, and the outcome that satisfies the most of their player base. The Adira solution can only be implemented after CD ends, because of the nature of it.
Between CD, whatever new content they promised this quarter, the Disco/Mirror Mega, and two new collections, I'm not really surprised something happened. They are working from home with multiple holidays in there. That just makes things worse. It's like coming home after a day or two away and finding the freezer opener or a leaking pipe. You could have caught it sooner in a normal situation and they longer it goes on, the worse it is.
The three things I'd like to see most are:
*New episodes- These are big investments, but maybe they could retire some older Expedition events by converting them into episodes. That would save them some of the development costs and recupe some of what they had previously invested. Maybe some of those older gold crew could become rewards for the episodes or missions, like how they included Quinn in the Q episode.
*Added milestones and maybe collections- This usually happens a couple times a year, but I always look forward to it. Love to see who gets A collection next. The Andorions? The Soong family? Caregivers? "The Killing Game"?
*An exchange of some kind- Even if it is just fleet based. I'd like to help the new players with surplus from my inventory or trade with my friends.
And many of those added were Tuesday pack people which are hard to get.
There's a straw man there. I am not saying power creep should be so fast that a character becomes non-meta relevant in 4 months. But I do think 2 years for non-relevance is totally fine. At the moment characters are born relevant or irrelevant and just stay that way. I am not advocating super fast power creep, but I do think healthy games have power creep that is faster than what we have here.
This approach to arguing is a constant problem here btw. Every time this argument comes up the same people resort to the same straw man. You're just resorting to rhetoric in an effort to win an argument instead of actually listening to the opposing views. You asked me what a healthy game looked like and now you are resorting to this style of argument? You go to great efforts to appear reasonable, but you do not argue in good faith.
All great ideas and points. I hope they implement at least some of them. Kudos!
Sorry, wasn't trying to create a straw man, or anything. Just stating that I am comfortable with the current power creep and why. Looking back at Braxton, G7, and FO Burnham though, you are right. I've been sitting on Braxton at 1/5 for probably a year or more because I assumed someone better would come along (I also have other reasons, so let's not get sidetracked here). No one has topped his voyage numbers in 2 years. What's more is that he even had an event last year. G7 may never get an event, so him being up there bothers me very little. Investing in him is one-dimensional.
As it was pointed out, there is some power creep near the top, but as you point out, there is not enough power creep at the top. Both valid points. I wouldn't mind seeing a new voyage beast at the top of the list. I'd say we're about a year overdue. Basically, I think there is some balance on power creep, but I wouldn't mind seeing that balance shift a little bit toward the top.
With all of the skill combos, traits, ship abilities, hidden traits and event potential....they could basically unveil anew crew every 4-6 weeks with tier 1 level power, and current tier 1-3 would still be relevant and powerful for 2-3 years. Maybe longer.
I just want them to break away from introducing the new ultra powerful crew in tuesday 6 packs. Or, if they need the income from those crew to keep the company going, they could at least get portal updates on a more steady schedule. Maybe once a quarter the portal gets updated with crew released between 6 and 12 months ago. Not sure if that is the right balance, but it would give the whales 6 months of exclusivity for the powerhouse crew.
This is the event lineup from two years ago. This was when I first started. "Temporal Trespassers" was my first event.
Looking at the purple crew, especially the new crew, there isn't A single one that I have done that is still out of the freezer, except Test Pilot Archer. He is still my 10th best science base and I expect to freeze him this month. If I scroll down, I see Medic Paris and Grathon Tolar in May and both of those were top purples in their skill when introduced, though Tanis has displaced Tom since. I wouldn't be surprised if a 4* of Adira tops Grathon this year.
Okay, golds. I don't have a lot of these and the ones I have aren't finished and don't get used. I know Braxton is still good. The EMA does get some use. L'Rell, Number One, and Kol I've heard about with some regular use. I don't hear about them as often though. The rest weren't really superior when introduced, I think. I'm not sure. Any gold was a big deal to me back then. Anyone with more prospective want to chime in?
If my thoughts are right, most of the cards from the first half of 2019 have been creeped with just a handful of holdouts. With 3 new crew in a typical week, factoring in a mega or two, extras...say about 42 new crew a quarter. If only about five are still major players, with maybe another five finding work here and there, that would mean around 87% are unconditionally creeped and 75% are depending on circumstances. Where will we be in June?
