Why your game keeps losing my interest
~peregrine~
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1. Events are stale.
2. Dailies are boring.
3. Nothing new to do.
I was not the first person to highlight these issues. One or another of these have been an issue with your studio since I started playing in 2017.
You, Wicked Realm Games, could do better by listening to us, your players, more often. Otherwise, your holding company’s focus on LTV will leave your studio in churn-mode.
I hope you aren’t there yet, but if so, I’m pretty much gone. Again.
2. Dailies are boring.
3. Nothing new to do.
I was not the first person to highlight these issues. One or another of these have been an issue with your studio since I started playing in 2017.
You, Wicked Realm Games, could do better by listening to us, your players, more often. Otherwise, your holding company’s focus on LTV will leave your studio in churn-mode.
I hope you aren’t there yet, but if so, I’m pretty much gone. Again.
"In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game." — Nicky Case, The Evolution of Trust
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Comments
I’m not gone yet, y’all ! 😂
Shouldn't be that difficult.
Thanks for replying, but I think you missed my larger point. The game is now, as construed by the studio, mostly a cash-cow. Thus the new functions that focus on CCG, as opposed to new functions that focus on actually doing something different.
Yeah, this is a very expensive game. Look alone at the deals, the prizes are very high.
I only buy the monthly dilithium and the campaign.
"...OK, but for Star Trek Timelines, the opposite is true." - Bylo Band
Star Trek Timelines is the journey, not the destination. It's like the board game Takaido, the point isn't to rush to the finish line, it is to stop numerous times in seemingly pointless spas, stopping numerous times to paint rivers and mountains, to stop and help out random farmers, and to stop in every inn to enjoy expensive meals.
You know a lot about the game, it would be a shame to just walk away out of boredom. I've found tremendous satisfaction and endless enjoyment out of building my fleet from the ground up, recruiting new players to the game, writing game guides to help them, and enabling and supporting our players to meet their goals and get stronger.
Maybe your time as an individual player is over, but that doesn't mean your journey needs to end. Have you given any thought to starting your own fleet? The game isn't really a game, it is a community. I spend a lot of time every week chatting with my fleet on discord or game chat, I get FAR more enjoyment out of that than event finishes. When I immortalize another card I post the screenshot as do many others, and we all cheer and have a good time with it. People will get a begold, post the screenshot in chat, and we'll all discuss the pros/cons of each card. That to me is the game, not event finishes or anything else.
The game is what we make of it, right now you see it as somebody else's "cash cow" and that is a perfectly reasonable conclusion, but it doesn't take much to change that, all it takes is a change in perspective. Rather than think of your time as possibly ending and inadvertently contribute to its demise, you could instead create your own fleet, lay out a welcome mat for new players and help them learn and grow and keep them engaged to grow the community, which would be a huge boon to us all. Or if that is too great a leap, seek out a growing fleet and ask to join up as an officer to help them grow, recruit, and retain new folks.
It's all about reinventing your purpose, to prevent yourself from burning out.
Points 1&2 I can understand, but nothing new? Really? At it's heart this is a card collecting game and they just gave us a way of 1) targeting specific cards and 2) trading polestars between players, which is close to card trading between players.
Events are grindy, ya but this is not a strategy game where players battle each other, it's a slow paced card collecting game that you can play on your phone a few times a day when bored, or go crazy for during an event. If you don't like this style of play then ok, but that's just your personal preference for games you want to play, not a definitive statement about the game itself.
Personally, I think the developers have been improving the game, especially the dailies you don't like. Scans are now fun, you don't have to log in 3 times to do them. Voyages are great, especially for free to play players. The annoying cadet missions can be warped (was a time you had to do them manually!).
For events, the last event they introduced, Skirmishes, is the best type of event. You convert chrons to honour and can get a good crew by putting in the time and not have some whale buy his way to a better position than you.
I wouldn't have recommended this game a year ago to a friend but I would now.
What He said!
Hopefully you’ve got some honour to play with for the sale tomorrow 🖖🏻
I'm a long term player (like you folks I see posting here) and the game really starts to drag at the top. Having most 4* and below crew immortalized, there's not much to do except play in the (often grindy) weekly event and do dailies.
There are almost 500 5* crew in the game now. Maybe instead of keeping them behind a pretty solid paywall, start introducing Year 1 and 2 5* crew to people with more advanced rosters. This seems like it could be done fairly easily, like adding them to voyage loot tables (ie. for voyages over 8 hours) or creating "Legacy 5* Beholds" that drop in the gauntlet or are guaranteed with a high gauntlet finish. Even rejigging starbase rewards (replicator rations are near useless for a reward) to allow players to collect crew. These Legacy 5* Beholds could be offered as event rewards too, in order to spice things up.
I think stuff needs to be definitely needs done to keep the game stimulating for the loyal long term players (who are most likely spenders to varying degrees). For whatever reason, the devs don't really seem to want to turn their attention to that and are putting together a Celestial Market...which doesn't really help when they severely limit how you can acquire Quantum. There are aspects of the game that need some serious tweaking (voyages, gauntlet, events, etc) so I'm not sure why they are building these new features when they need do substantial work on previous ones they've introduced.
I just hope they start introducing some 5* crew into regular game play so I can moving some of my FE 5* that are clogging up my roster into the freezer. It would also give me another reason to keep playing the game (ie. collecting crew).
