STO News

[SciFiFan]

At STLV, the devs officially announced the second expansion for STO. They are calling it Delta Rising. It takes place in the Delta Quadrant and some of what is coming with it is:
Level cap increase from 50 to 60
New specialization skill tree for continued captain growth
New missions to fill from 50 to 60
All new T6 ships
A new class of ship (not a cruiser, escort, science, carrier, destroyer)
A new class of bridge officer
Method of upgrading most T5 ships to near T6 status (T6 ships comes with new abilities that upgraded ships wont get)
Mk XIII and XIV gear
Tim Russ returns as Tuvok
Garrett Wang joins as Captain Harry Kim of the USS Rhode Island
A slew of new species to encounter, both enemy and allies.
And much more.

There is not anything on the website yet but you can listen to the panel here.

 

[Majestic]

I was dreading the level cap, I doubt I will be returning to the game in that regard, all the money and grind to get those ships and now they have become somewhat obsolete.

Thanks for the update mate.

 

[SciFiFan]

I was dreading the level cap, I doubt I will be returning to the game in that regard, all the money and grind to get those ships and now they have become somewhat obsolete.

Thanks for the update mate.

They said a couple of times during the panel the the T5 ships will not become obsolete. I will wait to see more info on the upgrades and how it will work before I decide how worth it it will be.

 

[Majestic]

They said a couple of times during the panel the the T5 ships will not become obsolete. I will wait to see more info on the upgrades and how it will work before I decide how worth it it will be.

Unfortunately they said the same thing when introducing fleet ships that they wouldn't cost anywhere near as much as c-store ships and that they wouldn't make c-store ships anything less than what they were at the time aka top of the line ships. Then about a month later we found out about the modules and that most required the 4 modules each of which were 500 zen which equaled 2000 zen and being only 500 zen cheaper than a c-store ship. In fact the KDF faction has very few discounted ships making it even more expensive.

I know most know about my lets say enthusiastic opinion of Cryptic/Perfect World, however that view had been through experience and watching what they say and do and often what they say in those interviews and podcasts is often not what actually happens. I guess my experience is that don't trust what they say and expect them to just screw their customers.

Many have spent small fortunes, whether it is real hard cash (for zen) or grinding dilithium using their time and effort and trading it for someone else's cash (zen), either way they have supported the game and I feel they deserve more what they are getting here. Really what does an extra 10 levels get people? Most people will get that done in a day on a character. I personally just see it as a way to make more money at the expense of customers rather than coming up with a creative way to do it that also benefits their customers while making their previous purchases (and their support for the game) not be as a waste. After all everything that players do in the game in someway or another supports the game, keeps it successful and keeps those dev's in a job. If no one played the game, bought anything in the store there wouldn't be a game now.

I guess I have a bit of a different outlook considering the fact I am looking at entering this gaming industry and like any business, customers really should be considered invaluable as are good employees. Maybe it's lost on Cryptic, perhaps Perfect World are just telling them this is what you do and they have no choice, either way I feel it's wrong and a lot that has happened to this game in the last year or 2 has turned me off it more than bugs and episode games crashing ever did. I just feel the more they do the more they are making it harder to develop characters and enjoy doing it at the same time.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

I hated the idea of the Hirogen being involved in the Alpha Quadrant as they should be incredibly far away. The Dyson story line makes going to the Delta Quadrant a bit more realistic, but I still would prefer they didn't. I feel that an expansion that was based in the Gamma Quadrant might work better, considering that we haven't heard much from either the Dominion or any other species in the GQ in a while, and the Delta Quadrant was such a jumbled mess of tons of races. I'm afraid Cryptic's going to just toss together a bunch of species from Voyager that should not have the ability to have contact with eachother due to vast distances between them and call it good.

The new bridge officer slot and ship type also scare me, as I'm afraid to see what Cryptic has come up with.

 

[SciFiFan]

They have finally put the official announcement for Delta Rising on the website. Read it here.

 

[Majestic]

Seems a good part of the community aren't impressed by the level increase.

