I feel like I'm paying a sub for a single player game!

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Heya

I'm quite new to STO, am Captain rank and have done lots of missions, patrols, etc but 95% of the time I'm soloing, and when I do get into a group the other person usually says nothing, doesnt respond to anything and leaves group as soon as the mission is done.

So why am I paying a subscription for a MMO? I've tried getting people to do the Crystaline Entity mission and the DS9 missions, but can only ever find 1 or maybe 2 people who are new too, but thats it despite sitting there for 30 mins asking in chat for people. This whole game just feels like a single player game so far tbh. The other ships flying around the map might as well all be npc's as far as I'm concerned as none of them seem to speak much if at all.

Is it better at higher ranks? Is there alot of fleet or group action for pve or pvp later on? Do people actually speak in this game? :confused: Atleast the people on the forums seems decent :P

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The team-required missions are STFs at Admiral rank, so more opportunities do appear. I would really suggest finding a fleet so you constantly have people to talk to and hang out with while playing the game. There are a good selection of quality fleets, you just need to do a quick search or talk with recruiters who pop up now and then.

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What you're paying for is the right to play a Star Trek game, with other people if you choose to. You're not paying for the right to always play with other people. You should join a friendly fleet if you want more player interaction; and good fleets have STF and Fleet Action get togethers. People aren't going to pug things they don't want to pug just because the game is an MMO, though. And CE is probably the worst FA in the game and most people have little desire to do that grindfest.

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Join a fleet, and get on vent, it makes the game a lot more enjoyable.

The problem is that the game was designed to be very accessible to casual players, which means pretty much anyone can solo the missions, so people don't have to group. This clearly has pros and cons. But missions are a lot more fun with a friend or two, specially on elite where they offer some modicum of challenge, so I do suggest looking into a fleet :)

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Heya

I'm quite new to STO, am Captain rank and have done lots of missions, patrols, etc but 95% of the time I'm soloing, and when I do get into a group the other person usually says nothing, doesnt respond to anything and leaves group as soon as the mission is done.

So why am I paying a subscription for a MMO? I've tried getting people to do the Crystaline Entity mission and the DS9 missions, but can only ever find 1 or maybe 2 people who are new too, but thats it despite sitting there for 30 mins asking in chat for people. This whole game just feels like a single player game so far tbh. The other ships flying around the map might as well all be npc's as far as I'm concerned as none of them seem to speak much if at all.

Is it better at higher ranks? Is there alot of fleet or group action for pve or pvp later on? Do people actually speak in this game? :confused: Atleast the people on the forums seems decent :P

Did you spend any time reading the gaming sites for their first and revised impressions on the game, and/or the reviews of past and present players on such sites as Amazon?

The game is understood to be and commonly refered to as a Single Player MMO. It's essentially a single player game with some elements of a MMO atmosphere, mostly these areas are in the very poorly functional social areas. Or as another poster stated the STF's at end game.

Don't rush through your missions however, the STFs are for the most part bugged and nearly impossible to beat and once you reach them, it's all you have left.

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Don't rush through your missions however, the STFs are for the most part bugged and nearly impossible to beat and once you reach them, it's all you have left.

Incorrect. My and my fleetmates have weekly runs, occasionally more than once a week, of Infected and Cure. We ever try to beat previous times, so our fastest Infected run was somewhere around 1 hour. They can be easy, you just need to work and communicate with people.

The only 'broken' one is Terradome, which can be beaten if you know the glitches and work with and around them.

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Badfishy,

I too know exactly what you are talking about and it is horribly irritating.

There is absolutely no reason for someone not return a "hello". I can understand one person, but when you are in a Fleet action with a half a dozen others... someone has to see their chat box.

It's annoying at how rude folks can be when they do speak, but moreso when they don't.

Like what was mentioned above... finding a fleet is a good idea.

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Don't rush through your missions however, the STFs are for the most part bugged and nearly impossible to beat and once you reach them, it's all you have left.

Impossible to beat? Hardly. Ok, yes it is impossible to beat by yourself, I'll grant you that. But in a team that knows what they are doing, it can be beaten routinely. I've "beaten" Infected about 50 times, Cure 15 times, Khitomer ~10 times. Most of these are done with fleet mates, so yeah join a fleet like the other posters have said.

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Join a Fleet! We run Infected, Cure, and the opening of Terradome daily, sometime in multiple groups, and KA every few days.

Lots of fun with the teamwork, although more emblems would be nice, mostly for KA.

