Sean

Crafting is mind-numbingly boring. Farming in STO is far more time consuming than in most other MMOs and yields less results (and that's if the whole system isn't broken, where only one type of crafting material will spawn across the whole game).

Accolades are OK if you can do them alone. If you can't, it's damned near impossible to get other people smart enough to help you complete them.

Does anyone wonder WHY less than 25% of players have a Klingon character? Because it's tacked-on and forgotten. The Devs even said they don't focus as much on Klingon content because nobody plays them. Deep Space Encounters are empty most of the time, Exploration is repetitive, PvP queues are way too long unless you're already at max level, and there aren't enough Weekly Series missions to get you anywhere near max level.

Dailies for emblems so you don't have to pay real money to get items... That's a horrible excuse to do dailies. STO isn't a free-to-play game. There shouldn't be microtransactions that let you get ships that tip the balance of power when you're already paying a monthly fee. Pick one, Cryptic: Monthly fees or microtransactions, not both.

Diplomacy isn't even a grind, it's a random grind. You get so few Diplomacy missions guaranteed that you have to spam Exploration missions hoping that you'll get one that rewards DXP. Look forward to it taking months to hit Ambassador.

STFs and PvP are hit or miss. Get a good group and it's the most exhilarating thing in the game. Get a bad group and you'll want to cancel your account due to the absurd amount of idiocy and incompetence.

The Weekly Series and The Foundry are the only things that will keep this game afloat. Cryptic needs to focus all its efforts on polishing those two features and the game may survive. Publish as many Foundry missions as possible, even if they're not the best. Just keep giving people things to do or they'll leave the game in droves.

I can't believe the entire first page went by without anyone mentioning having a "grats!" macro. I have one off in the corner that I will hit whenever I see anyone achieve anything. It's fast and since it's all in lower case, most people don't realize it's a macro.

Similar situation for me. My guild had a streak of bad luck, with half a dozen members being hacked within a week. The guild bank was raided a few times when they got hold of officers' accounts. I figured the $7 or so was worth it, because if I got hacked and wiped, I would probably just quit the game.

I suggest a global Advice channel moderated by Blizzard chosen players. It can be what Trade chat SHOULD be, without the trolls being able to troll without consequences. Moderators would have the ability to "timeout" people, and repeated timeouts would automatically turn into a ban. This way people can have their questions taken seriously, and people can chat without fear of being ridiculed for not knowing everything under the sun.

I would take the "rofl easy" of Wrath over the frustratingly hard dungeons of Cata any day. Like you said, it's not the encounters that are really all that hard, it's the low average intelligence of the people you end up getting stuck with through the dungeon finder. Guildies aren't always available, and just because they're your guildie doesn't mean they're any better than a random player.

I've honestly quit doing Heroics until the next patch. It's just not worth my time anymore.

"Necessary evil" is the perfect description of PUGs. It's not always possible to run with guildies, so you have to PUG. It's like roulette, with 90% of the numbers being failgroups, and the last 10% some combination of "barely made it" groups and "actually smart" groups.

Blizz is giving people new things to buy with JP, namely crafting materials. The change to normal dungeons is a huge help for those of us who don't always have guildies online to run with. I still don't have all the JP I need for gear on my main because of how unreliable random Heroic groups are. I'll gladly grind out normals to get the JP and not have to worry as much about fail groups due to the easier difficulty of normals.

This. DPS are still used to Wrath where the healer can spam heal everyone back up to full without worrying about mana. Bring your own food, bandages, or if you're a hybrid DPS, help get everyone back up to full.

@ Iownwolf:

For someone as experienced as you at being a bear, I'm sure the transition to playing bear as it is now wasn't that big a deal. I'm talking about learning how to play bear from scratch. Just reading your rotation made me want to just jump on my DK or Paladin where my AoE tanking rotation is much simpler. Tanking is tough enough (and thankless enough) as it is, I don't want to struggle with the rotation, too.

@ Pyromelter:

I wasn't severely under the hit cap. Missing was not an issue. I'm talking purely about leveling and dailies. I am NOT familiar with how to play Enhancement, yet I burned through the same dailies much faster and easier as Enhancement than I did as Elemental. In previous expansions, Elemental felt like it was just as fast as Enhancement. Not anymore. Elemental just feels sluggish.

@ Sarah Nichol:

Of course I'm using Red INT gems in Red sockets, I'm just using haste + something else gems in other slots to get as much haste as I can and still hit my socket bonuses. Also, how does being Elemental have anything to do with being any better at CC? You don't get any extra CC being Elemental, you get all of it just by being a Shaman. Of course I'm using CC wherever possible in dungeons. I'm usually the only one people can rely on to use it properly.