Thanks for the news, at least Kazon are in there, I like the Kazon and at one point considered making a mod on them.

 

[SciFiFan]

They are releasing more news for Delta Rising including a new announcement video.

They have started a running Intelligence Briefing on the species that you will encounter in the Delta Quadrant.

Also, starting Friday, they are starting the End of Summer Celebration. Everyday this weekend, they will be giving away a C-Store item free. You will only need to log in with a qualifying character to claim it. Also they are releasing on Thursday and "new well-known" ship. Speculation on the forums is that it is either the Dauntless or Constellation. We will see soon enough.

Today, they have discussed the system for upgrading T5 ships to what they are calling T5-U. You can read the blog here and see a list of the ships that are upgradable here.

 

[Majestic]

Thanks for the news mate, disappointed that they are expecting for most ships that you want to upgrade to T5-U will require some sort of Zen. No doubt they will have a whole new line up of T6 ships so trying to squeeze more money out of players to be is very low.

I suppose it doesn't really matter to me much as I have mostly moved on from the game.

 

[SciFiFan]

Hello all. There is some pretty big news on the story for Delta Rising on the STO website. I think would be best if y'all should read it. If you don't play the game anymore (which I do understand) perhaps this may be worth at least to check out.

Delta Rising News

 

[Hellkite]

They are really getting desperate. They must be hemorrhaging players

 

[Majestic]

Thanks for the news SFF, still not enough to get me back in the game. It's just become way to grindy for my tastes, even more since I left and has really moved away too much from the core of Trek. Obviously they needed to make changes due to the nature of MMO's but it could have been done a lot better imo.

I think it was the Tier 6 that finally hit it for me. I will log on every year to play the new content on a single character but my main days at playing STO is behind me I think. I'd much rather sit down and play the Mass Effect trilogy on my Xbox over and over as each time I play it it's something new to discover or do.

They are really getting desperate. They must be hemorrhaging players

Well they did lose like 500,000 players when they launched season 6/7 from what I heard/read. It's a reason they introduced the Romulans (despite what they say, they've been caught being dishonest with their customers before) as a way to try and bring old players back and new players in and also as a quick money grab.. I don't think it had the added income they had hoped for as many were unimpressed that it wasn't the Star Empire and players were forced to side either with the Feddies or the Klingons which was pretty un-Romulan if you ask me.

Basically it was a copy of the Pandarian from WoW.

It's the same with this tier 6 raise just another money grab. You watch next year there will be some other way for them to make players requiring to re-buy many things all over again. I mean they aren't even allowing the fleet ships to automatically go straight up to tier 6 stats, that was disappointing considering how expensive they can be. 2,000 Zen for a single ship, unless you paid the 2,500 Zen for the c-store version (which the KDF have few of that qualify) and then pay another 500 Zen for that c-store item to go buy it from a fleet that has grinded up their assets to have a shipyard and assets to buy one.

Still all that said they seem to still get enough revenue to keep going so I suppose that is a good thing for them, and to the players who continue to play the game and enjoy it. Still it's not very Trek imo and we'd do well if another more Trek like MMO would come in by another company, then maybe they'd get some decent competition and it would really show how successful they truly are as I have talked in-game in the past with many players and at least half of those I did talk to have said that despite the money they have spent in STO they would jump ship in an instant. Not a very promising trend/attitude for Cryptic/PWE. Shows they must be doing something wrong.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

The only reason I get on STO anymore is to use the character creator to make alien races for use in fan fic. Or to explore new content.

 

[Majestic]

Well yesterday I jumped on STO just to have a look around. I played the mission where the Undine attack Earth & Qo'Nos.

I must say it was a decent mission if still written from a Fed perspective, however I did like that they tired to include more KDF dialogue options this time around. So I will give credit where credit is due. The mission ending was very interesting, they finally did something that players have been asking for since season 6, to end the war as really you cooperate more with each other than fighting and so the war feel has long been gone. I do hope they will however go back and add in some new Federation war missions for the KDF just to flesh the war out a bit more.