Solid infected run should be under an hour, solid Cure just over, solid KA, about 2.5

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You will find people there. :D

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I know what you mean too. I've only had the game 4 days, and while I've been lucky enought to have a few battles with people who actually talk, they usually don't. I am only a liuetenant, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. And the one time I met an non-NPC Klingon, he wouldn't fight me! I shot him with my phaser rifle, but he mainly ignored it. He killed me once, but it wasn't a real battle.

I don't want to sound negative, but I feel that in a Role Playing Game, people should play the roles of their characters. Some only seem interested in completing their missions.

Why don't we start team: Let's do more than solo missions! Who's with me? Anyone? ;)

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Incorrect. My and my fleetmates have weekly runs, occasionally more than once a week, of Infected and Cure. We ever try to beat previous times, so our fastest Infected run was somewhere around 1 hour. They can be easy, you just need to work and communicate with people.

The only 'broken' one is Terradome, which can be beaten if you know the glitches and work with and around them.

Infected I've gotten through about a dozen or so times. It's fairly simple. The Cure... furthest ever, 3rd gate. Once this past week a team I was on spent 3 hours just trying to lower the first gate. However, today, Team I was on did it first try.

Terradome, engineer bug has prevented getting past the engineers. The bug is, even if you protect all the engineers, you get a fail notice and have to leave. I hear the final boss is also bugged.

They are still all that's left outside of dailies, and some of them are buggy, even infected has issues at times, particularly with the consoles in the last room not showing the input option.

As for the work arounds for Terradome, SHARE:)

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Hehehe......that a funny part talking about feeling lonely in this game.
I really never had that problem. I understand if someone doesn't want to talk, so I leave him alone, do my mission and go my own way....but if someone is talkative, I put him on my friends list and play again with that person in future.

The other thing may be that a lot of people here are not at good terms with speaking English language.
Hehehe, even mine native language is not English, but I manage somehow as you can see ;)

But the best thing is to find a fleet. A good one, like others have said before me.
If you need any help on a mission, and a good talk, find me in the game, name is Mitria@Mitria, and I'll help if I can for a little bit :)
I mostly play with my fleet mates, but not always and all the time! :)

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Why they instance ESD is beyond me. This game wasn't thought-out very well.

Oh, and just another chance to get an Open PvP request in.

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Beyond the game there are some great communities out there.

A place like Subspace Radio (www.subspace-radio.net) has a really good group of players that hang out and there's almost a nightly party going on in the social areas or on someone's ship. There's also an in-game chat channel and you can almost always find someone to group up with to do missions, PvP, STFs, etc.

Just wanna point out I'm not advertising here, just illustrating that there's a great community out there.

See you out there!

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The game doesn't really encourage grouping very well. It's actually a lot more fun with a group of people who know what they are doing, but most people will just solo their way through the whole thing. Then they try to do Infected and have never grouped before. :eek:

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Thanks for the info, and I may well look into another fleet then. I am in a fleet, but its pretty dead and quiet, so maybe time to look for a new one ;)

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Infected I've gotten through about a dozen or so times. It's fairly simple. The Cure... furthest ever, 3rd gate. Once this past week a team I was on spent 3 hours just trying to lower the first gate. However, today, Team I was on did it first try.

Terradome, engineer bug has prevented getting past the engineers. The bug is, even if you protect all the engineers, you get a fail notice and have to leave. I hear the final boss is also bugged.

They are still all that's left outside of dailies, and some of them are buggy, even infected has issues at times, particularly with the consoles in the last room not showing the input option.

As for the work arounds for Terradome, SHARE:)

Protecting the engineers can work, you just need to protect them. :p Just don't mis-scan anyone earlier, otherwise you'll have extra spawns making it impossible. Recruits will not respawn but officers and higher do, so you can always kite if neccesary.

The final boss room is impossible to finish once and done. You go in and start destroying the spawn tubes and other enviromental objects until it fails and you are reset outside the door. The destroyed pieces never respawn, so you just keep re-doing this until its just real enemies on the inside.

Next time you go in, melee all the Sulus so that one says UHGH or something, that's the real one. Melee him into a corner and have your lowest DPS member keep him there. Have the rest of the team melee the fake sulus into the pit while killing any other Undine. The boss has a mega-instant death attack, so you need to be fast. Take him out and the sky will fall with small recruits, nothing you can't handle. Just don't let the real sulu die or it might glitch and you may need to re-enter and start over.

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humm... I'll have to check that out too. after I restart my game. I made some mistakes in learning the gameplay and missed my chance to get a second ship:(

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The game doesn't really encourage grouping very well.