I think there is more creep than is often thought of. Just because they are good, it doesn't mean they are necessary either. Several have a similar crew that you can use in their place. Purples, which are usually half the new crew, have short shelf lives. Golds last longer, but Golds often top most purple crew to begin with, but how often to they top the top?
We got our Bones whose Med cup overfloweth last year this time. Pupcard was the February mega last year and took the top Science spot. I'm not really sure when Prof. Sato, Ru'Afo, PW Keiko, and High Roller Sisko were introduced. I wasn't on the boards or a competitive player then, at least. They haven't been replaced, but their edge is fading. Keiko is still tops, but I can distinctly remember when eleven of the top twenty for Command base were added, so all within the last two years. Maybe more if I overlooked someone.
There are a few outliers holding out, but most have been creeped within my time. Don't discount availability either. Pupcard was mega reoccurring. Bones the '20 CD crew. Sato, Sisko, and Keiko have been campaign premium tracks. Only Ru'Afo hasn't been easily available in the last two years. Enough players had access to five of the top six that they could be competitive against older players in raw stats, at least. They may not have the buffs, roster depth, and experience, but they had the crew access. That is another form of creep.
You talk about tiers, but that kind of over-simplifies things, in my opinion. There's a lot of metrics that leave a lot of room for power creep. There's top voyage score, but there's also top base and proficiency for each skill. There's number of events, top skill for each variant (mostly relevant to only main cast), total gauntlet score, base pairs for shuttles, voyage triplets, voyage traits... probably a few other things. I don't know how much turnover there has been at the top for these metrics. It looks like they should focus on total voyage power at least a little bit in 2021. I'm curious which other metrics were largely stagnant in 2020. I know Picard had some strong variants released. Maybe 2021 will be another banner year for Burnham.
I think the issue here is that without new game features (Episodes, Event types, etc...) too much power creep also unbalances the existing ones, if they aren't changed in substantial ways (which would require time and resources while not being of any particular interest to the players or increasing the company's revenue in a relevant way).
I know that you're in favor of new game features, but I don't think that WRG have the resources to add some on a constant basis, or they probably would.
There's also the issue of whether all the long-time players who appreciate a repetitive and easy gameplay would like these changes. I don't know how many of us exactly fall in one or the other group and how that relates to spending, but displeasing the "coasting" players in favor of the "bored" ones would be expensive in terms of time and resources, whereas the opposite isn't. The returns might be the same.
Power creep for voyages is an aspect that leaves many people unconcerned. Some because they have so few FF crew that they are still working towards 8 or 10 constant hours, and others like me because they are fine with constant 10 to 11 hours and have no desire to hunt additional minutes or 12 hours, as there is no huge benefit to gain from it.
Serious power creep could only work with new away missions or additional tiers to the existing ones which could only be passed with a new generation of crew not available yet. Voyages with legendary rewards starting from 12+ hours could also create a desire for significantly better crew.
I rather hope for an extension to keep the growing amount of FF crew busy. Seeing like 25 of 80 (?) being busy at best is discouraging to the ambition to add even more.
Yeah, it is an issue I have recognised. Basically your existing player base is primarily people who are happy, most seriously disgruntled players have already moved on.
However, I will counter that with new features slowing or preventing churn and potentially drawing back former players. Star Trek players tend to be fairly sticky and don't wander too far from channels where they'd find out if there were major changes. I know that I get Timelines news from time to time in my STO podcast.
Agreed on most counts. If WRG wants to ramp up power creep, adjusting rewards for long voyages (add dil as a rare drop after 10 hours) or raising the shuttle difficulty + rewards is one way to incentivize. As of now, there's not much difference between the 20th best gold crew and the 120th best.
Gauntlet churns too slow for my liking too. We really only had about two and a half competitive gauntlet crew added last year; Red Angel, Twilight T'Pol, and Mycelial Culber.
We're getting more power creep from collection bonuses on average than we are from new crew. First Officer Burnham was #1 for voyages and base when she debuted 1,138 days ago, now she's #4 and #2 respectively. They may be stuffing the meat a bit higher in the sandwich's ranks, but the top end is moving very slowly outside of very few names like Bones.
The lack of it(FOr now) i believe will backfire upon tp more than they could even imagine.