Not overly impressed with the ship upgrades, considering most require a very expensive c-store item and the fact that older lock box ships don't get upgraded to T6 status. Not surprised but certainly not impressed. I also have to say that I am not sold on the new DOFF mission UI change, I find it more confusing than anything else compared to the older one which was much easier to figure out what you're doing.

Other than that not much has changed, just more grind which I no longer do, just logging in to play the new missions and that is really it. Oh I did find that I still have 15 jem'hadar bug promotional doff packs and they are going for 8 million each on the exchange, not bad I put a few up and one sold within a couple of minutes. Guess I will be using them to fund Sidra, my KDF engineer a new lock box ship down the road as I am not paying $$$ to upgrade a ship that isn't even going to be a T6 ship. I will probably get Kevaas a new one at one point too but for now his Galor will suffice. At least they allowed a free upgrade of the Galor to T5-U.

So some positives and many negatives. I'm back into Trek, but not into STO. I will probably only play a little on the weekends along with other games like AOE3, Halo etc and leave the weekdays to doing my diploma and perhaps modeling and texturing etc. That's when I am not working on my truck and doing yard and house work.

 

[SciFiFan]

I played all of two episodes of Delta Rising. Reason being is that the missions are actually locked behind the player level. You have to be a certain level to play the episodes and you can not skip ahead. SO DR requires you to play an episode or two then grind the mission replays or queues to get to the next level in order to play. I have honestly been back on SWTOR this past week. I guess STO have finally done it for me. I may come back after I get tired of Star Wars. lol

 

[Majestic]

Seriously, I can't believe they put those new missions behind grind walls. I simply won't grind to play them, If anything I will log on and just do the academy and doff missions to level the characters. I have no interest in grinding the game to play new content. If they can't offer it from the get go to lvl 50 characters, then I can't be bothered to play them. Kevaas is lvl 51 atm doing one of the missions, however a server crash has buggered me up, I was in the middle of a mission when it went down.

I suppose the game really hasn't changed any.

 

[SciFiFan]

The sad thing is, this is nt the way way the game started out. There were flaws but, there was no mindless grind or cash grabs. The ship models and stories were sub-par but that was expected from a rushed job.

 

[Majestic]

Yeah I can understand in the leveling process but considering it's only just gone to level 60 you'd think they would just make the requirement level for all the new content in the expansion be level 50. I guess they have their reasons, pretty misguided reasons in my opinion.

I am only playing it for the new content, I have no desire to do any further rep assignments, nor work on any characters other than Kevaas and Sidra and that's only to get them through the new missions.

 

[SciFiFan]

I agree. I have only ran Natan through two of the new missions and have move T'vess into the Delta Quadrant but has yet to start the missions. In fact, the last time I did log in was just to start a new round of crafting assignments on Mak. I am having fun with Star Wars and I have been back into Neverwinter too. Like I told my wife, I will play one til I am bored with it then move on to another.

 

[Majestic]

Usually a good way to be. I have been playing a little AOE3 over the past few days as well. I am going to try and restrict my gaming time for STO and PC games to weekends from now on. Xbox will be a different story but I won;t be playing that much either until after Christmas when I get an Xbox One and some games I have been looking forward to.

 

[SciFiFan]

Usually a good way to be. I have been playing a little AOE3 over the past few days as well. I am going to try and restrict my gaming time for STO and PC games to weekends from now on. Xbox will be a different story but I won;t be playing that much either until after Christmas when I get an Xbox One and some games I have been looking forward to.

Been a while since we gamed together. Would be fun to do so again, even if just for a little while. I am almost always online on Friday nights (your Saturdays) playing one of the three games mentioned above. I was finally able to update my video drivers for my laptop and both ST and SW runs smoother. I think that is one of the main reasons why I am enjoying SW so much right now.

 

[Majestic]

Yeah we'll have to do it again soon. Jesse also messaged me wanting to catch up in game as well. So will probably have to sort something out there.

