Should I try out Star Trek Online?

[RogueIce]

There's no reason they can't raise the cap, though...

Of course not.

Offhand, I don't know where the CBA is on how high the rate should go. Obviously, they don't want to make it too easy since they want people to buy Zen. So in some sense higher=better but as to the point where they (potentially) lose people from the game I don't know.

Of course if they're the hard core never spend anything ever no matter what their loss may not mean as much. And they can quit their whining because Cryptic is a business and has no obligation, and certainly no desire, to give everything away free. But that's another argument.

Isn't a high dil-to-zen rate basically devaluing/inflating dilithium as a currency, though? Dil is still useful on the Exchange to some degree, at least, but I don't know how much people are using that versus just buying stuff with Zen...

It does, they just need more worthwhile dilithium sinks. Admiralty really pushed the rates because it's pretty easy for people to get dilithium now, and most of the major sinks are completed (Fleet Holdings) or likely don't keep much (upgrades, Reputation projects/gear) in turn.

If they released something like three, maybe even just two, Fleet Holdings that had, say, five tiers and didn't carry annoyingly high Doff requirements (which is the primary holdup for any but the largest and most active Fleets) but plenty of dilithium inputs, you'd see the market go down.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm.

Yeah, duty officers are the big obstacle there. Supply is relatively limited because you don't randomly get Common duty officers from many sources, except maybe by going well out of your way and running missions at the academy areas, I think.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

If they do decide to raise the cap, they will need to raise the daily refinement limit by a similar amount to keep the playerbase interested. As I can't see an economic reason for them to do that I suspect they'll just raise the cap.

[Purple]

Of course if they're the hard core never spend anything ever no matter what their loss may not mean as much.

I would say this is very wrong indeed. Just because that sort of person is not directly giving them money does not mean they are not earning money off that person. Any player, paying or not always provides the game with publicity and draws more players into the game. And those players might pay. And furthermore MMO's are all about social interaction and that's something every player, paying or not contributes to. If half of your in game friends are non payers and they leave how many of the other half do you think will want to stay vs the amount who'll see it as a sign that their community is crumbling and jump ship? I've played a lot of MMO's in my day and I can tell you crumbling is a big deal because it snowballs.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I guess it depends if you're the kind of player who tends to tell their friends about the game and promote it via word of mouth, or whether you prefer to keep your physical world separate from your virtual one. Most of the time in STO I only really interact with other players during PvE missions, I certainly don't talk to any outside of the game.

[Simon_Jester]

Having the user population decay affects PVE and fleets too, so it may cause problems.

[Lord Revan]

companies that don't care about the "free to play" players and care only about the paying ones quickly find themselves drifting to irrelevance as there's not enough asocial (or even anti-social) people willing to pay the company to keep up the servers.

While I speak don't speak with people I game with outside of the games I have quite a few in game "friends" (not really friends but people I like to play the game with).

[Elheru Aran]

Social interaction... I can't say it was ever a big deal for me in STO. It's quite possible to get through the whole game without any significant interaction with other players. Mind you, if you deliberately don't play PvP much or engage in the spontaneous PvE events like the Borg Attack or whatever, you might not have much incentive to max out your capabilities, but that's because if you're a reasonably decent player you can get through the single-player storyline without too much trouble without being overpoweringly maxed out.

Where the maxing out makes sense is in the after-game; the various mission zones like the Dyson Sphere, the Romulan zone, the Tholian zone, and all that.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

A sizable chunk of the playerbase sees PvP as so completely broken that it's pointless to even engage in it- short of completely overhauling the PvP experience, they could start with boosting the rewards you get for participating. As it stands it's just not worth it.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but PvE and fleets are still a thing even if direct PvP is not.

Also, the game has a fairly active user-created content ecosystem and that would suffer too.

[MrDakka]

How are the Foundry missions? I've only played for about a couple weeks, but is there any reason to play them?

[Elheru Aran]

How are the Foundry missions? I've only played for about a couple weeks, but is there any reason to play them?

Some are good. Some aren't. They're essentially sort of 'fanfiction' in the sense that they don't affect gameplay in any way, apart from dropped items. I do think (I could be wrong) that Cryptic watches what designers put into their Foundry missions in order to prevent people from giving themselves ridiculous items for their level. Things like that.

I've played a few. They're generally OK. Bit of a fun diversion once you're past the story missions. I tend to just focus on the story until I'm done with the missions, don't want to waste my time much.

