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Ship Mastery account wide {Devs please explain?}

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  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    Exactly, They actually are discouraging long time players from being interested in new ships...
  • tilartatilarta Member Posts: 1,798 Arc User
    Exactly.
    Which is why they should re-examine this issue, because it may cause a drop in the amount of purchased ships from the C-Store.

    If I can't be bothered levelling up a free ship trait due to the per character limitation, then by logical extension, I won't want to buy a paid ship with the same problem.

    Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
    Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad :'(
  • dracounguisdracounguis Member Posts: 5,358 Arc User
    edited July 2018
    Now if the "T6 Mastery" was to unlock the Mastery for the account instead of unlocking the ship then I'd have no problem sinking an extra 100k XP into Mastery on a ship.

    It is silly to take my money for a ship and then make me jump through an extra 100k XP hoop to allow my other toons to use a ship.

    Again I'll say... I have X minutes to play each day. Just because Cryptic makes MORE grind doesn't make me magically have more time to play! It just slows down my progress, a sense of accomplishment, and any desire to put more money into a game that makes DOING things excessively hard or long. I've essentially abandoned my alts at this point. Which means any item or ship I may have wanted for a specific toons means I now have no reason to purchase it. So Cryptic is 'forcing' me to give them less money. GJ.
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    I have to agree with Dracounguis. Which is why I phrased this forum as a question to the DEVs... It doesn't make sense on their part.
    As players mature, and become more steady players they are less likely to spend money. With the new Gamma pack I and lifelong subscription I got 5 new character slots. all I saw when I looked at them, was time I didn't have to level their ships.
    I have a total of 1 of my 8 toons (+5 character slots) who have done the main story line. Dracounguis got it perfect. There are only so many hours in the day and I have only so many to give to Sto. I won't spend money if I am spending my time grinding.
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    Even with the new sale for one of my favorite ships. The excelsior refitted. I can't bring my self to spend money on a ship that would be more work for all my characters.
    There has to be some reason this issue hasn't even been addressed as an issue yet.
    It honestly is starting to interfere with the process of why I would work to do the Risa special event... Logging in everyday for a month to get enough resources for a ship whose mastery is going to take me weeks to finish for everyone.
    The system is already set up with the arrival of the new Dominion ships.. A 6th unlock for your mastery for ALL characters to have access to the ship.. Why not make it access to that mastery?


    Remember to comment if you agree or disagree, See if we can get someone to notice this major issue
  • tilartatilarta Member Posts: 1,798 Arc User
    I looked at the unlockable Trait for the T6 Excelsior and thought it would be useful for my Aceton Beam builds.
    But as always, I didn't like the idea of unlocking it for multiple characters, so decided not to purchase the ship.

    Which is always going to be my reaction from now on, useful trait, not going to purchase the item because it isn't account wide.
    So Cryptic will always be missing out on making sales to me for this reason.

    Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
    Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad :'(
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    Here is my inquiry, I just want to know if they plan to change this... or if they plan to leave it the same.
    I too found myself abandoning the idea of working on my alts, because I am hoping they are going to change the ship mastery to be account wide.
    But I want to know if they unequivocally don't want to make ship mastery account wide. Then I can go forward from there.
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    I started doing missions for the day yesterday, Gathering set items for one of my 2 out of 8 toons who had completed ships. Started realizing that certain sets would go great with other builds I had planned, ended up abandoning the idea completly because the other builds I had planned would required a 80+ worth of work just to get the traits I needed to mesh well with the equipment that would take a few hours to get.
    I ended up playing a different online game for a few hours just because I THOUGHT about the amount of **work** that was involved with trying to optimize and alt toon.
    How many toons have people abandoned because of the grind aspect?

