Your point seems to be that there should be some type of tutorial to teach people how to pug the STFs. My reply to that is that people have 45+ levels to PUG and establish relationships before they get to the SFTS. All those earlier levels are your tutorial.

But they aren't taught to want to do it. Teaming is not a terribly organic part of gameplay until you run into that brick wall where you're expected to be good at it.

I'm not against challenging STFs but there needs to be some kind of precursor to get people in the mindset of organized grouping or people won't do it.

Besides, who even talks in a PuG at Lt. 7 if they do wind up in one?

I don't disagree with the idea that Cryptic needs to find ways to get people to team throughout the game. I simply disagree with the idea that it can be done at the end of the game. After 45+ levels of solo play a 15 minute PUG tutorial before attempting the hardest content in the game will accomplish nothing. People need to be taught the benefits of group play long before they get to an STF. There needs to be must-team objectives throughout the game to teach people the benefits of teaming. By the time they get to the STFs people are to hardened into the solo play mode.

Which is why removing system instancing would be the better overall path. When you actually see someone else doing a mission you actually feel like teaming up to do it faster/easier/to help out. Not to mention the fact that this is one of the ways you make friends and join guilds in other MMOs

I've had no problems with the game auto-teaming me in instances. It's up to me whether I wish to talk and establish relationships with those people once I'm auto-teamed with them.

An open world isn't going to make someone more social then they want to be and missions you can easily do by yourself aren't going to teach you how to do them as a team.

THAT is precisely what I'm talking about.

Give me a chance to get that loot another way that isn't prejudicial of my lifestyle and I would have no complaint.

If we referral people can't have unbeatable exclusive ships, then people fortunate enough to have social groups should not have loot the rest of us can't.

Put the Borg stuff out there to craft as well and i'll be happy.

Otherwise I'll have tp PUG and cryptic will be hypocrites for nerfing the Galaxy X's and not making STF loot available to everyone.

full post here:
Yes STO has the auto team function, but that does not mean that you always get put in a team, or that you even talk to the person. You get auto put into a team. With the open world you have to msg the person and actually talk to them. And thats the first step in meeting people you actually want to play with and team up with, which can later lead to good STF teams.

Another helpful is adding LFG system, but that wont guarantee you join a group that is good. They still need to adjust STFs so that the current difficulty is the highest, and then you can try finding groups for a lower difficulty if you're doing it with random people that dont usually work together.

Which is why I think there should be at least one easy STF before the hard ones start, maybe even one per rank. That's what I mean by "tutorial", the same way SB27 is a tutorial for Fleet Actions when compared with, say, Crystalline Entity.

Raids in every MMO are designed for multiple people. Loners in all of the 300+ MMOs are just going to have to learn to accept that.

whilst i agree, thats not a good comparison.

starbase 24 is in no way a tutorial for CE. none of the fleet actions are.

CE is much like the task forces. there is nothing in the game to prepare you for it.