Another long term player here (since 2016) - I’m playing every day and yes it gets grindy. I like the idea of introducing old legendaries into things like voyages, perhaps after the 8 or 10 hour mark or whatever. I’ve got a bunch of old legendaries that I’d like to finish and freeze. They are definitely not candidates for citation or crew retrieval. I am looking forward to the marketplace to exchange polestars though.
Making those decrepit 5* crew drop on voyages makes so much sense.
What is striking to me is why this studio does not pre-release stuff to the player base at large. Forget the future events & campaigns for a minute, and look at where their focus is: Card Collection.
The studio has apparently decided to outsource communications. Timelines Talks & the unreleased-data channel on STT Discord are fun, but they are not official communications from the studio that produces this game. As such, how many players are unaware of these outside sources? I have seen TT mentioned in an in-game message, which is sort of cool, but I have never seen the STT Discord mentioned there. Why is that?
The studio has alienated legacy players, is in the process of disinvesting from those whose LTV is now marginal, and does not seem to have any new ideas for something to do with our existing crew.
Was that too harsh? Did I misconstrue something? I think not. I will be here until they turn off the lights, but, damnit, Do Better. Please.
Set the bar high, make it require the deep roster of legendaries that a lot of us have.
And add a second voyage feature with super rare crew max. Perhaps a completely different reward and loot structure to that.
I want to habe a use for and a purpose behind all the crew I am collecting. Collections are nice, but it's an achievement and then another frozen crew.
I am at the point where my roster is very good and I have no desire to compete in events for a 1/5 (or even 2/5) that will have no impact on my game or get any use. It's okay for crew I really like, but most weeks it's not worth my time.
I really like this game, but am getting bored. I want something more to do so I can keep playing.
Chiming in to say that this is incorrect.
The official channels are still the same as they always been: forums, in-game mail.
Skirmishes are just arena or ship battles rebranded as an event
Campaigns were also existing mechanics wrapped into a system where you are encouraged to complete them for additional rewards
This new constellation/polestar thing isn't content ... it's just an attempt to redefine the game. I'm sorry, but the game did not start out as a collecting game. Not sure how many people were around when Becca reiterated it wasn't such. If it was a CCG, i would have never started playing.
If WRG wants people to keep playing the game, create something truly new that players can do on a daily basis. Create some kind of war system, or "defend a planet/starbase/system" ... something you can utilize the 1000 some odd cards you've created over the years, instead of letting them languish buried on a 5+ year roster or in vault.
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I very much agree that something to do with crew just sitting around would be good. We have these Starbases, why not give crew something to do? As a fleet, what about assigning our engineers to study ship design and produce schematics for ships we haven't finished? Get our diplomats out there establishing alliances for increased trade and credit production! Assign a few ships staffed with commanders, security officers, and some doctors to fend off a Romulan/Klingon/Breen attack!
Even if all it is is a reskin of Voyages or Shuttles, I'd like to be able to do something with my 250+ otherwise idle crew.
Also, if this wasn't a CCG originally, what was it? That really does seem like all it is now and has since I started playing.
Edit: The game does devolve more into a CCG the longer you play. New features do tend to make it more than a CCG. But not Crew retrieval or celestial market.
Since I stopped spending money, the game is boring . Disappointing to know for me, if I had not started spending money, I probably would have stopped playing long ago.
I don't remember seeing it advertised as a card collecting game. The feeling I got at the onset of the game was that cards were a path towards the bigger picture of completing missions, playing events and a greater promise of content to come. 2017 introduced two new modes of play in voyages and gauntlet. grabbing cards was simply a means to an end
Now, the entire paradigm has shifted to where all focus is simply collecting cards, while little to no development is taking place with regards to actual new gameplay. events and any new development have shifted to become the means to obtain cards.
I've had lengthy discussions with other players who too are disappointed in the direction the game has taken, and the lack of new gameplay since 2017. the focus of the game should be focused on giving players something to actually do.
With the recent announcement that recent development was focused on a polestar "market" rather than content, I've decided not to invest any more money into this game. I used to spend $100/month back in 2017, which shrunk to $14 over the last 1-2 years (campaign+monthly), down to campaign only, and now finally $0.
if wrg decides to focus again on developing interesting new gameplay, maybe I'll invest again in the product.
Second Star to the Right - Join Today!
What precluded you from updating ship loot tables from 2020-2021, as opposed to all of the other loot tables?
Do you intend to fix the in-game chat, so that players can come together & earn more stuff? Because this is what I just saw:
How about y’all show us that you actually listen to what the real constraints are to your LTV, instead of continuing to Pokemonetize the game that many people love to play.
Not for the cards. For the challenges.
Do Better, WRG
I think everyone would agree with that point. It would be nice to have MORE ways to use the cards, like in Voyages.
I can see the lack of card use as a turn off for the whales to keep playing since they have all the cards.
a) Card collecting, and now completing collections.
b) Developing collected cards (ranking them up and adding stars).
c) The events, which are competitions.
I enjoy the faction events, a lot more than I did when I first started. Sorting out crew, ranking up needed crew, although my 4* roster is almost complete. Ranking up duplicates.
The events are what makes the game for me now, competing for rank, and having to fit the game around me work schedule.
Adding big new things would be difficult, it would change the nature of the game, and those things would become stale after a while.
How is this different from the past 3+ years?