I really am only playing the new content but would be happy to do a team run just for the fun of it in-game at some point soon. I got myself a Kazon ship off the exchange and it's nice to see they are bringing something original into the lock boxes other than those mirror ships. That was a pleasant surprise and I do love the Kazon.

 

[SciFiFan]

Yeah we'll have to do it again soon. Jesse also messaged me wanting to catch up in game as well. So will probably have to sort something out there.

I really am only playing the new content but would be happy to do a team run just for the fun of it in-game at some point soon. I got myself a Kazon ship off the exchange and it's nice to see they are bringing something original into the lock boxes other than those mirror ships. That was a pleasant surprise and I do love the Kazon.

I talked to her in game the other week. I made her "Vice President" of Mak Enterprises (Formally MSFC Taskforce ). I have been meaning to get back on and play with her again but just got caught up in Star Wars.

 

[Majestic]

I like that Mak Enterprises. I donated a little yesterday to it on Josara as I had a surplus of DOFF and fleet marks.

I had like 3 messages from her spanning about a month or two. Shows how long I have been away. I was even surprised that Kevass is still in the fleet he is, as they prune inactives and I haven't been on in ages. I guess they missed Kevass in their latest pruning which is fine with me.

 

[SciFiFan]

Delta Rising is a mess. Stories are excellent but level gated. Leveling is sooooo slow past Lvl50. Power trays are bugged worse than they ever had. Carrier pets are bugged and getting nerfed. The Advanced level for PvE queue are not what they were advertised. The only reason I am logging in right now is for the Mirror Event.

 

[Majestic]

Cryptic doesn't really test anything, or at least not test it enough and do fixes before going live, which is the main problem with them. While it's inevitable that some bugs will make their way into the game, the vast amount of bugs and the vast amount of time it takes them to fix it is very unprofessional for a gaming company asking for money for their product through membership and online store items.

Like we discussed earlier they should have had all the level requirements for the new content to be a min of level 50. Making players go back and grind discourages many, annoys and frustrates more and just makes the game less fun.

I didn't bother logging in last weekend, preferring to spend my time working on YY and playing AOE3. This was due to the fact that there isn't a lot of new missions, which is the only reason I have been logging on. Being that Trek is so story driven it's a little shocking that it seems more of an after thought than a main focus to them.

It seems many features get nerfed after a time, which is why I wait 6 months before buying a ship from the store or unpacking a lockbox ship that I spent 60-100 million on the exchange. Did they give any reason for the pet nerfing SFF?

 

[SciFiFan]

Gecko did indeed to the right thing and let us know before hand. He said that the pets were using the wrong data. Their "metrics" were telling them that the combined damage output of the pets were often out performing the player ships. Well on that, if the player is set up like I am with my Atrox, this is intentional on the players part. I rely on my Elite Scorpions to do the bulk of the damage. The my carrier only having 6 total weapon slots and only two tac consoles, it will never be a offensive juggernaut. He also said that a lot of the pets at max level were having more shield and hull hit points than the ships that launched them. This has actually been confirmed by several players and if it is indeed the case, then I can understand.

Their idea of making harder game play (which many players have asked for) was to boosts the npc hit points and damage output. Apparently, this also affected carrier pets after level 50. Kurr (my Atrox captain) is still 50 so I am not personally seeing the issue at hand.

Pets are usually too weak to be too much use. I would hope that when they fix this, they find a positive middle ground. The other speculation on the forums is that they are doing this now so they can introduce Epic level pets in the future. Many fear though that if they do, it will only be obtainable from their horrid R&D system.

While I am at it, I will elaborate on the other issues I have mentioned.

Power Trays: There was a while back (don't know if you were playing then) that the power tray was bugged where when you beamed from the ground to space, your tray would be not set up the way you had it and powers were even missing. This was always fixed by re-slotting your Boffs so long as you had the "Lock Power Tray" option selected. This is no longer the case. Many have found a work around using the loadout selections but it seems to be unreliable.