I would go further and say that STO actually prevents you from grouping effectively. I know many won't agree, but not being able to share missions (i.e. exploration, many story missions, dailies, level restricted, private fleet instances, team limit of 5) and the lackluster state on many of the social features (no chat directory, no /friends paging, fleet management bugs) works against even the most dedicated social players.

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I would go further and say that STO actually prevents you from grouping effectively. I know many won't agree, but not being able to share missions (i.e. exploration, many story missions, dailies, level restricted, private fleet instances, team limit of 5) and the lackluster state on many of the social features (no chat directory, no /friends paging, fleet management bugs) works against even the most dedicated social players.


I share all those with a friend, in fact the sidekick feature helps.

Tell to my friend or we create a channel for friends. 5 member teams, pretty standard really. Directory? Fleet tools? I'm still not sure what you'd want that a "Fleet website" wouldn't do, or even a form of vent/chat (that seems to be a major "we have" or require, selling point).

This game has a auto team set as default, how can it discourage team play?

Placing a NEED to team system like raids and STF's isn't really the answer, it's more a excuse for fleets/teams. Can't do a STF? Join a Fleet! As opposed to group for real social reasons (IE community) as opposed to a necessity. Removing all temptation or "sin", certainly does not show how well you resist it.

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This game has a auto team set as default, how can it discourage team play?


Because absolutely every mission besides the STFs is easily soloable, there is no need to ever group up. When you group up the mission scales up, which is good because otherwise it would be painfully easy, but it means that there's no real advantage to teaming up. There literally are no group missions at all until you hit the STFs.

Also, all of the missions are instanced so you never will run into someone doing it. You may be auto teamed but only if you get there are exactly the right time.

If missions had optional objectives that required 2 or 3 people to be grouped then that might encourage teamwork. If there were some missions, at least one every 5 levels, that required grouping, that would encourage teamwork.

The game has none of that, so people will just solo it, and do. I think it's great that the game can be soloed, but there has to be some carrot to get people to group or they simply won't do it.

Overall I think the game is OK as it is, but it really is more fun playing in a group, so it's kind of a shame that it happens only rarely.

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I would go further and say that STO actually prevents you from grouping effectively. I know many won't agree, but not being able to share missions (i.e. exploration, many story missions, dailies, level restricted, private fleet instances, team limit of 5) and the lackluster state on many of the social features (no chat directory, no /friends paging, fleet management bugs) works against even the most dedicated social players.

I agree the grouping interface and quest sharing is terrible.

I have often completed things with no idea how or why it got done

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I know what you mean too. I've only had the game 4 days, and while I've been lucky enought to have a few battles with people who actually talk, they usually don't. I am only a liuetenant, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. And the one time I met an non-NPC Klingon, he wouldn't fight me! I shot him with my phaser rifle, but he mainly ignored it. He killed me once, but it wasn't a real battle.

I don't want to sound negative, but I feel that in a Role Playing Game, people should play the roles of their characters. Some only seem interested in completing their missions.

Why don't we start team: Let's do more than solo missions! Who's with me? Anyone? ;)

Ah, yes, get into character. I'm 30. This is a video game. Not a escape from reality. I usually log on, play a mission, and log off. Then again if I was into the role playing thing I would join a fleet, and have my wife dress up in a maid outfit and ... oh wait wrong kind of role playing...:)

Personally, I hate how "teammates" rush in when someone opens fire on group of ships and sweep in to take points away and drops. If I'm having trouble I'll call on a teammate for help.

Those of you feeling lonely, I suggest joining a fleet.

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Heya

I'm quite new to STO, am Captain rank and have done lots of missions, patrols, etc but 95% of the time I'm soloing, and when I do get into a group the other person usually says nothing, doesnt respond to anything and leaves group as soon as the mission is done.

So why am I paying a subscription for a MMO? I've tried getting people to do the Crystaline Entity mission and the DS9 missions, but can only ever find 1 or maybe 2 people who are new too, but thats it despite sitting there for 30 mins asking in chat for people. This whole game just feels like a single player game so far tbh. The other ships flying around the map might as well all be npc's as far as I'm concerned as none of them seem to speak much if at all.

Is it better at higher ranks? Is there alot of fleet or group action for pve or pvp later on? Do people actually speak in this game? :confused: Atleast the people on the forums seems decent :P

Hi

As someone willing to pay a sub (or buy a lifetime sub as i did) for a MMO that I play mostly solo, I'll give you my point of view on the subject.

i see three main problems with grouping, in this and other MMO's a lot.

