Star Trek Online: Here We Go Again!

[NowhereMan]

If you made potential encounters interesting and/or rewarding enough that could work but that's going to be tricky. You don't want them to be so frequent that people choosing that are always being delayed and you don't want them to be so rewarding that they're preferable to the content the person was headed towards (then you'd end up with people just travelling back and forth until they trigger an encounter). On the other hand if it's significantly less rewarding and not hugely entertaining noone'll ever pick that option and you've wasted development time.

I love interesting travel but personally I don't think it works outside of virtual worlds and honestly I don't think it works in pure sandboxes either. Player created stuff generally has to be simple enough for people to do stuff with that it ends up appearing generic 99% of the time. I really am not going to care whether that village is still there or not unless it has some utility for me (shops and such) and thus I'd be just as happy having insta-travel to and from it. On different travel systems, Fallout 3's was good and UO's was another I liked, you've got to whomp on foot to somewhere but once you've made it you can make a recall point. Or you can buy recall points from others. In modern MMOs though I could see a few people making the trek to a place and then selling stones for it at a high price. The next lot of people buy those stones, then make their own and sell them slightly cheaper until a week or so after somewhere's been discovered everyone can afford a cheap recall stone there and there doesn't seem to be any point walking.

[Sir T]

There was a mod in Oblivion that worked the same way. Really improved the game imo.

[UnSub]

How about flipping a switch;  one way nothing bothers you as you travel to your destination.  Let's say to meet up with friends for a mission or to hurry to a place.  The other way can generate random encounters as you go.'

This would be potentially good for STO, how many times was the Enterprise diverted from it's intended mission in the TV shows?

This happens afaik - you can be travelling somewhere and a distress beacon will be picked up, asking if you want to investigate.

I thought it was a nice touch.

[Tannhauser]

Yes that's true.  But it's also true that while you go afk for another brew, an enemy contact will spawn, pull you in it and blow your ass up.  Once they put in death penalties (ugh) that shit will cause much 'lamentation of the women'.

[Khaldun]

I like the "walk and create a fast travel shortcut" solution if it were combined with some kind of dynamic content (mob and interest-point) generation system in a true virtual world. E.g., if every once in a while, walking again was a way to discover if something new was out there, or where there was a group of people who walked a lot to keep abreast of interesting changes in the terrain while most people just zoomed from point A to B.

[Njal]

I love interesting travel but personally I don't think it works outside of virtual worlds and honestly I don't think it works in pure sandboxes either. Player created stuff generally has to be simple enough for people to do stuff with that it ends up appearing generic 99% of the time. I really am not going to care whether that village is still there or not unless it has some utility for me (shops and such) and thus I'd be just as happy having insta-travel to and from it. On different travel systems, Fallout 3's was good and UO's was another I liked, you've got to whomp on foot to somewhere but once you've made it you can make a recall point. Or you can buy recall points from others. In modern MMOs though I could see a few people making the trek to a place and then selling stones for it at a high price. The next lot of people buy those stones, then make their own and sell them slightly cheaper until a week or so after somewhere's been discovered everyone can afford a cheap recall stone there and there doesn't seem to be any point walking.

I sold runes in UO. I sold them for a couple of years with a good return.  IMO what made it work was two main things. One not everyone was good enough at Magery to create them while it was easy to be good enough to use them. Two you couldn't just do it once and then create unlimited runes, you had to be at the spot to create a rune and it cost in both reagents and supplies. Even if you wanted to do a huge amount of runes you generally didn't have enough reagents to create more than 10 or so sets as the shops had limited supplies of reagents.

I would take an hour or two to do my rounds and create runes for all the dungeons and major places of interest and sell them in bag of various themed locations. I'd sell 5-10 sets a week. But the main point is that it was a non-trivial task on the part of the seller.

[Shatter]

Well looks like not too many people maintained subs after their free month.  After being 30th place consistently throughout Feb this is now 693rd place on Xfire.  In comparison WAR is 70th and AOC is 62.  I only posted this because that is a massive decline in active players.  Hell, Kung FU Panda(676th) has more people playing it.

http://www.xfire.com/games/sto/Star_Trek_Online/

[Stormwaltz]

I don't know how much faith you should put in those numbers. Xfire hasn't been recording my STO playtime for most of the last week. I played for at least five hours between Friday and Saturday night alone, but my stats say I've played less than an hour in the last week.

[DaZog]

And I'm sure I'm not only one who doesn't use X-Fire 

I'm just waiting for the Season One or whatever patch. That and school.

