⛵ (ID: 4c3cf0)Country code: blank.gif, country type: blank, valid: No.6415
File: 1723802847391.png (558.39 KB, 577x433, 909rxu.png)
Scopely, the company responsible for Star Trek Fleet Command (a.k.a. Trekville), has been fucking up majorly lately. For months, they've been following a general trend of quantity over quality, flooding the game with new shit piled on top of the existing grinds. not adding to what was already there but creating entirely new systems out of scratch, none of which are compatible with each other (i.e. you have to specifically dedicate time to each new one separately), and of course making the best elements pay-only. Each new addition means more time required to keep up with the other players. not to mention the ridiculous power creep as bonuses get piled on bonuses with no balancing whatsoever.
For some idiotic reason, in the latest themed event arc, Scopely decided to theme the arc on Galaxy Quest. in a Star Trek game. I really like Galaxy Quest, but that's just fucking stupid. Anyway, the community's already been complaining about all the new grinds and loops being added to the game, and they completely jumped the shark with this one.
Each server of 2000-5000 players is more or less the same. Due to the benefits of large alliances, typically the whales on each server congregate in the top 2-3 alliances and dictate server politics, and everyone else fights over the scraps below them. Well, what if instead of being a whale and just lording it over your own server, the whales had to compete with each other to see who can outwhale the other whales from other servers??? Enter: alliance tournements. Members of alliances individually commit to completing missions that give the alliance points that rank up the alliance in a sort of leader board. As the alliance ranks up, the alliance gets bonuses. So the super powerful alliances where the whales are, become even more powerful.
But here's the best/worst part... Not all of the missions give the same number of points. Easy ones that anyone can complete give ~100 points. Ones that anyone can complete but require a substantial amount of patience and resource hoarding might give 1000-2000. But the best missions, the ones that give 10,000 each, can only be completed by opening your wallet and buying packs for whatever specialty bullshit currency is required to complete it, usually for $100 each. So the whales have had enough. In a game where single technologies regularly cost $100, or $500+ to max out the tiers on a single technology out of the many hundreds, and where people have spent $10,000 plus just to be near the top on their own server, they've had enough. The fleecing is just too much. The obvious money grab is making many of the whales and high level players want to quit entirely since the new system is designed to pit the whales against each other.
And the icing on the cake is that they didn't even bother fully testing this new system before rolling it out. The buggy bullshit barely behaves itself. Literally every aspect of it is flawed or broken in some way. People regularly complete their missions, dumping their resources including resources they've spent real money on, and then don't even get credit for it. The bugs have been horrendous in this rollout. All in service of a naked money grab. Scopely's been suppressing posts on Discord critical of this shit that absolutely no one wanted. And many people including high level people who have spent thousands on the game are openly talking of leaving.