EDIT to note:

'waste my time' may be a bit strong. If that kind of user-created stuff tickles your bollocks, then by all means knock yourself out. I just don't think you get any rank progression out of them, so they don't really benefit me in the long run; they're a diversion. A fun one on occasion.

[Simon_Jester]

The better ones are legitimately fun, and they often explore plot in ways that most of the official content hardly bothers with. And with (on average) a lot less mindless beat-em-up. Things that feel more like an episode of Star Trek, and less like an episode of a D&D campaign.

For instance, I encountered one that was a clever explanation of how the Pakleds came to be the way they are, and how they can appear to be such utter dolts and yet still be able to operate starships.

Some of them tend to drag out a lot, even when they've been broken up into multiple episodes.

[MrDakka]

Well with Risa lagging, I might as well give the higher rated ones a try. Any that you guys recommend?

[Simon_Jester]

Hm... can't you find another instance of Risa? It's not all the same instance, and if you find a less populated one maybe the lag problems will go down.

[Lord Revan]

How are the Foundry missions? I've only played for about a couple weeks, but is there any reason to play them?

as people have said for the Foundry missions are like any fanfiction really some are good and some aren't. With narative focused foundry mission you got few intresting micro stories though you might get some intresting unintended characteristics if the orginal writer didn't think the mission would be played play with characters with a different race or gender then orginal writer's character (for example there was this one mission that had a date as part of the main mission (as you can't have optional objectives in the foundry due limits of the editor) which ended with the character I played it with as openly lesbian or bi as the writer hadn't though one would play it with a female character (the "romance" dialoge was clearly written with a male character in mind) though mission overall was great and that was a minor issue really and was partly caused limits of the foundry editor (personally I play my characters as "has no intrest in romance atm" though they may be bi just that isn't such a big issue in that character's native culture to be publicly announced).

Well with Risa lagging, I might as well give the higher rated ones a try. Any that you guys recommend?

If you don't mind my shameless self promotion (and you're level 50+) you can try the one I've published "Price of peace" it doesn't have that many reviews but the ones I've gotten are generally positive.

[Elheru Aran]

Hm... can't you find another instance of Risa? It's not all the same instance, and if you find a less populated one maybe the lag problems will go down.

You mean like changing his server, or something like that? Far as I know you can only go to the one Risa, and when the event is in swing you pop in system and there's already a pretty big flotilla in the sky. But he could try figuring out the peak hours for his server and going at a different time, I suppose...

[Simon_Jester]

Huh. I know that for a lot of the social areas, there are multiple instances, and I could swear I've switched myself. But I forget how.

[Lord Revan]

Huh. I know that for a lot of the social areas, there are multiple instances, and I could swear I've switched myself. But I forget how.

thru the map screen there's a "change instance" button.

[Elheru Aran]

Huh. I know that for a lot of the social areas, there are multiple instances, and I could swear I've switched myself. But I forget how.

thru the map screen there's a "change instance" button.

Well gee go ahead and make us all look like idiots why don't you

[Lord Revan]

Huh. I know that for a lot of the social areas, there are multiple instances, and I could swear I've switched myself. But I forget how.

thru the map screen there's a "change instance" button.

Well gee go ahead and make us all look like idiots why don't you

Well the site motto does include "mockery of stupid people" in it

Though honestly I would have probably forgotten about that button if I didn't use it to be in the same instance with my fleet mates for fleet events and such.

[Simon_Jester]

In my defense, it has been over a year since I used that feature, and I only used it two or three times. It was one of the last things I learned to do on my old computer, which had excruciatingly bad graphics.

[MrDakka]

That's just it though. I've been cycling through to the least populated instances on Risa this past weekend and it didn't seem to help too much with the frequent disconnects and server not responding messages. So I've given up and am just popping in for a couple minutes to get my prize vouchers. Thinking of making a Klingon tac toon.

[mr friendly guy]

Anyone know if there is much benefit to getting your research skills to level 20. I swear after getting the bonuses from level 15, going higher only adds one percent extra success for critical bonuses when you try and make stuff. So far I have level 19 for the weapons skill - beams, projectiles and cannons and level 17 for everything else. Not sure if its worth going to level 20.

[Elheru Aran]

So I'm cracking out STO for the first time in... geez... probably 6, 8 months...

4 GB worth of patches.

*sigh*