    Make sure to leave a message even if it's just an 'agree' or 'disagree' as it is the only way we can get change in a game we all love.
  • flyingshoeboxflyingshoebox Member Posts: 123 Arc User
    This and having to get specialization point over and over on alts have been why I’ve not been able to get back into the game for a while now. I’ve had fun playing for years, but I’ve just never been able to stick to one character for very long. Over time its just gotten worse with more ships I’d purchased that I couldn’t stand having to unlock for the 3-4th time or having to unlock a specialization tree for the 5th time. I liked both ideas for the most part but the way they are implemented is just not friendly to playing a bunch of alts.
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    So warp shadows is now a box that can be reclaimed on additional characters who are not romulan.......
    The system is already set up to let us reclaim traits from other ships. So what's the hold up from ARC?
    THEY HAVE THE POWER!
  • dracounguisdracounguis Member Posts: 5,358 Arc User
    edited August 2018
    State of my toons since ViL came out.

    New Jemmy toon got T6 Mastery on the Jemmy ships. Now he sits in the Jemmy carrier never bothering to get ANY masteries of other ships; working on those last 2 Gamma recruit unlocks that just require doffing and a few more spec points. EXCITING!

    Other alts are back in their main ships w/ preferred weapon types, no more mastery grinds for them even though there are plenty of them out there to get.

    Main toon grinded out the jemmy ship masteries. Don't know if I'll ever use them over the ones I have now... so why'd I do it? :/

    Looking at the new Recon Destroyers... since I'm not grinding masteries anymore the question isn't
    "Do any of my alts need/want this ship?"
    it's
    "Does my main toon need/want this ship?"
    And since I finally broke down and spent over a billion EC for a T6 Connie... I'm gonna drive it till STO shuts down to get my EC's worth! :D

    So no, Cryptic just lost 1 sale of these ships and probably a few more since buying a ship for alts has been made infeasible due to the grind it takes to do anything. I mean on average daily stuff you 'have to do' is:
    1. Doffing
    2. Admiralty
    3. maybe post things on the Exchange (huge time consuming pain since the Exchange functionality sucks!)
    4. Do Borg RA for Ship Mastery and daily bonus Mark of your choice
    5. Do something for Gamma Marks w/ daily bonus (if you still need some)
    6. Do whatever Special Event is active. (and there is always something active)

    And that's per toon. Is it any wonder why I've abandoned my alts? If I did all that on each of my toons, it would be around 5-6hrs each day. Notice that nowhere in the list did it say "have fun"? Who's got time for that!? :D

    So having account wide Mastery unlock would be nice, but isn't going to be the cure-all for STO's growing grind-fest.
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    Been a while since I mentioned it here, but with age of discovery and all the new ships coming out almost off the assembly line. We still haven't seen the ship mastery reclaim tab get any additions. Anyone else notice that?
  • tilartatilarta Member Posts: 1,798 Arc User
    @valorim
    I hadn't thought to check, now that you mention it.
    But it is an interesting point and a valid one.

    My opinion still hasn't changed, I don't mind mastering one ship, even a T6 if it means I'll only do it once for an account wide Trait unlock.
    But for all 7 of my primary characters, it's still too much work.

    Not that I expect this policy to be ever changed, no matter how much the playerbase requests it.
    It's because mmos are built on the principle of players must spend as much time ingame as possible and anything that gets them to do this is how they make the game.
    Even if it's just something as repetively dull as grinding the same queues for hours on end and counting ship mastery XP, then moving to the next character to repeat the experience.

    Me personally, everytime a new ship trait is announced, if it's one that suits me, I think, yes, that would be nice to have.
    But my next thought is, 7xT5, not worth the time wasted.

    Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
    Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad :'(
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    It seems to me still that it is counter productive to us being ingame to have ship mastery grind. Arc has given us WAY more content then is ever needed to make sure I spend my life playing Sto. But I actively haven't played in over a week just cause Mastery grinding seems to daunting, and I don't see a reason to play new content with a ship I haven't finished building.