[Kageru]

X-fire is okay as long as you don't take it as anything more than a fuzzy indicator of trends. It is reasonable to say when, given a reasonably sized community, only 7 people are playing STO per day their retention figures are probably looking pretty cataclysmic. Which is pretty much in line with expectations.

Jack Emmert has apparently mentioned they have over 100k subscribers, but for a big IP and so soon after release that's not a great number.

[Reg]

100k is pathetic. UO probably still has 100k subscribers for crying out loud.

[Shatter]

Even if the current Xfire number is borked, the previous entry had STO at 89th place(from a consistent 30) not long after the first free month.  Again, thats worse then AOC and WAR numbers. 

[waylander]

Cryptic tries to fix booboos!

Yet another MMO company that launches some half ass product, and still thinks players will give them a year to fix their game.  Honestly, I think since AOC it has been clear that if Devs launch a largely incomplete feeling game that the players will drop them like a rock in under 6 months.  In fact AOC, Warhammer, Champions, STO, and who knows who else has seen their initial player retention drop like a stone within the first 90 days.

AOC had an incomplete middle game, stability issues, and a horrible sieging system

Warhammer had a bad PVE middle and end game, stability issues, and a broken sieging system

Champions was a poor man's City of Heroes, and not different enough for the super hero thing. Content was overly repetitive, and boring.

STO is lacking content, lacking regular or meaningful PVP, overly repetitive content, and doesn't encourage social interaction.

Look, players just don't put up with this crap anymore.  Launch a complete game, support PVP if you are going to put in in at all, and encourage social interaction without absolutely requiring it to advance. Anything less and any new game should roll in the $100 bills while they have them because 12 months later they'll be packing up their offices as the devs are laid off.

1 million, 900k, 800k, etc doesn't mean jack anymore at launch when the game is launched half ass and 6 months later it has nearly bled completely out.

[WindupAtheist]

I just wanna brag that I had this whole "huge box sales followed by subscriber crash" trend totally called years ago, prior to the latest generation of post-WoW flop releases. Not that it was really all that hard to see coming.

[Shatter]

That article confuses me.  

"It was also pointed out to me that players may not be communicating as much as in some other more traditional MMOs because the game is designed to be fast-paced and require a lot of interaction, meaning that players aren't devoting time away from their combat or other activities in order to initiate chat."

Then they come out with

"They recognize that they haven't included enough compelling non-combat activity for players to engage in and promise that they are planning on addressing this soon. "

Which is it?  People are too busy to socialize or there isnt enough content to make them socialize?  

[01101010]

That article confuses me.  

"It was also pointed out to me that players may not be communicating as much as in some other more traditional MMOs because the game is designed to be fast-paced and require a lot of interaction, meaning that players aren't devoting time away from their combat or other activities in order to initiate chat."

Then they come out with

"They recognize that they haven't included enough compelling non-combat activity for players to engage in and promise that they are planning on addressing this soon. "

Which is it?  People are too busy to socialize or there isnt enough content to make them socialize?  

Perhaps its the underlying "lack of players" in general. Players are communicating because they are not actually playing anymore.

[Malakili]

Which is it?  People are too busy to socialize or there isnt enough content to make them socialize?  

I don't think there is a contradiction.  When people are fighting and questing, they don't tend to socialize.  I think they are saying they need to add more non-combat  activities that encourage people to socialize with each other.  Though it isn't necessarily easy to get people to do this.

[caladein]

This thread has joined the Champions thread with "won't remember last read post" syndrome, at least for me.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I just wanna brag that I had this whole "huge box sales followed by subscriber crash" trend totally called years ago, prior to the latest generation of post-WoW flop releases. Not that it was really all that hard to see coming.

That was a good observation, but it was just an observation rather than a prediction.  The horrible releases of EQ2, AC2 and pretty much every thing else all the way back to AO and DAoC had already proven the point prior to WoW.  Release with a reasonably complete, balanced, and polished game or forget about money hats, the best you can hope for from then on is basic survival.  The original EQ may well have been the first and last MMO to release before it was done and still be a smashing success (for its time).

Sooner or later even survival will be iffy for titles released unfinished as more and more of the potential market gets burned and learns to wait-and-see before buying.  That's gonna really hurt folks like Cryptic who are, literally, banking on the early rush.  Or maybe I'm being too optimistic about the ability of the masses to learn not to burn themselves on the hot shiny thing.

[Reg]

This thread has joined the Champions thread with "won't remember last read post" syndrome, at least for me.

Yup I'm getting the same thing. Annoying.

[Ratman_tf]

I just wanna brag that I had this whole "huge box sales followed by subscriber crash" trend totally called years ago, prior to the latest generation of post-WoW flop releases. Not that it was really all that hard to see coming.