1 - Pick Up Groups.. PuGs are often awful, the communication is bad, and in a game without 100% defined roles such as this it all too often devolves into everyone rushing to do the same thing. Because of this large groups of people, such as myself, chose to actively avoid PuG playing. speaking personally I pay to play a game because I want to enjoy it, relax and have some fun. being rushed or heavily delayed on someone else's timetable lowers that enjoyment and often people can become rude and unpleasant when frustrated like this, again making the experience less fun overall.

2 - /zone is often not used outside of major hubs and starting areas, and a lot of people just have it turned off. if you're looking for a team using it you're not actually reaching a large amount of people. there are other ways to locate interested players however and i'll get on to that later.

3 - Complexity, the game is fairly action packed and requires a lot of interaction. its hard to type out a message while steering a ship and firing weapons and activating Boff abilities etc.. a little less so on the ground but that too can become just as hectic. As everyone tends to rush to the next objective (see point 1) people rarely stop to talk if they are teamed.


I would make the following suggestions if you'd like to experience more team-orientated playing and levelling, I cant promise they'll solve all the problems you've encountered but they should go some way to offset them.

Fleet - joining an active fleet, one with active players and a reasonable sized roster, will help, even if its just social interaction while playing solo its a large help, and many run activities and events as well which will increase your interactivity.

Channel - My sig contains a link to threads about the KDFAssistance channel, there's a similar one for the federation I'm told, these are open, free to join "custom channels" created for people to discuss things with and help other players in the game. while not always "chatty" I often see teams forming up in them and events occasionally get organised as well.

Assist - help people out, dont exclude your /zone chat and keep an eye out for people asking for help, if you can then offer it. its a good way to make friends in game and some, if not most, will return the favour if they can. sure you may end up running the same mission a ton of times but in the end, if its social interaction you're looking for, building up a network of people you know in game is the best way to do it, and being helpful is a great way to make such a network.

Best of luck to you, I hope you're able to find the social side of STO you're looking for and that it helps you stick around to enjoy everything it has to offer. :D

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Well in some MMOs I have played that require teaming you will find a huge number of people who can be elitist about who they group with. ( EQ 1 I'm looking at you) The learning curve is huge and to get a rep of "not being able to play your class" would be the kiss of death for the advancement of your character.

I know so many people who are happy that they can solo most content in this game. And that they don't like PvP in any game is for that same reason- the requirement for a minimum level of skill coupled with the fact that you will be judged by that level of skill you bring to a team.

And that's OK. It is the way THEY like to play the game. I don't understand it sometimes But I don't want force my play style on them.

I have to say that Cryptic's approach is a happy medium allowing all types of player's to enjoy playing a game in a star trek universe. You can find teams but you will have to work at it.

And most teaming that I seen in this game are the TF's and PvP play.

1 - Pick Up Groups.. PuGs are often awful, the communication is bad, and in a game without 100% defined roles such as this it all too often devolves into everyone rushing to do the same thing. Because of this large groups of people, such as myself, chose to actively avoid PuG playing. speaking personally I pay to play a game because I want to enjoy it, relax and have some fun. being rushed or heavily delayed on someone else's timetable lowers that enjoyment and often people can become rude and unpleasant when frustrated like this, again making the experience less fun overall.

2 - /zone is often not used outside of major hubs and starting areas, and a lot of people just have it turned off. if you're looking for a team using it you're not actually reaching a large amount of people. there are other ways to locate interested players however and i'll get on to that later.

3 - Complexity, the game is fairly action packed and requires a lot of interaction. its hard to type out a message while steering a ship and firing weapons and activating Boff abilities etc.. a little less so on the ground but that too can become just as hectic. As everyone tends to rush to the next objective (see point 1) people rarely stop to talk if they are teamed.

And you sir ARE CORRECT!

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Channel - My sig contains a link to threads about the KDFAssistance channel, there's a similar one for the federation I'm told, these are open, free to join "custom channels" created for people to discuss things with and help other players in the game. while not always "chatty" I often see teams forming up in them and events occasionally get organised as well.


The Starfleet channel is named SFCassistance (see my sig). I didn't create it, but I'm always available in both channels when I'm in-game. Most of my characters also have my LFT status set as "Got questions? I can help!".

I've never noted more than 4 people in the SFC channel when I've checked. The KDFassistance channel regularly has 20+ players lurking in the channel (123+ registered). I recently used it to group up for a KDF run of Infected which was the first time I had found enough KDF players to run a pickup STF. We completed it successfully too!

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Go to social, click fleets and do a full search on fleets.

When you click on a fleet you can view currently logged in users. Find a fleet with 10 or more logged in, like my fleet. 10 players on at anytime, 30 in evening at weekends and well over that when new things happen.

My fleet like others as mentioned run daily STF missions and they are fun. Challenging and require team work.