Advanced Queues: Before Delta Rising, they told us they were adding another difficulty setting for the PvE queues. They told us that the Normal would be staying the same. Advanced would be the same as the Elite was with the exception that the Optional would now be required for completing the mission. The new Elite would be geared only for those that are lvl 60 with very good gear. They would have new objectives to complete on top of the already known ones. The problem is, the Advanced is HARDER than the old Elites. This is making the mission not completable. This is killing the queues and by extension, the R&D as the only way to get the VR mats is through the Advanced PvE queues.

 

[dvatreknerd314]

I've also noticed that, at least with some normal-level PvE's, that they're harder than they were before Delta Rising. The Cure Found, for example, never had spheres popping up everywhere like it does now.

 

[SciFiFan]

Yeah, things are so messed up right now that I have been actually spending more time on Minecraft demo and seriously considering buying the full game.

 

[Majestic]

Gecko did indeed to the right thing and let us know before hand. He said that the pets were using the wrong data. Their "metrics" were telling them that the combined damage output of the pets were often out performing the player ships. Well on that, if the player is set up like I am with my Atrox, this is intentional on the players part. I rely on my Elite Scorpions to do the bulk of the damage. The my carrier only having 6 total weapon slots and only two tac consoles, it will never be a offensive juggernaut. He also said that a lot of the pets at max level were having more shield and hull hit points than the ships that launched them. This has actually been confirmed by several players and if it is indeed the case, then I can understand.

I can understand that, however it goes back to not testing enough before releasing on a live server. It's always been part of Cryptic's problem, I bet you remember the Dominion missions when they first came out and how long it took them to fix those.

Their idea of making harder game play (which many players have asked for) was to boosts the npc hit points and damage output. Apparently, this also affected carrier pets after level 50. Kurr (my Atrox captain) is still 50 so I am not personally seeing the issue at hand.

I remember the last time they increased difficulty, instead of making new difficulty levels they just made the enemies a lot harder which really annoyed me. I remember where I could with Kevaas do a red alert with 1 other player and then it became impossible to do it with another 3 players. I stopped playing them after that.

Pets are usually too weak to be too much use. I would hope that when they fix this, they find a positive middle ground. The other speculation on the forums is that they are doing this now so they can introduce Epic level pets in the future. Many fear though that if they do, it will only be obtainable from their horrid R&D system.

They do need a middle ground they need to be useful but not totally a I-win weapon or totally useless. If they are doing it only to increase another level of pets that is really stupid as it defeats the purpose of fixing them in the first place.

Power Trays: There was a while back (don't know if you were playing then) that the power tray was bugged where when you beamed from the ground to space, your tray would be not set up the way you had it and powers were even missing. This was always fixed by re-slotting your Boffs so long as you had the "Lock Power Tray" option selected. This is no longer the case. Many have found a work around using the loadout selections but it seems to be unreliable.

I remember that it was so annoying that if I recall, I just stopped playing ground missions entirely. The other weekend I didn't get that bug when I played STO and I was doing some of the new missions.

Advanced Queues: Before Delta Rising, they told us they were adding another difficulty setting for the PvE queues. They told us that the Normal would be staying the same. Advanced would be the same as the Elite was with the exception that the Optional would now be required for completing the mission. The new Elite would be geared only for those that are lvl 60 with very good gear. They would have new objectives to complete on top of the already known ones. The problem is, the Advanced is HARDER than the old Elites. This is making the mission not completable. This is killing the queues and by extension, the R&D as the only way to get the VR mats is through the Advanced PvE queues.

Typical, bad game design. Elite gear that only people with elite gear to start with can get. That always bugged me about STO the amount of elitism and bragging gear and ships in the game. That along with the huge over priced items and bad quality control is what has driven me from the game several times. I come back only for a little bit until it annoys me again and I leave.

Seems it could be their undoing if they don't fix the level difficulty as once the queues are dead it could be hard to bring them back to life.

Note to self, log-on for winter event to get snow booties on mains.