That was a good observation, but it was just an observation rather than a prediction.  The horrible releases of EQ2, AC2 and pretty much every thing else all the way back to AO and DAoC had already proven the point prior to WoW.  Release with a reasonably complete, balanced, and polished game or forget about money hats, the best you can hope for from then on is basic survival.  The original EQ may well have been the first and last MMO to release before it was done and still be a smashing success (for its time).

Sooner or later even survival will be iffy for titles released unfinished as more and more of the potential market gets burned and learns to wait-and-see before buying.  That's gonna really hurt folks like Cryptic who are, literally, banking on the early rush.  Or maybe I'm being too optimistic about the ability of the masses to learn not to burn themselves on the hot shiny thing.

We also have churn of the MMOG fan base. Some players get kids or their careers take off. And new players grow up and join the throng. For some people, STO was their first MMO. I bet a lot of them don't know jack about the state these games are released in, or the history of the developers.

[HaemishM]

This thread has joined the Champions thread with "won't remember last read post" syndrome, at least for me.

Yup I'm getting the same thing. Annoying.

Me too. I assumed it was just the CryptiStank.

[Stormwaltz]

STO has "well over 100K subscribers," quoth Emmert.

I read that here, though its taken from a podcast here.

[Malakili]

STO has "well over 100K subscribers," quoth Emmert.

I read that here, though its taken from a podcast here.

Oh boy!

[tmp]

STO has "well over 100K subscribers," quoth Emmert.

So, less than 150k (because doubt he'd resist bumping his number over such milestone) and definitely nowhere near 200k... pretty awful.

[Ghambit]

A few weeks after launch not a single entity really ever logged on from my fleet or friends list.  This even includes people with lifetime subs.

[Malakili]

A few weeks after launch not a single entity really ever logged on from my fleet or friends list.  This even includes people with lifetime subs.

One of the guys I met playing Champions was looking forward to this game in an insane way.  Hes a crazy trekkie, like full on, knows all the episodes by heart type.  He created a fleet for STO well over a year in advance of the game going live.  During beta he created a far more comprehensive list of ship configurations than I ever saw Cryptic do.  He bought the lifetime, he bought his girlfriend (also a trekkie) a lifetime.   He told me many times before release that he didn't even care if they game turned out to be crap, he was waiting for this game his whole life, and he'd play it forever.


He recently hit max rank, and told me the game is basically a failure, and he has recently gone back to playing other MMOs.  He does still log in every now and again because he does still officially run that fleet and is keeping things going for the people who play, to be fair.

If you can't get a lifetime star trek fan who sunk over $500 dollars into the game at launch (2 lifetimes + 2 boxes) to stay more than a month and a half...well, you've got major issues. 

[Ghambit]

Yah, I purposely recruited like 3 lifetimers into my fleet.  Once I saw them leave the scene, I no longer bothered to logon.  At that point you know you're wasting your time.

[Margalis]

Poor Roper is like the angel of death at this point.

[Shatter]

 Y'know, somehow "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it

[Malakili]

Y'know, somehow "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it

Heh.  I said as soon as the NDA lifted that the game was total crap, but I was drowned out by a chorus of "but the space combat is pretty fun" which to be fair, it isn't bad.  But that doesn't really make a whole MMO more than total crap :)

[Murgos]

Y'know, somehow "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it

Heh.  I said as soon as the NDA lifted that the game was total crap, but I was drowned out by a chorus of "but the space combat is pretty fun" which to be fair, it isn't bad.  But that doesn't really make a whole MMO more than total crap :)

Total crap is a pretty big piece of rhetoric for a game that a lot of people played to max level.

[Ollie]

Let's see now. It's an MMOG based on the Star Trek IP, yet the only meaningful way to interact with the game world is to blow stuff up. "Pedestrian" doesn't even begin to describe the design. 

[01101010]

In beta, I thought the space stuff was pretty awesome. It was the best single-player MMO I had played.

[Shatter]

Y'know, somehow "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it

Heh.  I said as soon as the NDA lifted that the game was total crap, but I was drowned out by a chorus of "but the space combat is pretty fun" which to be fair, it isn't bad.  But that doesn't really make a whole MMO more than total crap :)

Total crap is a pretty big piece of rhetoric for a game that a lot of people played to max level.

See I cant agree with you here.  I cannot accept that if a game is labeled as an MMO (and especially when it has a monthly sub) that the content should only last 4 weeks.  Console game...ok, MMO...no.  Sure one can argue that if you get 4 weeks out of a game you pay $50 for thats great, but IMO if that game is an MMO and thats all it offers, thats a failure.