    To much water drowns your plants.
    To much grind, kills the will to play.
  • tilartatilarta Member Posts: 1,798 Arc User
    @valorim
    You'd be surprised by what the Champions Online players had to say when I mentioned that grinding kills the will to play their game.
    They said a good mmo involves weeks and months of grinding because it gives a sense of achievement when they finally get what they wanted.
    One player even insisted we were legally obligated to grind in Champions Online because the Terms of Service states we must do it and therefore, we can't choose not to grind.

    To be candid, I think the concept that they are dealing with people who may not want to spend every waking minute playing just one game doesn't occur to those who design/promote the grind system to benefit their metrics.
    You want to keep someone ingame longer, give them better reasons then counting ship XP per character.

    I mean, it's not as if we've got a computer program running the levelling of that ship for us and we can be offline while it does so.
    We have to sit there and watch/play every second of that process and as I keep mentioning, by the 4th character, it's tedious, by number 7, I'm screaming in my mind "just let me go away!"

    Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
    Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad :'(
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    @tilarta
    I think we are definitely on the same page. I'm actually not against or deterred much by grind... They want us to play a mission 3 times over, to get the set of gear.. sure. Or they want us to do queued missions for fleet marks so I can finally buy that console for my ship. I'm on it.
    Hell, they want me to grind out doing the same stupid race over and over to get a Christmas ship. GOT ME.

    But you got it absolutely right with the counting XP per character.
    Ship mastery is ever mounting, never ending.... Once your players realized that they arn't achieving anything but more work for themselves, it kills the achievement at the end of the grind.
    I have 8 characters, probably 50+ ships. And if I managed to grind over the next year, every one of those mastery PER character out... The moment I make a new character, or buy a new ship, or complete a Christmas event.. I have added to that grind.

    AND of course, arc has one of the hallmarks of a fantastic game, MORE CONTENT. Jem'hadar are a thing.. NEW character.. more mastery grind. Cardassian player RACE, sweet! new character... more mastery. A brand new age of discovery ship!! more mastery... A new set of builds available that change what ships I never wanted to buy but now do... MORE MASTERY.

    I will gladly conquer a mountain for the satisfaction of the reward that comes. But I can only walk up the down escalator so long before I'm tired of walking
  • tilartatilarta Member Posts: 1,798 Arc User
    @valorim
    I do all of those things, because they're quickish and only need to be done once a day for the purple mark box/event token/event currency.

    Everytime I make a new character now, this is the first thing I think of:
    A80B755F525E956E946B617EAC9D3BA143A71905
    That I have to go through three ships worth of xp just so I can finally use the ship that character was intended to have!
    I don't even like escorts, so having to level up two of them is frustrating for me personally.

    Then there is the additional grinds as well.

    Reputation:
    Omega/Gamma/Dyson: T5.
    Nukara: T3.
    Temporal: T2.
    Diplomacy: T5.

    That's why I won't make characters now unless there is something special or new about that concept that interests me.
    Otherwise it's just personally frustrating to do what I've already done seven times before.

    Honest opinion time, are we the only ones still invested in this issue?
    It looks like we're the main posters in this topic.


    Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
    Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad :'(
  • borg0vermindborg0vermind Member Posts: 498 Arc User
    Lockbox unpacked ships should be all account-wide. Spending a few hundred mil for a ship is one thing, doing that a few more times is absurd.
  • valorimvalorim Member Posts: 36 Arc User
    edited December 2018
    I agree with you there Borgovermind, but even that I can see them saying "Loss of profit" With mastery of ships we buy once and then unlock for all characters (A mechanic I literally favor over my other 3 MMO games. and is the reason STO hasn't been dropped by me)... It makes them no additional profit for us to grind.

    @tilarta . Excellent points, plain and simple.

    At this point I log in to do my Christmas race, look down my character list at the ships they have cued up to grind out mastery and log out.
  • garaks31garaks31 Member Posts: 2,845 Arc User
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